Chapter 10 - The Man Beyond the Glass
Alejandro reached the kitchen window in three steps.
Nothing outside.
Snow.
Hedge.
Empty path.
Tomas triggered lockdown.
This time Alejandro did not trust the house systems.
He trusted people he could physically see.
Emma was moved to the central safe room with Elena, Gabriel, and two guards Alejandro had known since childhood.
Then he went hunting.
Not across the city.
Across his own property.
The photograph angle narrowed the possibilities.
East garden.
Second-floor lens.
Long zoom.
Tomas found a disturbed patch of snow near the old carriage house.
Inside, they discovered a hidden observation room.
Camera equipment.
Mansion floor plans.
School schedules.
Photographs of Elena and Emma from three states.
Four years of their lives covered the walls.
Alejandro stared at one image.
Emma at age one, asleep against Elena on a bus.
Another at two, holding a balloon.
Another at three, outside preschool.
Vincenzo had not recently discovered them.
He had been watching almost the entire time.
Tomas found a notebook.
Most pages were coded.
One page was not.
ELENA WILL RETURN TO THE ONLY PLACE SHE THINKS I WON’T EXPECT.
Alejandro whispered, “He wanted her here.”
Tomas nodded.
“The anonymous reference.”
“Elena thought coming here was her idea.”
“It wasn’t.”
A sound came from behind the wall.
Tomas raised his weapon.
Alejandro opened a narrow maintenance panel.
A passage led toward the mansion.
Old Prohibition tunnels.
His grandfather had built them decades earlier.
Vincenzo knew.
Of course he knew.
They followed the tunnel.
It split beneath the east wing.
One route went toward the wine cellar.
The other toward the basement staff apartments.
Alejandro felt sick.
Vincenzo had been able to reach Elena’s room without using a door.
The rule that Emma stay hidden downstairs had never protected her.
It had trapped her beside a secret entrance.
They reached Elena’s old room.
Behind a wardrobe was another panel.
Inside the wall, someone had installed a tiny camera facing Emma’s bed.
Tomas swore.
Alejandro ripped the camera free.
He had faced men with guns without feeling what he felt then.
Not fear.
Violation.
Rage so clean it became cold.
His phone buzzed again.
Vincenzo.
One message.
YOU STILL THINK THIS IS ABOUT MONEY.
Then another attachment.
An audio file.
Alejandro played it.
Luca’s voice.
Not from the watch.
A different recording.
“Vincenzo, stop.”
Then a second voice.
Henry Bell.
“You don’t understand what you started.”
Vincenzo answered.
“I understand exactly.”
Then Luca said something Alejandro had never heard before.
“Alejandro is going legitimate.”
“He’s shutting down the old routes.”
“If you expose this now, you destroy everything he’s trying to save.”
Vincenzo laughed.
“That is the point.”
The recording ended.
Tomas looked at Alejandro.
“You were changing the organization back then.”
“Yes.”
Vincenzo had not betrayed the Moretti family to make money.
He had betrayed it because Alejandro was dismantling the world Vincenzo had spent his life building.
The old accountant did not want power.
He wanted the Moretti empire to remain exactly what it had always been.
And Luca had discovered him.
Alejandro’s phone rang again.
This time it was the safe room.
One of the guards sounded frantic.
May you like
“Boss, Emma is gone.”
