Chapter 14 - The Ledger
Giulietta forgot the furnace.
Forgot Matteo bleeding against the steel railing.
Forgot the gun in her own hand.
“Elena?”
The woman’s mouth tightened.
“You were twelve the last time you called me that.”
Giulietta’s eyes burned.
“You’re dead.”
“No.”
“My father buried you.”
“He buried an empty coffin.”
Luca stared from the floor.
“You’re our mother?”
Elena’s face cracked for the first time.
“Yes.”
Matteo laughed weakly.
“Family reunion later.”
Giulietta snapped back.
She kicked his pistol away and pressed her knee into his shoulder.
“Elena, untie Luca.”
Her mother moved immediately.
The ledger lay half inside the furnace mouth, edges blackening.
Giulietta grabbed the leather cover and yanked.
Flames licked her glove.
She pulled it free and threw it onto the concrete.
Matteo watched her.
“You always were Vincent’s daughter.”
Elena stopped cutting Luca’s restraints.
A strange silence followed.
Giulietta noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Elena said.
Matteo smiled despite the blood on his teeth.
Giulietta ignored him.
For now.
“You triggered the security response?” she asked Elena.
“Yes.”
“The men outside my bridal suite?”
“Vincent’s protocol placed loyal crews on standby when the dead account detected Article Seven access.”
“The M on Warren’s key?”
“Marconi Protocol. Monitored key. Whoever used it would expose the route into your suite.”
Giulietta let out one short breath.
“So Warren was carrying bait.”
“He didn’t know.”
Luca’s ropes fell away.
He rubbed his wrists.
“Where have you been for twenty years?”
Elena looked at him.
“Alive because your father made the world believe I wasn’t.”
“Why?”
Her eyes went to Matteo.
“He ordered a hit on me after I found his first attempt to seize internal control.”
Matteo shook his head.
“That was not what happened.”
Elena raised her gun.
“Keep talking and I fix the part I missed.”
Giulietta stepped between them.
“No more secrets traded at gunpoint. We leave. We get Luca treated. Matteo talks in a room with cameras.”
Matteo coughed.
“You think cameras save you?”
“They saved Preston from becoming a corpse.”
“Generous.”
The fire alarm cut off abruptly.
Silence filled the lower level.
Then dozens of footsteps pounded through the tunnel.
Enzo appeared first, followed by Marconi soldiers.
Several slowed when they saw Elena.
One older captain crossed himself.
“Elena?”
She looked at him.
“Hello, Frank.”
Nobody lowered their guns until Giulietta did.
“Matteo is alive. Keep him that way.”
Two men lifted him.
As they moved, Matteo looked around at the captains gathering in the room.
“Ask them,” he said.
Giulietta stopped.
“Ask them what?”
“Which side they chose six years ago.”
A few men looked at the floor.
The ledger at Giulietta’s feet suddenly felt heavier than stone.
Vincent’s loyalty test had never ended.
She looked at Elena.
“Did Dad know you were alive until the end?”
Elena nodded.
“We built the contingency together.”
Matteo laughed softly.
“You still haven’t told her.”
Elena’s head snapped toward him.
“Shut up.”
Giulietta turned.
“Told me what?”
Matteo smiled through blood.
May you like
“Now we reach the part Vincent never had the courage to put in a ledger.”
