SHOT 6 — Before You Called Me Elena

The walkie-talkie hissed. A small voice slipped through the static, carrying a secret far too heavy for ten-year-old lungs.

“Spy One to Spy Two. The mean maid just entered the laundry room. This is your window. Over.”

Isabella Moretti crouched behind a marble pillar, rigid with the focus of someone poised to topple a throne. She pressed the pink button on her comm device, mimicking last night’s secret agents—though the blue ribbon in her dark hair made her look more like a cartoon character who’d wandered into the wrong conspiracy.

Behind the kitchen door, Dante watched.

Thirteen years old. More confidence than he had centimeters. His eyes fixed on the topmost shelf, where Signora Renata’s chocolate cookie jar sat like a sacred relic that had never once been touched.

He raised the walkie-talkie.

“Spy Two, receiving. Target in sight. Top shelf. Too high for you, Belladona. Lucky you’ve got an asset like me.”

“‘Over,’ Dante. You’re supposed to say ‘over.’ That’s the protocol.”

“Who made that protocol?”

“Me. And I’m the operation commander.”

Dante chuckled quietly. Arguing with Isabella was like bailing the ocean with a leaking bucket. You’d only exhaust yourself.

“We’re talking about cookies. Not nuclear codes.”

“Cookies are highly classified state documents. Especially Signora Renata’s. They’re like the Mona Lisa—but edible.”

He exhaled slowly. This wasn’t the first time he’d done something insane because she’d told him to. Last year, he’d climbed a four-meter oak tree just because she wanted to verify whether bird eggs really were blue, like her encyclopedia said. He’d nearly broken his neck.

But he did see the blue eggs.

Whatever spell Isabella had over him, he couldn’t explain it.

“Alright,” he said. “Going in. Keep watch.”

He moved like a cat. His fingers had just grazed the cookie jar when a voice shattered the silence.

“Please, don’t stop on my account. I’d hate to interrupt your criminal enterprise.”

Alessandro. Standing in the doorway. Grinning like a man born to cause destruction.

Dante startled. His hand slipped. The jar spun through the air—and he caught it. Barely. But the lid didn’t survive. It snapped free. Cookies hit the floor with a clatter that betrayed them completely.

Alessandro drew a long breath.

“SIGNORA CARUSO! C’È UN LADRO IN CUCINA!”

Behind her pillar, Isabella went rigid. Mission: total collapse.

Signora Caruso materialized from the hallway like a storm wrapped in a uniform.

“DANTE SALVATORE! Dio mio—always you!”

He knew her lecture could outlast a Sunday mass. In one motion, he scooped up the remaining cookies, stuffed them into his pockets, and bolted.

In the hallway, he nearly collided with Sophia Moretti—always calm, always composed, a Renaissance painting in motion. She was carrying a flower vase when he shot past her like a bullet.

“Dante, sweetheart,” she said, gentle but pointed, “someday you’ll realize those cookies cost more than an apology can cover.”

“Mi dispiace!”

He didn’t turn around.

Isabella materialized from behind the sofa and seized his wrist like she was pulling a wounded soldier off a battlefield.

“Don’t apologize yet! Run.”

They sprinted through the rose garden, toward the great oak tree and the treehouse above it—headquarters for every scheme in the Moretti universe. The wooden ladder creaked beneath them. When they reached the top, the world below shrank into something small and irrelevant.

The treehouse overflowed with stolen cushions, stacked comics, and folders of “sensitive documents”—mostly scribbled plans for impossible missions. Isabella’s stuffed bear served as chief of security. On the wall, a rule written in crayon: Only Belladona and Dan-Dun may enter. Even Alessandro had to knock three times and recite the password before his feet touched the floor.

Dante collapsed onto the cushions, gasping. Isabella dug into his pocket and pulled out the crushed cookies like irreplaceable war trophies.

“Mission accomplished.”

“Nearly cost me my life,” Dante corrected. The corner of his mouth refused to stay straight.

They ate in silence. Through the small window, the late afternoon sky dissolved into soft gradients of rose and amber, like the universe painting with pastel pencils.

“It’s beautiful,” Isabella murmured, eyes drifting shut.

She leaned her head against his shoulder. Her dark hair, smelling of strawberry shampoo, grazed his cheek. He let it stay. This ritual between them had existed for years—no contracts, no promises.

“You know, Dan-Dun,” she said, voice drifting somewhere far away, “a sky like this makes me want cotton candy.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“Because it really does look like one enormous cotton candy.” She sat up, eyes bright. “Do you remember the raccoon I gave cotton candy to at the zoo?”

“The one contemplating philosophy?”

“He washed it in the water and it dissolved. He just stared. I gave him another piece, he washed it again, it dissolved again. The zookeeper said the raccoon nearly had an existential crisis.”

Dante laughed quietly. “That poor raccoon.”

“If the sky were washed,” Isabella said suddenly, “do you think the color would disappear too?”

He studied the horizon—fading now into rose gold and amber, a brief gift before night came to collect.

“Maybe,” he murmured. “But it would come back tomorrow.”

“Like something that keeps people strong?”

“Maybe something like that.”

She smiled and leaned back against his shoulder.

“And we’ll always be like this, won’t we? Just the two of us. Forever.”

