Chapter 4 - The Room Beneath the Belladonna
Alessandro did not answer the door.
He raised one finger to his lips and motioned for Emma to move toward the hall.
She obeyed.
“Boss?” Marco called again. “We lost communication after the roadblock. I came alone.”
Emma reached her mother’s room.
Marianne was already awake.
She took one look at Emma’s face and began disconnecting the portable monitor.
“What happened?”
“Someone found us.”
“Charles?”
“Maybe.”
Marianne swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
“You are not walking anywhere,” Emma whispered.
“I survived a husband, a billionaire, a house fire, and cardiac surgery. I can make it down a hallway.”
Emma almost smiled.
Then a gunshot exploded from the front of the house.
She grabbed her mother.
Alessandro appeared at the bedroom door.
“Basement. Now.”
“What about your men?” Emma asked.
“Two are covering the east side. One’s down.”
“Marco?”
Alessandro’s eyes were hard.
“He wasn’t alone.”
They moved through the hidden basement door and into a concrete corridor lit by red emergency bulbs.
Marianne leaned heavily on Emma.
At the end of the corridor stood a steel door leading to the underground garage.
Alessandro entered a code.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
The keypad flashed red.
“Someone changed the access,” he said.
Emma stared at him.
“Can Marco do that?”
“Yes.”
Footsteps thundered above them.
Alessandro pulled a second key from inside his belt and opened a wall panel.
Behind it was a manual release.
The steel door groaned upward.
A black Jeep waited on the other side.
Emma helped Marianne into the rear seat.
Alessandro climbed behind the wheel.
As the garage door opened toward the desert, headlights appeared on the ridge.
Three vehicles.
Alessandro accelerated.
The Jeep shot across the dirt track.
Gunfire followed.
Emma ducked over her mother as bullets kicked dust from the road.
“Where are we going?” she shouted.
“Somewhere Marco won’t expect.”
“Where?”
“The Belladonna.”
Marianne looked up sharply.
“No.”
Emma turned to her.
“What is the Belladonna?”
Alessandro’s eyes remained on the road.
“My father’s first casino. It closed twelve years ago.”
“The room Victoria mentioned?”
“Yes.”
Marianne grabbed the back of Alessandro’s seat.
“If Charles knows about that room—”
“Then he probably assumes I destroyed whatever was inside.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
Emma stared at him.
“You knew about it?”
“I knew there was a sealed sublevel. My father told everyone it contained old mechanical systems. I never opened it.”
“Why not?”
“Because the week after the fire, Charles told me my father used it to torture people.”
Marianne’s face went pale.
“He wanted you afraid of what you would find.”
Alessandro looked at her through the mirror.
“Yes.”
The Belladonna Casino stood on the northern edge of the city behind a chain-link fence and a row of dead palm trees.
Once, it had been famous for crimson carpets, mirrored ceilings, and singers whose names glowed across Las Vegas marquees.
Now half its neon letters were missing.
BELL_D_NNA.
The building looked like a corpse waiting for someone to admit it was dead.
Alessandro entered through a loading bay.
They parked behind the old kitchens.
Inside, dust covered everything.
Rows of slot machines stood beneath sheets like forgotten bodies.
Marianne stopped near the main casino floor.
“I haven’t been here since Daniel died.”
Emma squeezed her hand.
“Was this where he was killed?”
“Behind it. The warehouse was demolished when the parking structure was expanded.”
Alessandro said nothing.
They crossed the casino and entered an employees-only stairwell.
At the bottom, a steel gate blocked the passage.
Alessandro removed a ring from his finger.
The Valentino crest.
He pressed it into a circular indentation in the wall.
The lock clicked.
Emma stared.
“You said you never opened it.”
“I never came down here. My father gave me the ring when I turned sixteen. I didn’t know it was a key until after he died.”
The room beyond smelled of dust, leather, and old paper.
No torture devices.
No chains.
No bloodstained concrete.
Instead, filing cabinets lined the walls.
A projector sat on a table.
Shelves held videotapes, cassette recordings, ledgers, and photographs.
Marianne whispered, “Oh my God.”
Alessandro opened the nearest cabinet.
Inside were envelopes labeled with names.
Judges.
Police officers.
Casino executives.
Politicians.
Some names had dates beside them.
Some had dollar amounts.
Emma looked at Alessandro.
