Chapter 5 - Fire at the Lake HouseLeo moved Lily and Beatrice before sunset.
He did not explain the destination to the guards until the convoy was already on the road. Three identical SUVs left through separate gates. Two drove toward downtown Chicago.
The third headed north.
Lily sat between Leo and Beatrice in the back seat. She held her stuffed rabbit against her chest and watched the city disappear beyond the tinted windows.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“A safe place,” Leo said.
“Is our house not safe?”
Leo hesitated.
Beatrice answered gently.
“It will be again.”
The safe house stood beside a frozen lake nearly two hours from Chicago. It looked like a simple cedar lodge, but cameras covered the trees, steel reinforced the doors, and armed men patrolled the property.
Leo’s wife had chosen the place years earlier.
He had not returned since her death.
Lily seemed to know it.
She walked into the living room and stopped before a framed photograph.
Elena Rossi stood on the dock, laughing into the wind. Leo held Lily as a baby. His expression in the photograph was softer than anything Beatrice had ever seen.
“Mommy’s house,” Lily whispered.
Leo looked away.
Beatrice understood why he had avoided the place.
Every room carried a version of the life the bomb had destroyed.
The first night passed quietly.
Lily slept in Elena’s old bedroom with Beatrice on a chair beside the bed. Leo remained in the hall until dawn, pretending to review security reports.
On the second morning, Beatrice found him in the kitchen attempting to make pancakes.
The first batch had burned.
The second resembled wet paper.
She stood in the doorway.
“You control shipping routes and warehouses.”
Leo glanced at the pan.
“Apparently not breakfast.”
Beatrice took the spatula.
“You’re using too much heat.”
“I was following the recipe.”
“The recipe assumes common sense.”
He looked at her.
Beatrice froze.
No employee spoke to Leo Rossi that way.
Then he laughed.
It was brief and rusty, as if the sound had not been used in years.
Lily appeared at the table.
“Bee makes bears.”
“Bears?” Leo asked.
Beatrice poured batter into a round face with two smaller circles for ears.
Lily smiled.
Leo watched his daughter’s expression as though witnessing sunrise after a long winter.
For several hours, they almost resembled a family.
That illusion ended when Mateo called.
He remained in Chicago investigating Damian and Victoria.
“The number that messaged Beatrice was activated near the estate,” he reported. “We found a transmitter inside the air system.”
“Who installed it?” Leo asked.
“Someone familiar with the original blueprints.”
“Damian.”
“Possibly. There is more.”
Leo stepped outside onto the covered porch.
Beatrice did not intend to listen, but the kitchen window remained open.
Mateo lowered his voice.
“I reviewed the personnel records from twelve years ago. Beatrice’s father worked for us.”
Leo turned toward the window.
Beatrice stopped wiping the counter.
“My father?” she asked.
Leo ended the call.
“You heard.”
“Robert Miller worked for your family?”
Leo’s silence confirmed it.
“My mother said he was an accountant for a manufacturing company.”
“He audited several warehouses owned through Rossi subsidiaries.”
Beatrice put down the cloth.
“He died in a warehouse fire.”
“Yes.”
The room felt suddenly colder.
“Was it one of yours?”
Leo’s eyes held hers.
“Yes.”
Beatrice stepped back.
She remembered the night police came to their apartment. Her mother collapsing in the hallway. The closed casket. The insurance company that refused to pay because the fire was labeled employee negligence.
“You knew?”
“I was twenty-three. My uncle controlled that division.”
“Your family told my mother my father caused the fire.”
“I believed the report.”
“You never checked?”
“I had no reason to question it then.”
“My mother cleaned offices at night because we lost everything.”
Leo’s jaw tightened.
“I did not know.”
“That does not change what happened.”
“No.”
Lily watched from the table.
Beatrice lowered her voice.
“Why was my father really there?”
“Mateo is finding out.”
Before she could respond, a guard entered.
“Sir, tire tracks were found near the west woods.”
Leo reached beneath his coat.
“How recent?”
“Less than an hour.”
“Move Lily to the shelter.”
Lily’s chair scraped backward.
“No basement.”
“It is not like the cellar,” Beatrice said quickly.
“No dark rooms.”
Leo crouched beside her.
“It has lights. Beatrice will remain with you.”
The alarm began before they reached the hallway.
One sharp tone.
Then another.
A guard shouted from outside.
“Fire!”
Flames rose along the eastern wall of the lodge.
They spread too quickly to be accidental.
Leo opened the reinforced door leading to the underground shelter.
Smoke rolled across the ceiling.
“Go,” he ordered.
Beatrice took Lily’s hand.
A window shattered.
A burning bottle struck the floor and exploded.
Fire rushed across the rug.
Lily screamed.
Beatrice lifted her and ran.
A masked man appeared through the smoke.
He grabbed Beatrice’s shoulder and pulled her backward.
She struck him with the heavy flashlight she had taken from the wall. The first blow hit his arm. The second caught his jaw.
He released her.
Leo fired once.
The attacker fell.
“Shelter!” Leo shouted.
Beatrice reached the steel door, but the electronic panel flashed red.
The power had been cut.
“Manual release,” Leo said. “Behind the painting.”
Beatrice tore a landscape from the wall. A lever sat beneath it.
She pulled.
Nothing happened.
“Again.”
She planted both feet and used her full weight. The mechanism groaned. The door opened six inches.
Smoke thickened.
Lily coughed.
Leo helped Beatrice pull until there was enough room for the child to pass.
“Take her.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll follow.”
Beatrice pushed Lily through.
Then gunfire erupted outside.
Leo turned toward the windows.
A second attacker entered through the kitchen.
Beatrice saw the weapon before Leo did.
She moved without thinking.
She slammed her shoulder into Leo’s back.
The bullet struck the wall where his chest had been.
Leo spun and fired.
The attacker fell against the counter.
Beatrice and Leo stared at each other through the smoke.
“You saved me,” he said.
“Again,” Lily called from the shelter. “Come on!”
They squeezed through the opening and sealed the steel door.
The shelter contained emergency air, water, medical supplies, and a bank of security screens. Most of the cameras had gone dark, but one exterior feed remained.
Four attackers moved around the burning lodge.
A fifth stood near the tree line.
He wore gray gloves.
“Damian,” Beatrice whispered.
The man looked directly toward the hidden camera.
Then he lifted one hand and gave a slow wave.
Leo’s face hardened.
A vehicle engine roared outside.
Damian disappeared into the woods.
Mateo’s backup arrived seven minutes later. By then, two attackers had fled and two were dead. The fifth, wounded in the leg, was captured near the lake.
The fire crew saved half the lodge.
They questioned the surviving attacker in the equipment shed.
Leo stood over him.
“Who hired you?”
The man spat blood onto the floor.
“Kensington.”
“Victoria’s father?”
The attacker laughed.
“You think the old man runs this?”
“Who does?”
The man looked toward Beatrice.
“Ask her father.”
Beatrice froze.
“My father is dead.”
“Maybe that’s why he left records.”
“What records?”
The man’s eyes flicked toward the burning lodge.
“The ones Damian has been killing people to find.”
Leo grabbed the front of his jacket.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you are useless.”
The attacker smiled.
“Robert Miller hid proof that a Rossi betrayed a Rossi. He sent one copy to his wife.”
Beatrice remembered her mother’s final possessions.
A sewing box.
Old receipts.
A brass key she had never identified.
Her mother had made Beatrice promise never to throw it away.
The attacker’s smile widened.
“Damian does not want the maid dead because she saved the girl.”
May you like
Smoke drifted through the broken doorway.
“He wants her dead because she inherited the truth.”
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