Chapter 7 - THE TRAIN THAT NEVER ARRIVEDThe old train station stood at the edge of a freight yard where the city gave way to warehouses, weeds, and rusting tracks.
Matteo parked two blocks away and killed the headlights. Dawn had not arrived yet. A thin gray light rested behind the clouds, making every abandoned railcar look like a body beneath a sheet.
Elena sat in the back seat with the recipe notebook pressed against her chest.
“How many men are inside?” she asked.
Luca checked the binoculars. “At least six. Maybe more.”
“And Marco?”
“No visual.”
Matteo looked at her through the mirror. “You stay in the car.”
“No.”
“This is not a discussion.”
“You have spent the entire night deciding what I am allowed to know. You don't get to decide where I stand.”
Gabriel leaned against the opposite door, his face pale. “She will go whether you permit it or not.”
Matteo's eyes moved to him. “You are not helping.”
“I am rarely helpful before breakfast.”
Elena opened the door.
Cold air rushed into the car.
Matteo caught her arm. “If you see Marco, you do not run toward him. You wait for Luca.”
“Why?”
“Because Vanni wants you emotional.”
“He already has that.”
“He wants you predictable.”
Elena held his gaze. “Then he should have chosen someone else.”
She stepped into the darkness.
They moved through the weeds in two groups. Matteo and Luca approached the station from the east. Gabriel stayed with Elena on the west side, despite his wound and the fact that every step made him wince.
“You are going to reopen that injury,” Elena whispered.
“It is already open.”
“You always answer like that?”
“Only when I am bleeding.”
The station's windows were boarded, but one had been pried loose. Elena saw a faint light inside.
A sound reached them through the cold.
Someone was crying.
Elena started forward.
Gabriel grabbed her hand. “Wait.”
“That sounds like Marco.”
“It sounds like someone wants you to think it is Marco.”
He was right. A second later, a loudspeaker crackled inside the station.
“Elena.”
The voice was male, distorted, and calm.
“You have brought the De Luca brothers. How touching.”
Matteo's voice came through the darkness. “Vanni.”
“You still remember me.”
“I remember the money you stole.”
“Money can be returned. People cannot.”
The station doors opened.
Marco stood in the entrance with his hands bound behind his back.
His face was bruised, and blood had dried beneath one nostril. He looked directly at Elena, but there was no recognition in his eyes.
There was terror.
“Elena,” he whispered.
She stepped forward.
Matteo's hand closed around his gun.
“Stop,” Vanni said through the speaker. “One more step, and the boy loses a finger.”
Elena froze.
Marco's breathing became ragged. “Don't listen to him.”
“You are not in a position to offer advice,” Vanni replied.
A man appeared behind Marco and pressed a pistol against his head.
Elena felt the world narrow to that weapon.
“What do you want?” Matteo asked.
“The notebook.”
“You already have the recipe.”
“I have a copy. I want the original.”
Elena held it up. “If I give it to you, you let him go?”
“No.”
Matteo's men shifted in the shadows.
Vanni laughed. “You are learning. A promise from a man like me is worth less than the paper it is written on.”
“Then why should I give it to you?”
“Because it contains the last location of the ledger.”
“The ledger is in the vault.”
“The vault contains only a copy.”
Elena glanced at Matteo. His expression told her Vanni might be right.
“What is the real ledger?” she asked.
“Inside the child.”
The words made no sense.
Then Marco began to shake.
His eyes lost focus.
He whispered, “The train.”
Vanni's voice softened. “Tell her what you remember, Nico.”
Marco's face twisted with pain.
Images seemed to move behind his eyes. A woman's hand. A train whistle. A yellow blanket. A recipe notebook burning in a metal sink.
Elena stepped closer despite Matteo's warning.
“Marco, look at me.”
He did.
“Your name is Marco Bellini,” she said. “Teresa raised you. She loves you. You are not what he says you are.”
“Nico,” Vanni corrected. “His name is Nico.”
“You can have two names,” Elena said. “But you do not have to belong to him.”
The man behind Marco pressed the pistol harder against his head.
Matteo's eyes flicked toward Luca.
It happened quickly.
Luca fired first.
The station erupted.
