Chapter 4: What Isabella Left Behind
The key stopped halfway into the lock.
Lorenzo held still, one hand braced against the altar. Behind him, the chapel seemed to hold its breath. Even Rosie had gone quiet.
“Is it stuck?” Elena whispered.
“No.” He glanced at the key, then at the worn star engraved in its head. “It’s old.”
He pressed gently and turned.
A small click sounded inside the stone.
Lorenzo felt the mechanism shift beneath his palm. The rectangular panel moved outward a fraction, releasing a breath of cold, stale air. He pulled the key free and eased the panel open.
Inside lay a flat bundle tied with faded blue ribbon. Beneath it, tucked into a narrow groove, was a photograph.
Enzo moved closer, eyes on the chapel windows. “Let me check the bundle before anyone touches it.”
“It’s my mother’s,” Lorenzo said.
“And someone just broke into your home looking for things she hid.” Enzo kept his voice low, but his gaze stayed sharp. “We don’t know who’s been here.”
Lorenzo looked at the open compartment. For four years, he had tried to bury the questions surrounding his mother’s death beneath work, threats, and orders. Now her handwriting—or something she had kept—waited within reach.
“Photograph first,” Elena said. “It might tell us what she wanted us to find.”
Lorenzo lifted it by the edges.
The image was slightly faded, its colors softened by time. Elena sat on a wooden bench, younger but unmistakable, her dark hair falling over one shoulder. In her arms was a baby wrapped in a pale blanket.
Lorenzo stood beside her.
He was younger, too. His face looked less carved, his shoulders less rigid. One of his tattooed hands cradled the infant’s head. The baby’s tiny fingers were closed around his thumb.
Rosie peered up at the picture.
“Is that me?”
Lorenzo didn’t answer immediately. The baby’s face was mostly turned into the blanket, impossible to make out clearly.
Elena’s eyes fixed on the photograph. “I remember this day.”
“You do?”
“I remember the room. Your mother had brought in a little cake from the restaurant.” Elena swallowed. “She said it was an important day.”
“What day?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
Rosie edged closer to Lorenzo’s side. “You’re holding a baby.”
“I am.”
“Were you scared?”
The question caught him off guard. He studied his younger self in the photograph. His arm was careful around the child, his hand spread protectively across the blanket.
“I think I was trying not to be.”
“Babies are wiggly,” Rosie said.
“Very.”
“And loud.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Her small smile appeared and vanished. Elena’s hand settled on Rosie’s shoulder, protective without pulling her away.
Lorenzo turned the photograph over.
A line of writing crossed the back in dark ink. He recognized the letters before he finished reading them. The sharp slant. The way the L in his name hooked back under itself.
January 12. The first night she slept through.
He stared at the date.
“That’s your handwriting,” Elena said.
“I know.”
“Your mother was alive then,” she added quietly. “She died four years ago. This picture was taken before that.”
Lorenzo traced the edge of the photograph with his thumb, careful not to touch the ink. A sensation stirred somewhere beneath his ribs: a baby’s warm weight in his arms, a soft fist wrapped around his finger, someone laughing nearby.
The memory slipped away before he could grasp it.
“You remember her?” Elena asked.
“I remember holding a baby.” He lowered the photograph. “I don’t remember this room. Or why.”
Elena looked as if she wanted to say more. Instead, she glanced toward the bundle.
Enzo checked the photograph’s back without taking it from Lorenzo. “No obvious marks. Let’s see what the rest says.”
The ribbon crumbled slightly when Lorenzo untied it. Inside were several folded letters, their edges yellowed and softened. The first envelope bore Elena’s name in Isabella’s familiar handwriting.
Elena’s breath caught.
“May I?” Lorenzo asked.
She nodded.
He passed her the envelope. Elena opened it with trembling fingers. The letter inside was short, written in the same neat hand as the note at Nana’s Soup.
She read silently at first. Then her face tightened.
“What does it say?” Lorenzo asked.
Elena’s eyes moved over the lines again. “It’s addressed to me.”
“I can see that.”
“It says the records here aren’t safe.” Her voice dropped. “That someone has been watching the archive.”
Lorenzo reached for the page, then stopped. Elena held it close.
“Does she name who?”
“No.” Elena’s fingers creased the edge. “She says not to trust any record by itself. And not to open the rest unless—”
A sharp crack split the chapel.
The nearest window burst inward.
“Down!” Enzo shouted.
Lorenzo lunged for Rosie, pulling her against his chest as glass scattered across the stone floor. Elena dropped behind the altar. Enzo drew his weapon and moved toward the side aisle, keeping low.
Rosie clutched Lorenzo’s coat.
“Mr. Giant!”
“I’ve got you.” He covered her head with one hand. “Don’t move.”
Another crack echoed outside—wood snapping, perhaps, or a boot striking the chapel door.
“Enzo!” Lorenzo called.
“Stay down!”
The chapel filled with the cold rush of wind. Loose dust spiraled from the altar. Somewhere near the broken window, something clattered across the floor.
Lorenzo kept his body between Rosie and the shattered glass. He heard Elena’s quick breathing, then the heavy thud of Enzo forcing open the side door.
“Clear!” Enzo shouted from the entryway.
Lorenzo rose just enough to look. Snow and fragments of colored glass glittered beneath the window. No one stood outside. The trees beyond the chapel shifted in the wind, bare branches scratching against one another.
“Did you see anyone?” Lorenzo asked.
“No.”
Elena pushed herself up. A thin red line marked her palm where the glass had cut it.
“Are you hurt?” Lorenzo asked.
“It’s nothing.” She looked toward the altar.
So did he.
The open compartment was empty.
The letters were gone.
For one stunned second, Lorenzo couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. He had heard the shot. He had felt the draft. He had not let go of Rosie.
But the photograph was still in his hand.
“Elena’s letter?” he asked.
She stared at her empty palm. “I had it.”
Enzo came back through the doorway, scanning the chapel behind him. “Someone was here.”
“Where did they go?” Lorenzo demanded.
“I don’t know. The door was open when I got there.” Enzo’s gaze moved from the empty altar to the broken window. “There’s fresh snow outside. I’ll check the tracks.”
Rosie clung tighter to Lorenzo’s coat.
“Did the bad men take the words?”
Lorenzo looked down at her. He wanted to promise that nothing else would be taken from them. He had learned, these past few days, how little a promise was worth if he could not keep it.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we’re not leaving you alone.”
Elena closed her cut hand into a fist. “My mother knew the archive was watched.”
“Then someone knew we’d come here,” Enzo said.
Lorenzo stared at the empty compartment. His mother had hidden a photograph of him holding a baby, then left a warning for Elena—and someone had been waiting to steal the letters before they could read them.
Outside, Enzo’s flashlight swept across the snow.
He stopped.
“Boss,” he called. “You need to see this.”
May you like
Lorenzo held Rosie close and stepped toward the doorway, the photograph still in his hand.
In the snow beneath the chapel window was a single fresh footprint, pointing away from the estate—and toward the road leading back to Nana’s Soup.