“This is blackmail.”
“Yes.”
Marianne walked toward a shelf.
“Lorenzo kept insurance.”
“Against Charles,” Alessandro said.
“Against everyone.”
Emma found a box marked BROOKS, DANIEL.
Her hands began shaking.
She pulled it down.
Inside was a photograph of her father.
She had only three pictures of him at home.
In this one he looked younger, standing outside a warehouse with a camera around his neck.
Beneath it lay a police report, two bank statements, and a cassette tape.
The label read:
D. BROOKS — 10/14 — WAREHOUSE.
Emma looked at her mother.
Marianne covered her mouth.
“That’s the night he died.”
Alessandro found an old cassette recorder in a drawer.
He inserted the tape.
Static filled the room.
Then a man’s voice.
Lorenzo Valentino.
Emma had never heard it before, but Alessandro visibly recoiled.
“You should have kept your wife out of my books, Daniel.”
Another voice answered.
Emma knew it instantly despite fifteen years of absence.
Her father.
“You framed me once. You’re not doing it again.”
A third man laughed.
Charles Sterling.
“You won’t get another trial.”
Marianne began crying silently.
On the recording, Daniel said, “My daughter knows where the copies are.”
Emma looked at her mother.
“What copies?”
Marianne shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
The tape continued.
Lorenzo: “Leave the girl out of this.”
Charles: “You’re getting sentimental.”
Daniel: “If anything happens to me, Marianne sends everything.”
Charles: “To whom?”
Then a loud metallic noise.
A door opening.
A teenage voice shouted from somewhere in the distance.
“Dad?”
Alessandro staggered backward.
His own voice.
Seventeen years old.
The recording erupted into movement.
Lorenzo cursed.
Charles said, “He saw us.”
Daniel shouted, “Run, kid!”
A gunshot cracked through the speaker.
Marianne sobbed.
Emma could not breathe.
Another gunshot.
Then Lorenzo’s voice, furious.
“What did you do?”
Charles answered calmly.
“What you should have done five minutes ago.”
Alessandro gripped the table.
On the tape, young Alessandro shouted.
“You killed him!”
A scuffle followed.
Lorenzo yelled, “Alex, stop!”
Charles said, “He’s a witness.”
“He’s my son.”
“He’s a liability.”
Silence.
Then Lorenzo, colder now.
“Take him home. Lock him downstairs until I figure this out.”
Emma stared at Alessandro.
His father had not protected him.
He had postponed deciding whether to sacrifice him.
The tape hissed.
Then came one final exchange.
Charles: “And the Brooks woman?”
Lorenzo: “Leave her alone.”
Charles: “She has copies.”
Lorenzo: “I said leave her alone.”
Charles laughed softly.
“You always were weak where women and children were concerned.”
The tape ended.
No one spoke for a long time.
Finally Alessandro said, “My father was a murderer.”
Marianne wiped her face.
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t order Daniel’s death.”
“No.”
“Charles did.”
“Yes.”
Emma stared at the box of evidence.
“Why keep the tape?”
Alessandro looked around the room.
“Because Lorenzo recorded every important meeting in this building. Maybe he didn’t know that night would become evidence against him. Maybe he kept it because Charles frightened him. Maybe he thought he could use it later.”
Marianne whispered, “Or maybe guilt made him keep the only proof Daniel wasn’t a criminal.”
Emma’s eyes filled.
Proof.
Her father’s name could be cleared.
Not only in her heart.
Publicly.
Legally.
She reached for another folder.
A photograph slid out.
It showed Charles Sterling shaking hands with a younger man outside a private airfield.
The younger man had black hair, a narrow face, and a familiar expression.
Emma had seen him that evening at the hospital.
Standing behind Alessandro.
Marco D’Angelo.
The photograph was dated fourteen years earlier.
Alessandro took it from her.
His face became unreadable.
“I met Marco thirteen years ago,” he said.
Marianne shook her head.
“No.”
“What?”
“He introduced himself to you thirteen years ago.”
Alessandro stared at her.
“He was working for Charles before the fire.”
A sound came from the hallway.
The faint scrape of a shoe on concrete.
Alessandro killed the room lights.
Darkness.
Emma heard the click of his gun.
A flashlight beam appeared beneath the door.
May you like
Then Marco’s voice floated through the corridor.
“You should have left the past buried, boss.”
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