Chapter 6 - The Price of the Bellucci Name
I put Selene on speaker.
Damian’s entire study went silent.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“That isn’t important.”
“You broke into my home.”
“I searched your home.”
“For a key?”
“For what the key opens.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Selene sighed.
“Please don’t insult me.”
Damian stepped closer to the phone.
“Selene.”
A long silence.
Then:
“Hello, darling.”
His face didn’t change.
“If you touch Mara or Lily—”
“Oh, stop pretending this is romantic. Two nights ago she was polishing your silver.”
I felt Damian tense.
Selene continued.
“You always did have a weakness for damaged things. Broken companies. Disgraced family names. Strays.”
I looked at Lily.
She was upstairs again, guarded and unaware.
Good.
Damian’s voice became frighteningly calm.
“What do you want?”
“The brass key.”
“Where does it go?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need Mara.”
I closed my eyes.
My mother’s sewing box.
The key had been taped beneath the bottom fabric.
She had once told me never to throw it away.
I assumed it belonged to a storage chest she no longer owned.
Now I remembered something else.
Her last week in the hospital.
She had been weak and drifting between sleep and morphine.
At one point, she grabbed my wrist.
“If a Bellucci ever asks,” she whispered, “make sure it’s the right one.”
I thought medication had confused her.
She hadn’t been confused.
“Selene,” I said, “you won’t find it in my apartment.”
Silence.
Damian looked at me.
Neither of us knew whether I was bluffing.
I wasn’t.
Because after my mother died, I had put the brass key on the chain with her cross.
I wore it beneath my uniform almost every day.
Including now.
I touched my collar.
Damian saw the movement.
His eyes widened slightly.
Selene said, “Then perhaps we should meet.”
“No.”
“You don’t have much choice.”
Police began tracing the call.
Selene laughed.
“And tell the detectives to stop wasting time. This phone will be dead in thirty seconds.”
The line disconnected.
Twenty-eight seconds later, the signal vanished.
I pulled the necklace from beneath my blouse.
A small brass key hung beside the cross.
Damian stared at it.
“I’ve seen that design.”
“Where?”
He moved toward the photograph of his mother.
Behind it was an old image of the Bellucci estate before renovations.
The brass symbol carved into the key’s head matched a crest above a small stone structure.
“The original family chapel,” he said.
“There’s a chapel here?”
“Not anymore.”
Luca looked up.
“South garden.”
Damian nodded.
“My father had it demolished after my mother died.”
“Why?”
“He hated it.”
We searched the estate renovation records.
The chapel had not actually been demolished.
Its visible structure had been removed, but the underground foundation remained beneath a later greenhouse.
By noon, detectives, Damian, Luca, and I stood inside the greenhouse.
Old stone steps hid beneath removable flooring.
The brass key opened a door at the bottom.
Inside was a room barely six feet wide.
A single metal safe had been embedded into the foundation.
The key opened that too.
Damian did not touch the contents.
Police photographed everything first.
Inside were ledgers.
Bank records.
Photographs.
Audio tapes.
Letters.
Three decades of evidence documenting the Bellucci family’s old criminal network.
Damian’s father.
His uncle.
Business partners.
Bribed officials.
And several men still alive.
Damian stared at the boxes as though he were looking at a grave.
“My mother kept all of this.”
“She was trying to protect you,” I said.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“She was making sure I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know.”
That answer changed something in my chest.
He could have burned the records.
Hidden them.
Protected the Bellucci name.
Instead, he turned toward the federal attorney.
“You get everything.”
Luca looked at him sharply.
“Damian.”
“Everything.”
“Some of this could destroy the company.”
“Then we rebuild what deserves rebuilding.”
The attorney asked, “Do you understand what cooperation may expose?”
“Yes.”
“Your family?”
“Yes.”
“Your own prior decisions?”
Damian paused.
Then nodded.
“Yes.”
That was the moment Selene lost.
Not when the police found Tessa.
Not when Pike’s blood appeared beside the camera wire.
Not when the recording exposed their conspiracy.
She lost when Damian became willing to sacrifice the power she had been trying to steal.
The board meeting began at three.
Federal investigators attended.
Gerard Pike appeared by video from an unknown location, claiming the entire scandal had been manufactured by Damian to avoid “legitimate corporate oversight.”
Then Damian released the Northstar recording.
Pike’s face disappeared from the call thirty seconds later.
Everett Vale resigned from the Vale Capital board before sunset.
Selene remained missing.
The directors voted unanimously to suspend the debt restructuring.
Damian temporarily stepped down as CEO while outside investigators reviewed every legacy company.
He did it voluntarily.
At 6:20 p.m., after the longest two days of my life, I went upstairs to find Lily.
Her room was empty.
I stared at the bed.
Blanket pulled back.
Stuffed fox missing.
Bathroom empty.
“Lily?”
No answer.
I ran into the corridor.
The security officer assigned outside her room lay unconscious near the service stairwell.
Blood trickled from his temple.
I screamed.
Damian and Luca came running.
“My daughter.”
Damian looked into the empty bedroom.
His face changed.
Security alarms activated.
The estate gates closed.
Police searched every room.
Then Luca found a phone on the floor beside the service stairs.
Not Lily’s.
A disposable phone.
It rang.
Damian answered.
Gerard Pike’s voice came through.
“You should have taken the deal.”
“Where is Lily?”
I grabbed Damian’s arm.
Pike laughed.
“The maid’s daughter became inconvenient.”
I felt my knees weaken.
Damian caught me.
“If you hurt her,” he said, “there is nowhere you can go.”
“Save the threats.”
“What do you want?”
“The original Bellucci ledger.”
“It belongs to federal investigators now.”
“Then get it back.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“Make it possible.”
A pause.
Then we heard Lily crying faintly in the background.
“Mama?”
I lunged for the phone.
“Lily!”
“Mama!”
Pike pulled the phone away.
“Pier Fourteen. Midnight.”
Damian’s expression changed.
Pier Fourteen belonged to Bellucci Maritime.
An old shipping terminal scheduled for demolition.
Pike continued.
“Bring the original ledger.”
“Let Lily go first.”
“No.”
“You want me, not her.”
“I want insurance.”
The line went silent for a second.
Then Pike said the sentence that made every person in the room understand how desperate he had become.
“And Damian?”
“Yes?”
“Come alone.”
The call ended.
I looked at Damian.
“No.”
He already knew what I meant.
“You are not going alone.”
He looked toward Luca.
“Call the FBI.”
May you like
Then he looked back at me.
“We’re bringing Lily home.”
