PART 2: THE LITTLE GIRL WHO EXPOSED THE MAFIA BOSS’S ᴅᴇᴀᴅLIEST SECRET

The silver case clicked open.

For one terrible second, nobody moved.

Inside lay a glᴀss vial filled with pale amber liquid, a slender syringe, and a small black device no larger than a cuff link.

I had seen enough weapons in my life to recognize most things capable of killing a man.

But I had never seen anything like that device.

“What is it?” I asked.

Aldo Manfredi closed the case halfway.

“Medication.”

“Then why are you hiding it?”

His eyes lifted to mine.

For twenty years, I had watched Aldo lie to judges, police commissioners, rival bosses, and men who would have gladly cut his throat for the price of a decent watch.

He had always been good at it.

That was why the slight tremor in his jaw frightened me more than a gun pointed at my head.

“Because your doctors don’t understand your condition,” he replied. “I’ve been trying to find something that might help.”

“By bringing a syringe into my bedroom?”

“Dario, you’re confused.”

“Then explain the black device.”

His expression hardened.

“It’s a monitoring instrument.”

Giulia suddenly stepped out from behind my shoulder.

“No, it isn’t.”

Aldo looked down at her.

Something ugly flashed across his face.

“Little girl, go back to wherever you came from.”

Giulia didn’t move.

“You used that thing last night.”

The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the fire crackling in the fireplace.

Aldo’s fingers тιԍнтened around the silver case.

“What did you say?”

“You put it under his pillow,” Giulia answered. “Then you took the little bottle from your pocket.”

She pointed at the amber vial.

“You said, ‘Soon, the old lion won’t wake up anymore.’”

For the first time since my illness began, I saw genuine fear in Aldo’s eyes.

Not concern.

Not anger.

Fear.

And that was when I understood that the child wasn’t merely making an accusation.

She had witnessed something he believed nobody could possibly have seen.

I reached for the call ʙuттon beside my bed.

Aldo moved faster than I expected.

He crossed the room and ripped the wire from the wall.

“Don’t do that,” he said quietly.

I stared at the broken cable.

Then I looked at the man who had once taken three bullets protecting me during a dockside ambush.

“You’ve made a serious mistake.”

His lips тιԍнтened.

“No, Dario. The mistake was letting you believe you were still in charge.”

He straightened his jacket and placed the silver case on my bedside table.

“Your doctors have given you six weeks at most. Your captains are tired of waiting. The harbor needs a functioning leader, and I have arranged everything necessary to ensure a smooth transition.”

“By poisoning me?”

“By making certain you can’t interfere.”

I had suspected betrayal.

I had even prepared myself for the possibility that Aldo might seize control of my empire after my death.

But hearing him say it aloud was different.

This man knew where I hid my weapons. He knew the names of my informants, the locations of my safe houses, and every secret I had ever trusted to another human being.

He knew which door to use if he wanted to enter my bedroom unnoticed.

He had helped build the fortress around me.

Now he was dismantling it from the inside.

“How long?” I asked.

Aldo glanced toward the window.

“How long what?”

“How long have you been doing this?”

He hesitated.

Then he smiled.

“Forty-one nights.”

The number struck me like a fist.

Forty-one nights.

Forty-one nights of shaking hands, collapsing legs, and waking with the sensation that my own body was slowly abandoning me.

Forty-one nights of wondering whether I was losing my mind.

“You’ve been drugging me since the beginning.”

“I’ve been managing your decline.”

“You bastard.”

“Careful, Dario. Anger raises your blood pressure.”

I tried to sit up.

My arms trembled violently, and pain sH๏τ through my shoulders. For one humiliating moment, I couldn’t lift myself from the pillows.

Aldo watched me struggle.

Then he leaned closer.

“Look at you. Twenty years ago, you could empty a room with a glance. Now you can’t even sit up without help.”

He adjusted the blanket over my legs with a tenderness that made my stomach turn.

“It’s time to let go.”

Giulia grabbed the edge of the silver case.

Aldo spun toward her.

“Don’t touch that!”

The little girl flinched, but she didn’t release it.

Instead, she stared at the black device.

Then she said something that changed everything.

“You’re holding it upside down.”

Aldo froze.

“What?”

Giulia pointed to a tiny red light on its side.

“My daddy had one like that.”

I looked at her.

“You have a daddy?”

She shook her head sadly.

“Not anymore.”