Dante looked at the sky, then at the small girl he’d been watching over since the first time he could reach the lowest branch of this oak tree.

“Forever.”

✘   ✘   ✘

The painting on the study wall showed a cotton-candy sky. Frozen exactly as they’d seen it from the treehouse, seventeen years ago.

Elena looked at it for exactly one second.

Then she turned away. Her chest throbbed like a guitar string pulled too taut.

Two in the morning. Salvatore Mansion appeared to sleep—but that was an illusion. Cameras blinked from every corner. Motion sensors held their breath. The security system here wasn’t just technology. It was the physical shape of a man terrified of his own shadow.

The earpiece in Elena’s ear hummed.

“Main hallway camera rotates every forty-five seconds,” Aria whispered. “Your window is between second twelve and second thirty-eight. Go past that and the sensor screams.”

“Copy.”

Elena moved. The marble floor didn’t notice her. Years of training under Marcus had turned her footsteps into something even the wind couldn’t catch.

“Signal in three… two… one… now.”

She slipped through.

The cloned access card performed obediently. The library door opened without a sound, as if it had always been destined to surrender to her.

Behind a marble statue of a goddess missing one arm, a wooden panel waited. Elena pressed two concealed points among the carvings. The panel shifted, slow and fluid as a long exhale.

“I’m at the door.”

“Eight-digit encryption. Processing.”

The silence was deafening. She could hear the creak of floorboards below, the distant breath of a guard, the electric hum of indicator lights. When tension began crawling along her skin, she pressed it down—deep, where it wouldn’t surface.

Click.

The archive room smelled of old paper and iron. Shelves stood in rows like long-retired soldiers. Elena moved to the far corner—a drawer with an electronic lock more elaborate than all the others.

“Sentinel-X. Integrated directly with Victor’s central server. I need a manual bypass.”

“Twelve minutes to crack the encryption,” Aria replied.

“Do it.”

Every second moved like an hour.

“Done. But I can’t guarantee the outer hallway stays quiet.”

The drawer slid open. Inside: a thick folder, its corner marked in red. Elena photographed every page with the camera embedded in her watch. Names. Passport photos. Account numbers. Ship manifests that had no business existing in any legal record.

“Elena. Ten minutes before the system refreshes. Leave. Now.”

She arranged the drawer precisely as she’d found it.

“Next move?” Aria asked.

“Victor’s study. West wing.”

“Now? That’s too risky.”

“The keylogger has to be installed before the system upgrade tomorrow morning. This is the only window.”

“Understood. But we have two weeks before the next deep scan. After that, all bets are off.”

“Two weeks is enough.”

✘   ✘   ✘

The west wing was the heart of the family’s paranoia.

A standard card was useless here. Elena used a duplicate signal—lifted from the head of security days ago. Two guards stood rigid as chess pieces. She studied the rhythm of their breathing, waited for the five-second gap, and slipped past them.

The door to Victor’s study recognized the stolen signal. Green light. A hospitality that felt grotesque in a room this cold.

Everything inside was too large. Too grand for one person. A monument to unchecked ego.

The keylogger was installed in seconds. By morning, it would harvest secrets without leaving a trace.

She was turning to leave when a photograph stopped her.

Warm colors. Past sunlight captured on paper. Young Dante stood there—smiling with a smile not yet touched by the world’s darkness. His mother held little Lorenzo. Victor stood behind them wearing an expression that only looked affectionate from a distance.

Elena stared at the boy in the photograph. The boy who had chased her through this house, laughing. Who had broken every rule just to share crushed cookies with her.

Back then, the world hadn’t taken anything from him yet.

An emotion she should have killed years ago pulsed in her chest. She closed her eyes—and drowned it in the darkest part of herself, the place that had long since gone black.

“Wait.” Aria’s voice sharpened. “Pattern changed. I see a disruption in the patrol log. Four guards, heading your way. Victor must have triggered the micro-alarm.”

Footsteps in the corridor. Heavy. Measured.

No time for the door. Windows electronically locked.

One option.

Elena pressed herself into the folds of the velvet drapes and became shadow.

The door groaned open. Two guards swept in. Flashlight beams sliced through the dark.

“Clear,” said one. Rough Russian accent.

“Check again. Boss will skin us if we miss anything.”

Desk. Wardrobe. Every drawer. One guard moved toward the drapes. One more step. The beam began to rise.

Elena held her breath until her chest ached.

“Hold.” Aria’s whisper was ice-thin. “Fire alarm—east lobby—now.”

The guard’s radio crackled. Smoke detected in the east lobby. Abandon position. Check the area immediately.

He grunted—relieved—and turned to leave.

The door swung shut.

Elena didn’t move for two full minutes. Only when her legs began going numb did she step out from the curtain.

✘   ✘   ✘

The walk back to her room felt like moving through an endless tunnel. Each step echoed in her own ears.

She turned the final corner.

And stopped dead.

Dante stood directly in front of her door. Black pajama pants. Arms folded across his chest. Eyes locked on her without blinking—cutting through every layer of every secret she had ever guarded with her life.

“Miss Lafayette,” Dante said, his voice low. So measured it became dangerous. “I would greatly appreciate a very interesting explanation tonight.”