Chapter 5 - The Ghost in Room 304
The guards didn't even have time to bring their submachine guns to their
shoulders.
Matteo’s team fired four suppressed rounds in rapid, terrifying synchronization.
The two security guards collapsed against the wall, their weapons clattering
across the linoleum floor as they slumped into the corners, neutralized before
they could draw breath.
Doctor Anton Castiglione dropped the glass syringe. The vial shattered on the
tiles, the clear, lethal toxin pooling harmlessly across the threshold of
Room 304.
The doctor turned to flee toward the fire exit, but Matteo closed the distance
like a striking panther.
Matteo’s hand clamped around the doctor’s collar, slamming him against the
concrete wall with enough force to crack the drywall behind him.
“Anton,” Matteo snarled, pressing his forearm against his throat.
“Matteo! Wait! You don't understand!” the doctor sputtered, his glasses dangling
from one ear, his eyes wild with terror. “Vittorio forced me! He threatened to
revoke my medical licenses in Europe! He said she knew too much about the Swiss
accounts!”
“Is she alive?” Matteo whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, raw
intensity.
“Yes! Yes! The neural blocker expired an hour ago! She’s breathing on room air!”
Matteo threw the doctor to the floor. Luca immediately pinned him, securing his
wrists with heavy zip-ties.
Matteo stood in front of the door to Room 304.
For the first time since I had met the Black Lion of Sicily, his hands were
shaking. He stood frozen before the frosted glass, his chest heaving with
ragged, terrified breaths.
He reached out, his fingers trembling as they pushed the door open.
I followed him into the room, holding my breath.
The room was vast, dark, and silent save for the steady, rhythmic beep of a
cardiac monitor. Through the tall floor-to-ceiling windows, the falling snow on
Lake Zurich glowed faintly in the moonlight.
In the center of the room was a motorized hospital bed.
Lying beneath a pristine white duvet was a woman.
She was thirty-six years old, her dark auburn hair spread across the pillows,
her face pale as freshly fallen snow, hollowed by five years of medical
confinement. But her features were unmistakable—the proud, aristocratic jawline,
the delicate arch of her dark eyebrows.
Camilla Falcone.
As the door clicked shut, her long, dark eyelashes fluttered.
She turned her head slowly toward the doorway.
Her eyes opened.
They were a brilliant, piercing sea-green—the exact color of the Mediterranean
waters off the coast of Palermo.
Her dry, cracked lips parted.
“...Matteo?” she whispered, her voice barely louder than a breath of wind
through dry grass.
Matteo fell to his knees beside the bed.
The ruthless mafia warlord who had ruled southern Italy with an iron fist buried
his face into the hospital mattress, his massive shoulders heaving as he sobbed
like a broken child.
“Camilla... my love... my soul...” he wept, his scarred hands gently taking her
thin, frail fingers into his palms. “I’m here. I’m here. I found you.”
Camilla’s weak fingers slowly curled around his thumb. A single tear escaped the
corner of her eye, tracking down her pale cheek into the pillow.
“You... you took so long, my lion,” she breathed, a faint, fragile smile
touching her lips.
“I thought you were in the dirt, Camilla,” Matteo choked out, kissing her
knuckles, kissing her wrist. “They told me the fire took you.”
Camilla slowly shook her head against the pillow.
“The fire didn't take me, Matteo,” she whispered, her voice gaining strength,
her green eyes hardening with a terrifying, lucid clarity.
She looked past Matteo’s shoulder, her gaze settling directly on me.
May you like
“Vittorio Castiglione put the bomb on that boat,” Camilla said. “And he did it
because I found the ledger.”