Matteo pulled Elena behind a concrete pillar as gunshots shattered the windows. Gabriel sprinted toward the entrance with a speed that did not belong to an injured man. He struck the gunman from behind, and both men crashed through the doorway.
Marco dropped to his knees.
Elena ran.
She reached him just as another shooter appeared on the platform above. The man lifted a rifle.
Matteo fired from behind the pillar. The shooter vanished.
Elena cut Marco's bindings with a knife Luca had thrown across the floor.
“Can you stand?”
“I don't know.”
“Try.”
He pushed himself up, swaying.
A train whistle screamed in the distance.
Marco clutched his head.
“Not again.”
“What?”
“The room. My mother. She was screaming.”
Elena held his face between her hands. “Listen to me. You are here. You are safe.”
“I saw a man put something in the sauce.”
Her pulse stopped.
“What man?”
Marco's eyes filled with horror. “I did it.”
“No.”
“I carried the vial. I remember now.”
He collapsed against her.
The last shooter fled through the rear doors. Matteo's men chased him into the rail yard, but the station had gone quiet except for the distant whistle.
Gabriel limped back inside with blood on his collar that was not his.
“Vanni is gone,” he said.
Matteo looked at Marco. “What did he remember?”
Elena answered before Marco could.
“He says he put the poison in the sauce.”
Matteo's face hardened.
“I didn't know what it was,” Marco whispered. “Vanni told me it was medicine. He said someone would die if I refused.”
“Who?” Matteo asked.
Marco shook his head. “He showed me a photograph.”
“Of whom?”
Marco looked at Elena.
“You.”
The answer cut through her.
Matteo crouched in front of him. “What else did you see?”
Marco closed his eyes. “A train. Your mother. A baby.”
Elena felt her breath catch. “My mother?”
“She was holding you. And another baby.”
“Nico,” Gabriel said.
Marco shook his head harder. “No. The baby was crying. Your mother gave him to a man with a scar on his hand.”
Everyone looked at Gabriel.
He stared at his own hand.
A pale scar crossed his palm.
Elena turned slowly toward him.
“You took the baby.”
Gabriel's expression collapsed.
“I tried to save him.”
“You took my brother.”
“I carried him out of the house.”
“Then you gave him to Teresa?”
“I gave him to Isabella.”
Marco's eyes opened.
“No,” he whispered. “It wasn't Gabriel.”
He looked past them, toward the dark platform.
“The man had a scar on his hand, but his ring was different.”
Elena turned. “What ring?”
Marco's face went white.
“A black stone shaped like a drop of water.”
Matteo and Gabriel looked at each other.
Matteo whispered a name.
“Silas Vanni.”
Outside, the sound of a car engine roared to life.
They rushed to the doors, but the car was already disappearing between the freight containers.
Through the rear window, Elena saw Vanni lift one hand.
On his finger gleamed a black stone ring.
In the other hand, he held a yellow baby blanket.
Elena wanted to follow the car, but Matteo caught her before she reached the platform.
“He wants you to chase him.”
“He has the blanket.”
“The blanket is not the evidence.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if Vanni had the evidence, he would not have left the station.”
Marco leaned against the wall, his face gray. “He took the blanket from my house when I was little.”
“You remember that?” Elena asked.
“I remember a woman screaming. Teresa was not there. Another woman.”
Gabriel looked at the yellow cloth through the broken window. “Sofia.”
“Who was Sofia?”
“The woman in the photograph.”
Marco shook his head. “She was not my mother.”
“Then who was she?”
“She was holding the other baby.”
The sentence stopped everyone.
Elena looked at Matteo. “There was another child besides us?”
“No,” he said too quickly.
Marco pressed both hands to his head. “I can see the room. Two women. Two babies. A man with the black ring. He said one child would become a key and the other would become a witness.”
Elena felt the cold move through her.
The people hunting them had not been searching for one secret child. They had been tracking every person who could connect Lucia to the ledger.
Matteo took the notebook from her and tucked it inside his coat.
“We are leaving.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere with doctors and locked doors.”
May you like
Elena looked at the disappearing car.
“No more locked doors,” she said. “Not unless I am the one holding the key.”
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