Chapter 7 - Rosie’s SecretThe safe room door was locked when Allessandro arrived.
But the keypad was dead.
Marco ripped open the emergency panel and cursed.
“Power cut from inside the auxiliary line.”
“Can you open it?”
“Manual override takes time.”
Allessandro grabbed the steel handle.
“Lucia!”
From inside, muffled sobbing.
“Allessandro!” Lucia cried. “She’s here!”
“Isabella?”
“No—someone else!”
Allessandro looked at Marco.
The betrayal kept multiplying.
A guard came running down the hall.
“Boss, we found a service tech uniform near the generator room. Someone changed clothes inside the house.”
Matteo had planted a man before sunrise.
Allessandro’s mind moved fast.
“How long on the door?”
“Three minutes,” Marco said.
They did not have three minutes.
Allessandro looked down at the doll still tucked absurdly under his arm.
Rosie.
Emma had given it to him.
He almost handed it away—then stopped.
The doll felt wrong.
Too heavy in the middle.
He turned it over.
One button eye was darker than the other.
Not a button.
A lens.
Allessandro froze.
“What the hell…”
He tore open the stitched seam along the doll’s back. Inside, wrapped in cloth, was a tiny recording device.
Marco stared.
“Boss?”
Allessandro remembered Emma’s words.
Her mother had sewn it by hand.
But had someone else altered it?
He pressed the side.
A small red light blinked.
Then playback began.
Emma’s voice. Faint. From the night before.
A cup dropping.
Isabella’s voice.
“Grown-ups have secrets.”
Then Matteo’s voice, closer than before.
“Don’t scare her. Children talk when frightened.”
Isabella whispered, “Then make sure she doesn’t.”
Lucia gasped from inside the room.
Allessandro’s face hardened.
The doll had recorded everything.
Not by accident.
Someone had placed the device inside Rosie before Emma ever walked into the kitchen.
Who?
The steel door groaned as Marco forced the manual release.
Inside, Lucia stood with a broken metal shelf support in her hand. Emma was behind her, crying but alive.
On the floor lay a man in a maintenance uniform, bleeding from the forehead but breathing.
Lucia looked at Allessandro.
“He came through the vent panel,” she said. Her voice shook, but her chin stayed up. “So I hit him.”
Marco looked impressed.
Allessandro stepped inside and knelt before Emma.
“You were very brave.”
Emma wiped her face.
“Rosie helped?”
Allessandro held up the torn doll gently.
Emma gasped.
“Rosie is hurt.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But Rosie was hiding something important.”
Emma looked at the little recorder.
“That’s not mine.”
“I know.”
Lucia stared at it.
“Who put that in my daughter’s doll?”
No one answered.
Then Father Dominic’s weak voice came from the doorway.
“I did.”
Everyone turned.
The old priest leaned against the wall, pale from the blow Isabella had given him, but alive.
Allessandro rose slowly.
“You?”
Father Dominic nodded.
“Forgive me. I suspected Matteo weeks ago. I heard things in confession I could not repeat. Not directly.”
Marco’s face darkened. “You used a child?”
“No,” the priest said sharply. “I protected one. Emma carried that doll everywhere. No one suspected it. I meant to capture threats against Lucia. I never imagined…”
His voice broke.
“I never imagined they would poison you at breakfast.”
Allessandro’s anger fought with understanding.
Confession. Silence. Loopholes. God and crime tangled in one old man’s conscience.
Father Dominic looked at Emma.
“I am sorry, child.”
Emma held the torn doll carefully.
“Can Mama fix her?”
Lucia cried then.
Not loudly.
Just once, like something inside her had finally split.
Allessandro turned to Marco.
“Send the recording to every loyal captain. Now. Matteo wanted shadows. Give him light.”
Marco nodded.
The captured man on the floor groaned.
Allessandro crouched beside him.
“Where is Matteo?”
The man spit blood and smiled.
“Already gone.”
Allessandro leaned closer.
“Wrong answer.”
The man’s smile faded.
Because Allessandro Romano’s voice had become the voice men feared.
“Where?”
The man swallowed.
“Harbor. Pier Nine.”
Allessandro stood.
This time, when he moved toward the door, Emma called after him.
“Mr. Romano?”
He looked back.
She held Rosie against her chest.
“Don’t eat anything there.”
May you like
For the first time all day, Allessandro smiled.
“I won’t.”
