Chapter 6 - THE FATHER WHO CAME BACK WRONGElena’s pistol slipped from her hand.
“Gabriel?”
She moved toward him, but Dominic caught her arm.
Something about Gabriel’s expression was wrong.
He looked healthy. Too healthy for a man supposedly tortured for months.
“You’re alive,” Elena whispered.
Gabriel smiled.
“That was always the plan.”
Isabella emerged fully from the shadows. She wore a white suit and black gloves, appearing more like a politician than the leader of a criminal network.
“Our family has a talent for returning from the dead,” she said.
Elena looked between them.
“You worked with her?”
“At first, no,” Gabriel replied. “Then I learned the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That Vincent murdered our father.”
Dominic shook his head.
“Salvatore died of a stroke.”
Gabriel’s smile vanished.
“Vincent poisoned him and seized the empire.”
Isabella placed a hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“She showed me the medical report,” Gabriel continued. “Vincent destroyed our family and spent years pretending to protect it.”
Elena remembered Vincent’s tenderness toward Sophie, but she also knew the terrible things people said about him.
“Why fake your death?”
“To escape Vincent long enough to gather evidence.”
“Why abandon your daughters?”
“I was protecting them.”
“You let Sophie believe you were dead!”
Pain crossed Gabriel’s face, but it disappeared quickly.
“I’ll explain everything after the vault opens.”
Elena realized he was avoiding the most important question.
“Why did your men beat me?”
Gabriel looked at Isabella.
She answered for him.
“Derek exceeded his instructions.”
“You ordered my kidnapping?”
“We needed Vincent to find Sophie. He possessed the family signet required to enter the vault.”
Elena stepped backward.
Her rescue had been manipulated. Derek’s attack, Vincent’s arrival, and the pendant had all been pieces of a larger plan.
“You risked killing our daughter,” she said to Gabriel.
“I knew Vincent would arrive.”
“You couldn’t know that.”
Gabriel’s silence revealed the truth.
Sophie had been considered an acceptable sacrifice.
Dominic suddenly drew a hidden blade and attacked Isabella’s guard. He cut the man’s throat before seizing Elena’s fallen pistol.
Gunfire filled the catacombs.
Dominic pushed Elena behind a stone column.
“Run!”
Gabriel tackled him.
The two men crashed onto the floor, fighting for the weapon.
Elena ran deeper into the tunnel.
Behind her, Isabella shouted, “Let her go. She’ll lead Vincent directly to us.”
At the lakeside estate, Vincent received a message from Elena’s phone.
A map showed the church and a single instruction:
BRING THE GIRLS OR ELENA DIES.
Vincent studied the message.
“They need Sophie alive,” Marco said. “Mia too.”
“They also need my signet.”
“Then we give them nothing.”
Vincent opened a safe and removed the gold Torino ring he had inherited from his father.
He handed it to Marco.
“Make a copy.”
“You intend to enter the vault?”
“I intend to find out what they fear inside it.”
Vincent refused to bring Sophie and Mia. Instead, he placed them inside a reinforced panic room beneath the estate with Dr. Romano and six guards.
Sophie grabbed his hand.
“You promised to bring Mommy back.”
“I will.”
“Daddy too?”
Vincent hesitated.
“If he deserves to come back.”
At Saint Augustine’s Church, Vincent entered alone wearing a concealed transmitter.
Isabella waited before the altar.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other.
Vincent remembered a six-year-old girl chasing him through their father’s garden. He remembered teaching her to ride a bicycle. He remembered pulling her red coat from the lake after she disappeared beneath the ice.
“You let me believe you were dead,” he said.
“Our father gave me to the Crown.”
“Why?”
“To settle a debt. They raised me, educated me, and taught me what the Torino family truly was.”
“You could have come home.”
“To become another soldier beneath you?”
“You were my sister.”
“I still am.”
She approached and touched his cheek.
Vincent caught her wrist.
“You ordered an attack on a child.”
“I ordered a performance. Derek became careless.”
“You murdered him to silence him.”
“I saved him from what you would have done.”
Vincent released her with disgust.
“Where is Elena?”
“Waiting below.”
“Gabriel?”
Isabella smiled.
“Also waiting.”
The church doors slammed shut.
Armed men stepped from the confessionals.
Vincent’s own caporegime, Anthony Moretti, stood among them.
Moretti had served him for twenty years.
“You chose badly,” Vincent said.
Moretti raised his weapon.
“I chose the future.”
Vincent was forced into the catacombs.
He found Elena bound to a chair and Dominic lying nearby, bleeding but alive.
Gabriel stood before the vault door.
The brothers faced each other for the first time in seventeen years.
Vincent’s voice became unsteady.
“You’re alive.”
Gabriel struck him across the face.
“That’s for our father.”
Vincent did not defend himself.
“I didn’t poison him.”
Gabriel punched him again.
“You expect me to believe you?”
“I was with him when he died. His last words were your name.”
Gabriel faltered.
Isabella interrupted.
“Enough. Open the vault.”
The iron door contained three locks: one shaped for Vincent’s signet, one requiring the pendant fragments, and one biometric scanner designed for Sophie.
Vincent looked at the empty corridor.
“You don’t have the girls.”
Isabella checked her watch.
“I will in five minutes.”
Vincent’s transmitter crackled.
Marco’s voice came through faintly.
“They breached the estate.”
Gunfire erupted over the connection.
Then Sophie screamed.
Vincent lunged at Isabella, but Gabriel struck him from behind.
As Vincent fell, Isabella knelt beside him and displayed a live video.
The panic room door at the estate slowly opened.
May you like
The person entering was Dr. Romano.
He held a syringe in one hand and pointed a gun at Sophie with the other.
Related Stories
