Chapter 6 - THE SCHOOL WITH NO CHILDREN
St. Bartholomew’s Academy stood behind an iron fence in northern Queens.
The stone building had once educated the children of judges, bankers, and politicians. After the fire, newspapers reported that the structure was unsafe and would eventually be demolished.
Twelve years later, it remained untouched.
The windows were boarded.
The chapel tower leaned slightly toward the street.
Yet the bells still worked.
Niko’s audio analysis confirmed they had rung in Elena’s video at exactly four fifteen in the afternoon.
Someone maintained the building.
We approached after midnight.
No convoy.
No visible soldiers.
Tony, Niko, six trusted men, and me.
Bruno remained with Elena despite his protests. I needed him alive more than I needed his nose.
The front gate was chained, but the chain had fresh oil around the links.
Tony cut it.
Inside the schoolyard, dead leaves moved across cracked pavement. A child’s hopscotch grid remained faded near the entrance.
The front doors were locked.
Niko bypassed the alarm panel.
“It’s connected to a private security network.”
“Whose?”
He checked the registration.
“Wynn Protective Services.”
Theodore Wynn owned the company guarding the abandoned property connected to my hidden uncle.
We entered through the kitchen.
The air smelled of dust and old wood.
Classrooms lined the main corridor. Desks stood beneath sheets. Religious paintings watched from the walls.
It looked abandoned.
But the dust betrayed movement.
A narrow path of clean floor continued toward the chapel.
Beneath the altar, we found an elevator.
There were no buttons inside.
Niko used a maintenance key recovered from the ambulance depot.
The elevator descended four levels.
When the doors opened, warm air touched my face.
A modern facility stretched beneath the ruined school.
White corridors.
Medical lighting.
Security cameras.
Locked steel doors.
The walls displayed cheerful murals of forests and stars, the kind designed to make hospitals less frightening to children.
Tony looked through the window of the first room.
Empty beds stood in two rows.
Restraint straps were attached to each frame.
We continued.
The second room contained shelves of medication, including the drug Dr. Park believed had been used on Elena.
The third held filing cabinets.
Niko opened one.
Hundreds of folders.
Each labeled with a child’s name.
Some included photographs, school records, medical history, and notes about family circumstances.
Single parent.
Undocumented guardian.
History of running away.
Low media potential.
Children were selected according to how little noise their disappearance would create.
Tony opened a file and swore.
“What?”
He handed it to me.
The folder belonged to Carlo’s daughter, Isabella.
She had died at age four from what doctors called a sudden infection.
At least that was what we had been told.
The file contained photographs of her playing in Carlo’s yard.
Notes documented her schedule.
A red stamp covered the final page.
UNSUITABLE: PATERNAL ATTENTION TOO HIGH.
Carlo had discovered the network because they had evaluated his daughter.
Maybe her illness had not been natural.
“Copy everything,” I told Niko.
A speaker crackled overhead.
“Still giving orders as if the building belongs to you.”
The voice from Elena’s video.
Dr. Gabriel Russo.
I looked at the nearest camera.
“Show yourself.”
“You have your father’s impatience.”
“You have his ring.”
A soft laugh filled the corridor.
“He gave it to me.”
“My father tried to erase you.”
“Your father tried to erase many things. Mostly his guilt.”
Steel doors slammed behind us.
Red lights flashed.
Gas hissed from ceiling vents.
“Masks!” Tony shouted.
We covered our faces, but the chemical acted quickly.
My vision narrowed.
Niko stumbled.
One of our men collapsed.
We forced open a side door and entered a laboratory, sealing the vents behind us.
Niko activated the emergency ventilation system.
The air cleared slowly.
Two men remained unconscious but breathing.
The speaker inside the laboratory came alive.
“You came seeking monsters,” Gabriel said. “But you stand inside your inheritance.”
“You kidnapped children.”
“I rescued children from lives that would have destroyed them.”
“You sold them.”
“Some were placed with families willing to pay. Others entered research programs. Every system assigns value, Dominic. I merely stopped pretending otherwise.”
Tony fired into the speaker.
The voice shifted to another device.
“Violence. Your father’s favorite language.”
“You killed him,” I said.
“No. Salvatore killed himself piece by piece. Fear, whiskey, and regret finished the work.”
“What did he build?”
“The roads. The officials. The charitable fronts. He understood that influence required access to every layer of society.”
“For smuggling.”
“For continuity. Your father feared prison, assassination, and political change. Children raised within grateful families became judges, officers, executives. Loyalty cultivated from childhood.”
My stomach turned.
The network was not merely trafficking for money.
It placed children into powerful families, manufacturing future allies.
“How many?”
“Enough that you have met several without knowing.”
Tony looked at the cabinets.
“He’s buying time.”
I agreed.
Security monitors showed armed teams entering the lower corridors.
We barricaded the laboratory door.
Niko searched for another exit.
“There’s a surgical passage behind the storage wall.”
We moved a cabinet and found a narrow tunnel.
Before entering, I pulled one folder at random.
A twelve-year-old boy named Samuel Price.
Missing eight years.
The placement section listed a new identity.
Peter Vale Jr.
Councilman Vale’s adopted son.
The councilman had not merely served the network.
The network had built his family.
We moved through the passage as gunmen entered the laboratory behind us.
The tunnel opened into an observation room overlooking a circular chamber.
A single chair stood beneath bright lights.
A man sat strapped to it.
His hair was gray.
His face was thinner than the one in my memory.
But I recognized him immediately.
Carlo.
Alive.
A microphone lowered from the ceiling.
Gabriel’s voice became softer.
“Your cousin has waited twelve years to see whether you became your father.”
Carlo lifted his head.
His eyes met mine through the glass.
He did not look relieved.
He looked afraid.
Not of Gabriel.
Of me.
Gunmen entered the observation room from both sides.
We fought in a space barely wide enough to raise our weapons.
Tony took a bullet through his vest and stayed upright.
Niko shut off the lights.
I shattered the observation glass and jumped into the chamber below.
Carlo recoiled as I approached.
“It’s me.”
“I know.”
I cut the restraints.
“We’re leaving.”
He grabbed my wrist.
“No.”
“What?”
“You can’t take me outside.”
“Why?”
His eyes moved toward a camera in the ceiling.
“Because Gabriel didn’t keep me alive to punish me.”
An alarm began sounding.
Carlo pulled open his shirt.
A surgical scar crossed his chest.
May you like
Beneath the skin, a small red light blinked.
“He put something inside me,” Carlo whispered. “And he says it will kill every child connected to the program if my heart stops beating.”
