Chapter 93 - The Sanctuary of Bones
The crypt beneath the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte was cold, dry, and silent as a grave.
Father Thomas, an elderly priest with weathered hands and eyes that had seen decades of syndicate violence, pulled a heavy wool blanket over Vincent's shivering body. The priest had spent two hours stitching the reopened wound on Vincent's flank by the light of tallow candles, using vintage surgical thread and holy water mixed with medical alcohol.
"The fever has taken hold," Father Thomas murmured, wiping his brow with a stained cloth. "I have done what God allows. The rest belongs to his will."
Mateo sat on the stone steps leading down from the nave, cleaning his weapon in rhythmic, obsessive strokes.
Maya was asleep on a wooden bench nearby, completely exhausted, wrapped in Father Thomas's heavy wool cassock.
I sat on the stone floor beside Vincent's cot, holding his limp, burning hand. His breathing was fast and shallow, his brow soaked with fever sweat.
The hard drive Vincent had taken from the aluminum case lay on the altar table beside my laptop—an old, encrypted machine Mateo had scavenged from a dead-drop location near the train station.
I stood up, walked to the altar, and plugged the drive into the USB port.
The screen flickered to life. The drive bypassed the standard firewalls, loading a massive directory of digitized microfiche documents, dated between 1991 and 1998.
"What are you looking for?" Mateo asked quietly without looking up from his rifle.
"The truth," I said. "Vincent said Julian's biometric key wasn't based on Maya's blood, but on their mother's line. He said there was an older sister sent to America."
"I never heard of an older sister," Mateo said. "Lorenzo De Marco had two sons: Julian and Vincent. That's the family history."
I clicked open the first folder, labeled *PROTOCOL GENOVA - 1993*.
Scanned medical records appeared on the screen. Birth certificates, legal relinquishments, and sealed Vatican baptismal registries.
My eyes scanned the Italian text, my heart beating faster with every line.
In July of 1993, Lorenzo's wife, Isabella De Marco, gave birth to a daughter in a private clinic outside Genoa. But Lorenzo, obsessed with patriarchal lineage and fearing his rivals would use a daughter as a political hostage, ordered the child removed from the registry. The girl was placed with an American diplomatic couple stationed in Rome.
The adoptive family's name was typed in crisp courier font at the bottom of the document:
*Vance and Sarah Hayes. Relocation destination: Boston, Massachusetts.*
A high-resolution photograph of the infant was attached to the file, alongside the mother's hospital footprint card. And on the back of the child's left shoulder was a distinct, star-shaped birthmark.
I froze.
My left hand slowly rose to touch my own shoulder, right beneath the collarbone.
The star-shaped birthmark.
The room seemed to tilt beneath my feet. The sound of the flickering candles roared in my ears like a furnace.
"Elena?" Mateo asked, noticing my sudden rigidity. "What is it?"
I couldn't speak. I looked from the screen to the cot where Vincent lay unconscious, fighting for his life.
Vincent hadn't searched the world for a random, trustworthy woman to raise Maya five years ago. Julian hadn't chosen a random agency in Zurich.
I wasn't a stranger hired to hide a mafia child.
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I was Isabella De Marco's daughter.
I was Vincent and Julian's sister.
