Chapter 3 - THE CHAPEL OF GHOSTS
The tunnel was narrower than a hallway and older than sin.
Brick walls pressed close on both sides. The ceiling dipped low enough that I had to bend. Dust clung to my tongue. Somewhere ahead, water dripped steadily, like a clock counting down Leo’s life.
I moved as fast as I could without jarring him.
The stranger stayed on the phone, guiding me through turns I could barely see.
“Left at the broken pipe.”
“There’s a step down.”
“Do not open the first door. It leads to Marco’s wine cellar.”
My bare foot struck something sharp. I bit back a cry.
Leo’s breathing fluttered against my chest.
“Keep talking,” I whispered.
“To me or the baby?” the man asked.
“Both.”
A pause.
Then his voice softened. “His name is Leonardo Antonio Rossi. His mother called him little lion before he was born. She used to play old Italian songs to him. Badly. She had a terrible voice.”
Despite everything, tears burned my eyes.
“You knew her?”
“I was her driver.”
The words changed the shape of him in my mind. Not just a hidden voice. Not just another man with a gun somewhere in the Rossi machine. A person who had carried the dead woman to appointments, opened doors for her, maybe heard her laugh.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Dante.”
I almost stopped walking.
Dante was the guard everyone feared most after Lorenzo. Tall, silent, scar across one eyebrow. I had seen him once drag a bleeding man out of the west garage without changing expression.
“You work for Lorenzo?”
“I work for the woman he failed to protect,” Dante said. “And for her son.”
Ahead, the tunnel sloped upward.
“Almost there,” he added. “When you reach the iron door, push hard. It sticks.”
I reached it thirty seconds later. It was old, black, and swollen with rust. I shoved my shoulder against it once, twice, three times before it gave with a groan.
Cold night air rushed over me.
I stumbled into the garden behind the mansion.
The Rossi estate spread around me like a sleeping beast. The mansion burned with lights behind its tall windows. Men moved like shadows across balconies and terraces. Somewhere inside, Lorenzo was either fighting his way out or already dead.
I could not think about that.
The chapel waited beyond the garden maze, small and pale beneath the moon. Ivy crawled over its stone walls. An angel statue stood near the entrance, its face worn smooth by time and weather.
I ran toward it.
The chapel door opened before I reached the steps.
An older man with silver hair and a medical bag rushed out.
“Give him to me.”
I flinched backward.
Dante’s voice came through the phone. “That’s Bellamy. Trust him.”
Trust.
The word felt almost cruel.
Still, I handed Leo over because I had no other choice.
Dr. Bellamy carried him inside and laid him on a folded blanket across the front pew. The chapel smelled of wax, old flowers, and cold stone. A marble plaque near the altar read: Sofia Bellini Rossi. Beloved Wife. Devoted Mother.
Devoted Mother.
She had died before she could hold him.
Dr. Bellamy opened his bag with shaking hands. “How long since he fed?”
“A few minutes,” I said. “He swallowed. More than once.”
The doctor looked up sharply. “He latched?”
“Yes.”
“Strongly?”
“At first.”
His face tightened. “Then he can eat. I knew it.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
Bellamy prepared a syringe, then looked at me as if deciding whether I could survive the answer.
“He has been sedated,” he said.
My stomach turned. “Sedated?”
“Not enough to kill him quickly. Enough to weaken his reflexes. Enough to make him appear unable to feed. Enough for doctors to chase the wrong diagnosis.”
I gripped the back of a pew. “Why?”
“Because if Leo dies, Lorenzo’s direct line ends. Certain shares, properties, offshore holdings, and voting rights move into family control until another heir is named.”
“Marco.”
Bellamy did not answer.
He did not need to.
Leo coughed again. The doctor gave him something from the syringe and checked his pulse with two fingers.
“Will he live?”
“If the doses have not damaged him too much,” Bellamy said.
I hated that answer.
A noise sounded outside.
All three of us froze.
Dante’s voice sharpened through the phone. “Mara. Hide.”
Dr. Bellamy grabbed Leo and moved behind the altar.
I slipped beside a confessional booth, pressing myself into shadow.
The chapel door opened.
Marco Rossi walked in wearing a black suit and a smile that belonged at a funeral.
Two men entered behind him.
“Well,” Marco said, glancing toward Sofia’s grave marker. “Isn’t this touching?”
Dr. Bellamy stepped forward, blocking Leo from view.
“Leave the child alone.”
Marco laughed softly. “Doctor, you always were sentimental.”
“He’s a baby.”
“He is a signature on a trust.”
My hands shook. Rage, not fear, filled them now.
Marco moved closer to the altar.
“Where is the maid?”
No one spoke.
His gaze drifted around the chapel.
“She lost a baby, didn’t she? That’s what makes this beautiful. Grieving women are so easy to explain. She steals the child. She smothers him by accident. Lorenzo kills her. Then Lorenzo, destroyed by grief and scandal, becomes unfit to manage anything.”
I covered my mouth to stop myself from making a sound.
Marco sighed.
“I wanted this clean.”
Then Leo cried.
A tiny, weak cry.
But enough.
Marco’s eyes snapped to the altar.
“There you are, little lion.”
He raised his hand.
One of his men stepped forward.
Then a gun clicked behind Marco’s head.
May you like
Dante’s voice filled the chapel.
“Move one more inch, and you join the dead.”
