جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 100

The escape from the tunnel became nothing but mere fragments afterward. They had finally made it outside where some of Lorenzo's men stood waiting, Marco went to work immediately, shouting out instructions through smoke and darkness. “Take these kids," he began, handing the other two children to the two men by his side. " Find and take them back to wherever they belong and you better do it exactly as I've asked, or else… I'll leave it at that.” He growled. " Yes Sir!” They chorused, rushing away. More gunfire erupted causing more concrete to collapse behind them as Matteo kept crying against Isabella’s shoulder and Lorenzo’s didn't stop hand gripping hers so tightly it almost hurt. Not once did he let go, even when the underground walls had trembled violently around them, when bullets struck somewhere behind them or even when the emergency lights failed completely and the tunnel descended into chaos. He never let go. —---------------------- By the time they had gotten to

The study did not return to silence after Marco’s revelation.“The access code used belonged to your mother.” Instead, the words lingered heavily inside the room, settling into the dark wooden shelves, the dying fire, and the shadows cast across his father’s old study." About the documents I told you, your father handed down to me, this…" Marco said, raising the flash drive in his hand. “ This is the most important of them all… I've never opened it and I don't intend to have the tiniest idea of whatever it contains." He finished, handing Lorenzo the drive.Rain tapped steadily against the windows as Lorenzo inserted the drive and an archive recording popped up and remained paused on the computer screen, Dante’s image stood frozen mid-frame like a ghost that had been waiting years to speak.Marco placed another file on the desk between them.“The access came through the Zurich accounts with encrypted relay,” he said quietly. “... It was the same security framework Dante built years a

The villa remained uneasy even long after the alarms had stopped. The security teams swept the perimeter twice before daybreak while Marco personally walked around, reviewing surveillance feeds, checked blind spots, and inspected every entrance himself. In the end, it was nothing unusual, just a triggered motion sensor near the eastern woods. Officially, it was written off as a false alarm. But no one truly believed that because the fear of the recent incidents had settled too deeply into the bones of everyone in the villa over the past weeks for anyone to just brush the tiniest issue off as a mere occurrence. You could hear it in the lowered voices of the staff, in the guards who now walked their routes with sharper eyes, and in the silence that always lingered inside every corridor. Lorenzo had not slept. He couldn't, it felt his father's revelation broke the last strand of relaxation left in him. He remained in Dante’s study way long after sunrise, seated behind the desk with

For the rest of the evening, the wooden horse remained on Lorenzo's desk. Not even Marco who had quietly increased security around the estate after it was discovered. Isabella had kept looking at it all through dinner while Matteo kept asking Lorenzo if it belonged to him while growing up, that was the one question Lorenzo hadn't responded to since they began to draw closer.The truth had been simple yet strangely difficult to say aloud because in truth,it had belonged to him. It belonged to a version of him he barely remembered anymore.The horse had once lived in the pocket of a six-year-old boy who used to run gleefully through the gardens of the old De Luca estate, climbing trees and returning home with dirty knees, who still believed adults knew everything and that parents could never leave.That boy had buried the toy after losing a childish argument and declaring, with all the dramatic finality children seemed to always possess, that he would “never need it again.”But a few we

When Lorenzo got back to the villa, he could not sleep, he was just watching and thinking, tuning over everything Marco had said that night in his mind, implying that he was not the legitimate son of his father. For every single time he replayed the scene in his head, it broke him, over and over again, those words had followed him all the way home. He laughed once not because it was funny, but because it was unbearable, all of it.A soft sound behind him broke the silence, he turned around and saw Isabella standing at the doorway.She wore a light sweater over her night clothes, her hair loose around her shoulders but sleep still lingered in her expression, now replaced by concern. “You weren’t in your room.” she called out, just concern tinged with worry.“I went to the greenhouse.”“You went there alone?” Her eyes widened.“Yes… I saw some footsteps by the fountain and decided to go looking” he replied.The answer sat heavily between them as she looked at him incredulously.He ste