Chapter 2 - The Man Who Came to Finish the Fire
By midnight, Alessandro had transformed the hospital floor into a fortress.
Two elevators were shut down. His security men guarded every stairwell. Nurses complained until Alessandro donated enough money to the cardiac wing to make the hospital administrator stop arguing.
Emma should have found that ridiculous.
Instead, she watched from the doorway of her mother’s room as Alessandro spoke quietly into his phone.
“Pull every file we have on Charles Sterling. Business, personal, political. I want properties, shell companies, pilots, drivers, mistresses, offshore accounts, everything.”
A pause.
“No, Marco. Don’t call him.”
Another pause.
“Because if he realizes we know, he disappears.”
Emma looked away.
She had spent eight months living under Alessandro’s roof and still knew almost nothing about the machinery behind his power.
She knew which coffee he drank at six in the morning.
She knew he hated lilies because their smell reminded him of funerals.
She knew he tipped delivery drivers even when other people told him they were already paid.
She knew he kept a loaded pistol in the second drawer of his desk.
She knew men twice his age became nervous when he entered a room.
But she had never asked how many people would move through Las Vegas because Alessandro Valentino made one phone call.
Tonight, she saw the answer.
Too many.
Her mother was asleep.
Emma stepped into the hallway.
“Alessandro.”
He ended the call.
“You should rest.”
“I’m tired of people telling me to rest while they decide what happened to my life.”
His expression softened.
“Fair.”
“I want the truth.”
“You heard the truth.”
“No. I heard my mother’s version. I heard your evidence. I heard that your father destroyed mine and Charles Sterling tried to kill everyone who knew. But there is still something missing.”
“What?”
“Victoria.”
Alessandro’s jaw tightened.
Security footage from the mansion had shown Victoria leaving twenty-three minutes after Emma was pulled from the water tank.
Her phone had been turned off.
Her driver claimed he had not seen her.
The Sterling family jet was still in Nevada.
Victoria herself had vanished.
“She sabotaged that tank,” Emma said. “Not fifteen years ago. Three days ago. Why?”
“Jealousy.”
Emma studied him.
“You don’t believe that.”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
Alessandro leaned against the wall.
“What did she say to you before you went into the tank?”
Emma replayed the party in her mind.
Victoria’s smile.
The laughter of the guests.
Five million dollars.
Her mother’s surgery.
“She said my mother needed heart surgery.”
“I know.”
“That means she researched me.”
Alessandro nodded slowly.
“Victoria had access to the household employment files.”
“But she knew exactly which wound to press.”
“Yes.”
Emma closed her eyes.
There was something else.
A moment she had ignored because the terror of drowning had swallowed everything afterward.
“When the technician showed me the emergency release, Victoria touched my shoulder.”
Alessandro straightened.
“She said, ‘You’re full of surprises, Emma.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I thought she meant because I agreed to do the stunt.”
“And now?”
Emma turned slightly, reaching behind herself.
Her fingers brushed the edge of the scar beneath the hospital gown.
“She was looking at my back.”
Alessandro’s face darkened.
The memory came suddenly.
Victoria in the dressing room before the performance.
Insisting Emma wear the silver backless dress chosen for the escape artist.
Emma had protested.
Victoria had laughed.
Don’t be modest. Half the women in this city paid for bodies they’re less proud of.
Then Victoria’s hand had paused near the top of Emma’s scar.
For one second too long.
“She saw it before I entered the tank,” Emma whispered.
Alessandro reached for his phone.
At that exact moment, every light in the hallway went out.
Darkness swallowed the floor.
A nurse screamed somewhere near the elevators.
Emergency lights flickered red along the baseboards.
Alessandro grabbed Emma and pulled her behind him.
“Stay close.”
His voice had changed.
No hesitation.
No confusion.
Only command.
Two gunshots cracked from the far end of the corridor.
Emma flinched.