For the briefest moment, the room softened around her grief.

Then she looked back at Aldo.

“My daddy said bad men use little machines to make people sick. He told Mommy never to let them touch me.”

Aldo’s face went white.

Not pale.

White.

He looked at Elena’s daughter as though she had just risen from a grave.

“What’s your father’s name?” he demanded.

Giulia stepped closer to me.

“Why?”

“Tell me his name!”

She shook her head.

“My mommy says I shouldn’t tell strangers.”

Aldo slowly turned toward me.

And suddenly, his betrayal seemed almost secondary to the terror spreading across his face.

Because he wasn’t looking at Giulia like an inconvenience anymore.

He was looking at her like a witness who had survived a murder.

Or like the daughter of a man who was supposed to be ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.

The bedroom door burst open.

Two armed guards rushed inside, followed by Elena Marchetti.

The moment she saw Giulia beside my bed, all the color drained from her face.

“Giulia!”

Her daughter ran to her.

“Mommy!”

Elena wrapped both arms around the child, checking her face and hands as though she expected to find blood.

Then she looked at me.

“Mr. Castellano, I’m so sorry. The heating failed at school, and I had nowhere to take her. I told her to stay in the laundry room. I swear I didn’t know she would come here.”

“Your daughter may have just saved my life,” I said.

Elena went still.

Aldo snapped the silver case shut.

“This is a private medical matter. Take the child and leave.”

“No,” I said.

He turned toward me.

I forced myself to hold his gaze.

“Nobody leaves this room.”

One of the guards shifted uneasily.

They were my men.

Or at least, they had been.

Aldo noticed the movement and smiled.

“You still think you can give orders?”

“I just gave one.”

“And who do you think they’ll obey? The man who can’t stand, or the man who’s been keeping this household running for the past month?”

He turned to the guards.

“Take Elena and the child downstairs. Lock them in the servants’ quarters until I decide what to do with them.”

Neither guard moved.

Aldo’s smile disappeared.

“Did you hear me?”

The older guard, a former marine named Russo, glanced at the silver case.

Then he looked at me.

“Boss?”

It was one word.

But after forty nights of isolation, it sounded like the first gunsH๏τ of a war I might still win.

“Stay where you are, Russo.”

He did.

Aldo’s hand drifted toward his jacket.

Russo immediately drew his weapon.

“Don’t,” he warned.

For several seconds, the room became a frozen battlefield.

Then Aldo laughed.

It was a thin, bitter sound.

“You have no idea what you’re doing, Russo.”

“Maybe not,” the guard replied. “But I know what murder looks like.”

Aldo slowly raised his hands.

I should have felt victorious.

Instead, I felt the cold certainty that we had just stepped into something much larger than a succession dispute.

Because Aldo was not a man who gambled everything on a single plan.

He had contingencies.

And men like him didn’t become frightened unless they knew something worse was coming.

I looked at the guards.

“Take him to the study. Search him. Confiscate every phone, every key, and every piece of paper he has.”

Russo nodded.

As the guards escorted Aldo toward the door, my former right hand stopped beside Elena.

He looked directly at Giulia.

Then he whispered something so softly that only she could hear it.

Her small face crumpled.

Elena pulled her daughter away.

“What did you say to her?” I demanded.

Aldo glanced back.

“Ask her what happened to her father.”

Then he was gone.

For the next twenty minutes, nobody spoke.

Elena sat beside my bed with Giulia in her lap. The little girl had buried her face against her mother’s shoulder.

I had men interrogated in this mansion for far less than the silence that followed.

But I didn’t press them.

Not yet.

Instead, I asked Elena to tell me about her daughter’s father.

Her fingers тιԍнтened around Giulia’s shoulders.

“His name was Matteo Marchetti.”

The surname meant nothing to me.

At least, not immediately.

Then I remembered a case from twelve years earlier.

Matteo Marchetti had been a brilliant chemist who worked for a private medical research company near the harbor. His specialty was developing treatments for neurological disorders.

He had also been the subject of a sealed investigation after a laboratory fire killed two employees and destroyed years of research.

The official report said Matteo had died in the fire.

The unofficial report said he had stolen confidential research before disappearing.

I had received that report from Aldo himself.

“Matteo was your husband?” I asked.

Elena nodded.

“He wasn’t a criminal. He worked for a company that promised to develop treatments for people with damaged nerves. At first, he thought they were trying to help patients.”

