Chapter 4 - The Dead Man’s DaughterFor six years, Alessandro had believed Mateo Reyes died without leaving family.
That was what the report said.
Single man.
No wife.
No children.
No relatives in the country.
Buried under a plain stone in a cemetery Alessandro paid for but never visited.
Now Mateo’s daughter stood barefoot in his dining room holding a memory card inside a child’s pendant.
The dead did not return easily.
But when they did, they brought receipts.
Alessandro turned to Maria.
“You were married to Mateo?”
Maria nodded once, tears still shining on her face.
“Not legally,” she whispered. “He said legal papers made people traceable. But yes. He was Lily’s father.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Maria looked at Isabella, then at the pinned gunman.
“Because Mateo told me if anything happened to him, I was to disappear. He said the danger was inside your house.”
Alessandro’s eyes darkened.
“My house?”
“Your circle,” Maria said. “Your people. Someone close enough to touch your food. Close enough to hear your calls. Close enough to smile at your table.”
No one looked at Isabella.
They did not need to.
Isabella stared at the pendant like it was a bomb.
“You don’t know what’s on that card,” she said.
Lily hugged it against her chest.
“No,” she admitted. “But you do.”
That silenced her.
Alessandro extended his hand gently.
“Lily.”
The girl hesitated.
Maria knelt beside her.
“It’s all right, mija.”
Lily placed the pendant in Alessandro’s palm.
His fingers closed over it carefully, as if the little silver thing weighed more than the mansion itself.
“Nico,” Alessandro said.
His bodyguard looked up.
“Lock down the house. No one leaves. No one calls out. Bring Luca from the garage, Dr. Vale from the lab, and Father Brennan from the chapel.”
Isabella gave a cold laugh.
“A priest? Planning a confession?”
“No,” Alessandro said. “A witness.”
Her expression flickered.
That was enough.
The gunman on the floor began to laugh.
“You think a priest scares anyone in this city?”
Nico pressed his knee harder into the man’s back.
The laugh stopped.
Alessandro crouched in front of him.
“Your name.”
The man spat blood onto the marble.
Alessandro waited.
The man looked up at him with hatred.
“Grant Bellamy.”
Isabella shut her eyes again.
Nico’s head snapped toward her.
“Bellamy?”
Alessandro recognized the name. Everyone with a memory did.
The Bellamy family had once owned half the warehouses along the harbor before Alessandro’s father took them piece by piece. The Bellamys had vanished from Baltimore’s underworld after a failed war, but old money rarely died. It hid. It married. It invested. It waited.
“You brought Bellamys into my house,” Alessandro said to Isabella.
She lifted her chin.
“You brought death into mine first.”
“Daniel Carrow stole from me.”
“No. Daniel Carrow found out who was stealing from you.”
Alessandro studied her.
Isabella’s voice trembled now, not with fear, but with years of rehearsed grief.
“He went to Mateo. He begged him to take the evidence to you. Mateo promised he would. Then my father died. Mateo died later. And you married yourself to the woman who came to finish the job.”
“I did not kill your father,” Alessandro said.
Isabella laughed bitterly.
“Men like you never do. You nod. Someone else bleeds.”
Maria stood suddenly.
“No.”
Everyone turned.
Her voice shook, but she did not lower it.
“Mateo did take the evidence. He tried to get it to Mr. Romano. But someone intercepted him.”
“Who?” Alessandro asked.
Maria looked at the pendant in his hand.
“I never knew. Mateo came home that night terrified. He said there were two enemies. One outside the family and one wearing the family name.”
Alessandro’s face turned cold.
“My family name?”
Before Maria could answer, a phone rang.
Not from Alessandro.
Not from Isabella.
From the gunman’s jacket.
Nico removed it and looked at the screen.
His face hardened.
“No caller ID.”
Alessandro took the phone.
He answered without speaking.
For three seconds, only static breathed through the line.
Then an old male voice said, “If the child is still alive, you have already lost control of the morning.”
Alessandro’s eyes did not move.
“Who is this?”
The voice chuckled.
“You used to call me uncle.”
The line went dead.
No one spoke.
Alessandro lowered the phone slowly.
Nico looked at him.
“Boss?”
Alessandro stared toward the bright harbor beyond the windows.
There were only three men in the world he had ever called uncle.
Two were dead.
One was supposed to be in a private hospital outside Annapolis, unable to speak after a stroke.
Alessandro turned toward the guards.
“Bring me Carlo Romano.”
Isabella’s face emptied of color.
Alessandro saw it.
So did Lily.
And this time, the little girl spoke before anyone could stop her.
“That’s the man I saw last night,” she whispered. “The old man.”
Alessandro turned slowly.
Lily’s voice became smaller.
“He was with her.”
May you like
She pointed at Isabella.
“And he called her daughter.”