Alessandro drew a pistol from beneath his jacket.
“Get into your mother’s room. Lock the door.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Emma.”
Another shot.
A security guard shouted.
Alessandro pushed Emma toward the room.
“Now.”
She ran inside and locked the door.
Her mother woke, disoriented.
“What happened?”
“Power outage.”
The lie sounded pathetic beside the gunfire.
Marianne’s eyes widened.
“Charles.”
Emma moved a chair beneath the door handle.
The hospital room had one window, sealed shut, twelve floors above the street.
No escape.
Her mother struggled to sit up.
“Emma, listen to me.”
“Don’t move.”
“There’s something you need to know.”
“Not now.”
“Yes, now.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway.
Fast.
Then silence.
Emma picked up the metal IV pole and held it like a weapon.
Marianne stared at the door.
“Charles has a man inside Alessandro’s organization.”
Emma turned.
“What?”
“I don’t know who. But after the fire, every time I tried to move, every time I changed jobs or apartments, Charles found me. Someone in the Valentino family kept giving him information.”
A shadow appeared beneath the door.
Emma tightened her grip on the IV pole.
Someone knocked three times.
“Emma.”
Alessandro’s voice.
She did not move.
“Say something only you would know.”
There was a pause.
Then Alessandro said, “The first week you worked at my house, you broke a crystal vase in the east hall and blamed the cat. I do not own a cat.”
Despite everything, Emma nearly laughed.
She shoved the chair away and opened the door.
Alessandro stepped inside, blood on his white shirt.
Emma’s stomach dropped.
“You’re hurt.”
“Not mine.”
Behind him, two security men dragged an unconscious attacker down the hallway.
Alessandro looked at Marianne.
“One man got through a staff entrance wearing hospital maintenance clothes. Another cut power to this floor.”
Marianne’s face tightened.
“Charles knows I talked.”
“How?” Alessandro asked.
Emma looked at him.
“My mother says he has someone inside your organization.”
For the first time that night, Alessandro looked genuinely surprised.
Then his phone rang.
He answered.
“Speak.”
A man’s voice was faint through the receiver.
Alessandro’s expression went dead.
“When?”
He listened.
“Keep everyone there. Touch nothing.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?” Emma asked.
Alessandro looked at her.
“The storage facility where my father’s old legal records were kept is on fire.”
Marianne closed her eyes.
Emma felt the old scar on her back begin to burn as if fifteen years had vanished.
Alessandro moved toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To make sure nothing else disappears.”
“You can’t leave us here.”
“I’m moving you both.”
“Where?”
“A safe house outside the city.”
Marianne shook her head violently.
“No. He’ll find it.”
Alessandro looked at her.
“Not this one.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because only three people know it exists.”
Marianne’s voice turned quiet.
“Then pray one of those three isn’t the man who betrayed you.”
Forty minutes later, Emma and Marianne were placed in an armored SUV beneath the hospital through a private loading entrance.
Alessandro sat across from them.
Two vehicles drove ahead.
Two followed behind.
Emma watched Las Vegas slide past the tinted window.
She thought of Victoria.
Charles.
Her father.
The burning house.
The boy in the basement.
Then the convoy stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
Alessandro’s hand moved toward his gun.
The driver’s voice came through the partition.
“Roadblock.”
“What kind?”
“Police vehicles.”
Alessandro frowned.
“We didn’t request an escort.”
Blue and red lights flashed ahead.
A uniformed officer stepped into the road and raised one hand.
Then Emma saw the second man standing beside the police cruiser.
Gray hair.
Expensive black coat.
Silver-topped cane.
Even from thirty yards away, she recognized him.
Charles Sterling.
Victoria’s father smiled directly at the windshield.
And beside him, wearing a white dress and holding a bandage against her temple, stood Victoria.
She lifted one hand.
Not in greeting.
In warning.
May you like
Then she mouthed two words Emma could not hear.
Don’t stop.