“And later?”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“He discovered they were testing experimental compounds on people who didn’t know they were part of a trial.”

My trembling hand curled against the blanket.

“How does that connect to me?”

Elena looked at the bedside table.

“The night before Matteo disappeared, he told me someone had stolen his research. He said the people responsible had enough money and influence to make a man disappear without leaving a trace.”

“Did he tell you who?”

“No.”

She hesitated.

“Only that one of their biggest clients was a man who controlled the eastern harbor.”

The room seemed to tilt around me.

I stared at her.

“You’re saying my organization funded this research?”

“I don’t know who paid for it. Matteo never told me your name.”

“Then why bring your daughter into my mansion?”

“Because I needed the job.”

Her voice broke.

“I had nowhere else to go. Matteo vanished when Giulia was two. The police said he was ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, but they never found a body. I worked three jobs, sold everything I owned, and spent years trying to discover what happened to him.”

She wiped her eyes.

“Then someone offered me a position here. The salary was more than I could earn anywhere else, and I was told the previous housekeeper had left suddenly.”

“Who offered you the position?”

“Aldo Manfredi.”

The words landed heavily.

Aldo had hired the woman whose daughter would expose his secret.

He had brought the witness into my own home.

But why?

Had he underestimated Elena?

Or had he known exactly who she was all along?

I looked at Giulia.

“Sweetheart, do you remember what your father looked like?”

She nodded.

“He had dark hair and a little scar here.”

She touched the side of her chin.

“And he used to draw pictures of boats.”

“Boats?”

“He said the harbor was full of secrets.”

Elena began to cry silently.

I looked away.

I had spent twenty years building an empire on the belief that every secret could be bought, buried, or destroyed.

Now a five-year-old girl was reminding me that some secrets survived because the people who carried them refused to disappear.

“Giulia,” I said gently, “what exactly did you see when Aldo came into my room?”

She lifted her head.

“He didn’t come alone.”

Elena stopped crying.

“What do you mean, baby?”

Giulia rubbed her eyes.

“Sometimes another person came first. They wore gloves and carried a little box. They put something beside Mr. Dario’s bed, then they looked at the clock.”

My pulse quickened.

“Can you describe that person?”

She thought carefully.

“They smelled like flowers.”

A chill ran down my spine.

Camilla.

My missing companion had worn a distinctive perfume—white jasmine and orange blossom. I had bought her the first bottle myself.

“She had long hair,” Giulia continued. “And a shiny bracelet.”

The diamond bracelet stolen from my safe.

The one that had vanished with Camilla.

I stared at Elena.

“Your daughter saw Camilla in my bedroom.”

Elena looked horrified.

“That’s impossible. She’s been gone for weeks.”

“Apparently, not gone enough.”

I reached for the phone on my nightstand.

My fingers shook, but I managed to dial the private number of my head of security.

No answer.

I tried again.

Nothing.

Then I called Russo.

The line connected.

“Boss?”

“Where is Aldo?”

A pause.

“Downstairs. We have him secured.”

“Good. Find Camilla. Check every gate, every vehicle, every room in this house. And nobody enters or leaves without my permission.”

“Yes, sir.”

I was about to hang up when I heard something in the background.

A muffled shout.

Then a crash.

“Russo?”

Static.

“Russo, answer me!”

A voice came through the line.

It wasn’t Russo.

It was Aldo.

“Dario,” he said calmly, “you should have killed me when you had the chance.”

The call ended.

The first gunsH๏τ came from the eastern corridor.

The second shattered a window.

Elena grabbed Giulia and dropped to the floor as Russo’s men shouted orders outside my bedroom.

I tried to reach the pistol locked in the bedside drawer.

My fingers slipped twice.

By the third attempt, I could barely feel my hand.

I hated that more than the gunfire.

I could accept betrayal.

I could accept losing money, territory, even my life.

But I could not accept lying in bed while other people decided whether I deserved to survive.

“Mr. Castellano,” Elena whispered, “we need to get out of here.”

“There’s nowhere safe.”

“Then we find somewhere they don’t expect.”

Giulia suddenly looked toward the wardrobe.

“Behind there.”

I frowned.

“What?”

“My daddy told Mommy about a secret door.”

Elena stared at her daughter.

“Giulia, what are you talking about?”

“The door behind the big clothes.”

Elena went pale.

For a moment, she looked as if she might faint.

