Chapter 3 - The Ghost in the Records
The room seemed to tilt. Silvio. He had been my father’s closest advisor, the man who held my hand at Juliana’s funeral and swore on his mother's grave to help me find the truck driver who ran her off the road.
"You're lying," I growled, stepping forward until I was inches from her face. The scent of her lavender soap couldn't mask the metallic tang of fear in the air. "Juliana died in a car crash in upstate New York. The police report—"
"The car crash was the backup plan," Gemma interrupted, her eyes flashing with anger. "When Silvio realized Juliana had escaped to Switzerland to get her blood flushed and documented, he panicked. She knew she couldn't come back to the North Shore estate without proof. She knew you were surrounded by vipers, Lorenzo. You were too busy fighting a turf war in Brooklyn to see the monster sitting at your own dinner table."
She pointed to the hard drive on the desk.
"On that drive are the forensic toxicology reports from the Zurich clinic, signed by my medical board. It contains the audio recordings Juliana made while she was in her hospital bed. And... it contains the genetic mapping for Sophia."
My hand dropped from my jacket. "Sophia?"
"Silvio didn't just want Juliana dead," Gemma whispered, her voice cracking. "He knew Sophia carried the genetic marker for aggressive leukemia from Juliana’s maternal line. He intentionally suppressed the early pediatric screenings three years ago so the cancer would be untreatable by the time you noticed. He wanted your legacy dead, Lorenzo. He wanted the Pellegrini line wiped out so he could take the seat."
I struck the mahogany desk with my fist, the heavy wood splitting with a loud, cracking sound that brought Marco’s hand straight to his holster outside the door.
The pieces of the last two years began to slam into place with terrifying, bloody precision. The sudden "accidental" death of our family doctor last spring. The way Silvio always insisted on managing the security details for Sophia’s medical trips. The three previous nurses who had quit—they hadn't quit because Sophia was difficult. They had been paid off or threatened by Silvio’s men to ensure the child didn't receive the specific Neapolitan therapeutic care she needed to survive.
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"Why the lullaby?" I managed to ask, my chest heaving as the rage threatened to consume me. "Why did you sing it tonight?"
"Juliana taught it to me in Zurich," Gemma said, a soft, sad smile breaking through her exhaustion. "She said it was a code. She told me, 'If my daughter stops speaking, it means they have broken her spirit. If you sing this song, she will know you are a piece of me, and she will fight.' I forged my papers because it was the only way to bypass Silvio’s vetting process. I had to get inside this fortress before the chemotherapy failed."
