Chapter 6 - The Five-Year Deception
The room was tomb-silent save for the gentle hum of the medical monitor.
Luca stood guard at the doorway, his weapon lowered, his eyes scanning the
corridor while Matteo remained on his knees, clutching his wife’s frail hands.
I stepped forward, pulling a clean glass of water from the bedside table,
holding the straw to Camilla’s dry lips. She drank with small, grateful sips,
her green eyes fixed on my face with quiet curiosity.
“Who is she, Matteo?” Camilla asked, her voice clearer now.
“Her name is Gina,” Matteo answered, his voice thick with emotion. “She works in
our home. If it wasn't for her, Camilla... your memorial urn would have been
buried in the garden mud tonight. She dropped the porcelain, found your unburned
wedding ring, and forced Bianca to confess.”
Camilla’s eyes widened with profound, radiant warmth. She weakly lifted her
right hand, her paper-thin fingers brushing against my wrist.
“Thank you, little sister,” Camilla whispered. “In this world... true hearts are
rarer than diamonds.”
“You’re safe now, Donna Camilla,” I murmured, blinking back tears.
Camilla turned her head back toward her husband. “Matteo. Listen to me
carefully. We don't have much time. Anton wasn't the only one guarding this
facility.”
Matteo’s jaw tightened. “Who else is here?”
“Vittorio Castiglione knew that if I woke up, the Falcone family would tear Rome
to pieces,” Camilla explained, her chest rising and falling in shallow, measured
breaths. “He contracted an elite mercenary unit from Eastern Europe—the Black
Vanguard. They have eight armed men stationed in the lower chalets at the base
of the hill. Their orders were simple: if anyone breaches this clinic, they are
to level the building with thermite charges.”
“They won't get the chance,” Matteo said coldly.
“They already have the signal, Matteo,” Camilla warned, pointing a trembling
finger toward the emergency transmitter blinking red on the nurse’s station
across the room. “When Anton dropped that syringe, the floor pressure sensors
triggered the compound alarm.”
As if on cue, the distant, muffled crack of a high-caliber sniper rifle echoed
across Lake Zurich.
The tall ballistic glass of Room 304 shuddered, a spiderweb fracture blooming
across the outer pane.
Luca threw himself backward through the doorway. “Boss! We have snipers on the
tree line! Vehicles approaching the lower gate at high speed!”
Matteo stood up in one fluid, lethal motion, drawing his Sig Sauer from his
shoulder holster.
“Luca. Prep the medical transport gurney. We move to the underground tunnel
beneath the morgue.”
“Matteo... wait,” Camilla gasped, her hand reaching up to grasp the collar of
her hospital gown.
She pulled on a thin, delicate platinum chain concealed beneath the fabric of
her neck.
Suspended from the chain was a heavy, antique platinum locket shaped like a
weeping angel.
She unclasped the chain with trembling fingers and pressed the locket into my
palm.
“Gina. Take this,” Camilla urged, her eyes burning into mine with an
unshakeable, desperate intensity.
“Donna Camilla... what is it?”
“Inside that locket is a micro-SD drive,” Camilla whispered, coughing weakly.
“It contains the original bank transfers, the shell corporations, and the signed
human trafficking authorizations proving that Senator Vittorio Castiglione sold
two hundred refugee children to the Mediterranean cartels to fund his political
campaign in Rome.”
My blood ran cold. The sheer magnitude of the evil made my knees tremble.
“If anything happens to Matteo or me tonight,” Camilla commanded, her grip
tightening on my fingers with surprising strength, “you take that drive to the
European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Do you swear to me, Gina?”
I looked at the weeping angel in my hand, then looked into the fierce, dying
eyes of the Don’s wife.
“I swear on my brother’s life, Donna Camilla,” I said.
“Good,” Camilla smiled faintly.
Then, from the stairwell at the end of the corridor, the deafening roar of
May you like
automatic gunfire ripped through the clinical silence.
The siege of Lake Zurich had begun.