Then she hurried to the wardrobe and shoved aside the hanging suits. Her hands searched the wooden paneling until she found a small brᴀss latch concealed beneath the lowest shelf.

She pulled.

A narrow section of the wall opened inward.

Behind it lay a dark pᴀssage.

I stared at the opening.

I had owned this mansion for fifteen years.

I had paid for every renovation.

I had inspected every security system.

And I had never known the pᴀssage existed.

“How does your daughter know about that?” I demanded.

Elena looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read.

“Because Matteo built it.”

Another gunsH๏τ echoed through the hallway.

There was no time to ask more.

Elena helped me sit up. Pain tore through my legs, and I nearly blacked out.

“I can’t walk,” I said.

“We’ll help you.”

“You don’t understand. My legs barely work.”

Giulia slipped from her mother’s arms and came to stand in front of me.

“Then don’t use them.”

Despite the terror outside, I almost laughed.

“What?”

“Daddy said when something is broken, you have to find another way to make it work.”

She pointed at the pᴀssage.

“You can use your arms.”

It was ridiculous.

It was painful.

It was the only chance I had.

With Elena supporting one shoulder and Giulia pulling at the blanket, I dragged myself toward the opening. Every movement sent fire through my muscles. My hands slipped against the polished floor.

Behind us, the bedroom door shuddered under a violent impact.

Someone shouted my name.

Then the door burst open.

A man entered carrying a pistol.

He wore my security uniform.

I recognized him immediately.

Bennett, one of the guards I had personally promoted.

He raised his weapon.

“Step away from the boss.”

Elena froze.

Giulia clutched my sleeve.

Bennett’s gaze moved from me to the open pᴀssage.

Then he smiled.

“Aldo said you’d find it eventually.”

My blood turned cold.

“You knew about this pᴀssage.”

“Of course.”

“Who built it?”

Bennett didn’t answer.

Instead, he aimed at Elena.

“Get the child out of the way.”

“No,” I said.

He looked at me with pity.

“Dario, this isn’t about you anymore.”

“Then who is it about?”

He glanced at Giulia.

And for the second time that morning, I watched a grown man look at a five-year-old child with unmistakable fear.

“The girl,” he said.

Elena тιԍнтened her arms around her daughter.

“Why?”

Bennett’s expression changed.

“Because her father stole something that belongs to powerful people. Something they’ve spent years trying to recover.”

“What did he steal?” I demanded.

Bennett smiled without humor.

“The proof that your illness was never an accident.”

He raised the pistol.

I threw myself forward.

My shoulder struck his knees, and we crashed against the edge of the bed. The gun fired, blowing a hole through the ceiling.

Bennett struck me across the face.

Pain exploded behind my eyes.

I felt his hands close around my throat.

For one horrifying moment, I couldn’t breathe.

Then Giulia screamed.

“STOP!”

The sound was so sharp that Bennett turned instinctively.

Elena seized the silver case from the bedside table and slammed it against his wrist.

His grip loosened.

I dragged in a breath.

Bennett stumbled backward, and Elena shoved him into the wardrobe. He fell among the hanging suits.

“Go!” she shouted.

I crawled into the pᴀssage.

Elena followed with Giulia.

Behind us, Bennett recovered and fired twice into the darkness.

One bullet struck the wall inches above my head.

Then Elena pulled the hidden door shut.

Silence swallowed us.

For several seconds, the only sound was my ragged breathing.

The pᴀssage smelled of dust, damp stone, and old wood. It sloped downward beneath the mansion, lit by tiny emergency lamps embedded in the walls.

I looked at Elena.

“How did Matteo know about this place?”

She shook her head.

“He didn’t build it for you.”

“Then who?”

She hesitated.

“He said the pᴀssage belonged to someone who had lived here before the Castellanos.”

Before I could question her, Giulia tugged at my sleeve.

“Mr. Dario?”

“Yes?”

“Daddy said if we ever came here, we had to find the room with the blue door.”

Elena closed her eyes.

“No,” she whispered. “Not that room.”

I stared at her.

“What is behind the blue door?”

She looked at me as if the answer might destroy us all.

“The reason Matteo disappeared.”

We found the blue door at the end of the pᴀssage.

It was small, metal, and covered in layers of peeling paint. Someone had scratched a symbol into the center: a circle crossed by three short lines.

The same symbol was engraved on the black device in Aldo’s silver case.

I recognized it now.

Not from the harbor.

Not from my business records.

From the medical reports that had arrived during the first week of my illness.

It had appeared in the corner of a document submitted by one of the European specialists.

A private research organization.

A name I had never heard before.

Project Lazarus.

Elena reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a small key.

My eyes narrowed.

“You’ve had that all along?”

“Matteo gave it to me before he disappeared.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because he told me never to use it unless someone came looking for Giulia.”

Her voice trembled.

“I thought he was being paranoid.”

She inserted the key.

The lock clicked.

The blue door swung open.

Inside was a room that should not have existed beneath my mansion.

Shelves lined the walls. Filing cabinets stood beneath a ceiling crowded with cables. A bank of old monitors faced a metal desk, and dozens of medical charts lay scattered across its surface.

At the center of the room stood a glᴀss cabinet.

Inside it were dozens of sealed vials.

Each bore a handwritten label.

I moved closer, gripping the edge of the desk to keep myself upright.

The labels listed dates.

Patient numbers.

Dosages.

And the names of men who had suffered unexplained neurological deterioration.

One name appeared again and again.

Dario Castellano.

My stomach twisted.

There were forty-one entries.

One for every night of my illness.

Beside the final entry was a note.

Subject remains conscious. Motor function deteriorating as expected. Proceed to final phase.

I stared at the words until they blurred.

“Expected,” I whispered.

Elena moved beside me.

“Dario…”

“They knew this would happen.”

My hands began to shake violently.

Not because of the illness.

Because I was finally looking at the truth.

Someone had studied my body, tracked my symptoms, and documented my decline like a scientist observing an animal in a cage.

Someone had planned every stage.

The weakness.

The trembling.

The collapse.

Even the doctors who couldn’t explain what was happening.

I turned toward Elena.

“Who owns Project Lazarus?”

She opened a folder on the desk.

Inside was a contract signed twelve years earlier.

The date of Matteo’s disappearance.

The date of the laboratory fire.

And a signature at the bottom.

Aldo Manfredi.

But beneath it was a second signature.

One that made the room spin.

Dario Castellano.

I stumbled backward.

“No.”

Elena looked at the document.

“Did you sign this?”

“I’ve signed thousands of contracts.”

The paper trembled between my fingers.

“But I never authorized experiments on people.”

“Maybe someone forged your signature.”

I wanted to believe her.

I needed to believe her.

Then I noticed the final page.

A handwritten instruction in my own distinctive script.

If I ever become a threat to the project, initiate the protocol without delay.

For a long moment, I couldn’t speak.

I recognized the handwriting.

It was mine.

The room seemed to close around me.

Had I forgotten something?

Had I authorized something during a period of my life I could barely remember?

Or had someone learned to reproduce my signature so perfectly that even I couldn’t distinguish it from the original?

Giulia approached the desk.

She looked at the papers, then at me.

“Mr. Dario?”

I forced myself to meet her eyes.

“I’m here, sweetheart.”

She pointed to a small envelope tucked beneath the final page.

“Daddy said you would need that.”

Elena gasped.

“Giulia, what did you just say?”

The little girl reached for the envelope and handed it to me.

Written across the front were five words.

FOR DARIO. WHEN HE REMEMBERS.

My fingers went numb.

I opened it.

Inside was a pH๏τograph.

It showed me standing in front of a laboratory, younger by at least twelve years. Beside me stood Aldo. On my other side was a man I recognized from the old harbor reports.

Matteo Marchetti.

But that wasn’t what made my blood run cold.

Behind us, through a glᴀss window, stood a little boy.

He couldn’t have been older than six.

He had dark hair, a solemn expression, and a small scar beneath his chin.

The same scar Giulia had described on her father.

I looked at Elena.

“That’s Matteo.”

She nodded slowly.

“Yes.”

“Then who is the boy?”

Elena stared at the pH๏τograph.

Her lips parted.

No sound came out.

Because the boy wasn’t standing beside Matteo.

He was standing beside me.

And around his wrist was a hospital bracelet bearing my surname.

CASTELLANO.

I looked again at the date.

Twelve years earlier.

I had no memory of that day.

No memory of the laboratory.

No memory of the boy.

But I knew the face.

Not because I had seen it in the pH๏τograph.

Because I had seen it in the mirror.

The boy had my eyes.

My jaw.

The same small crease between his brows that appeared whenever I was angry.

I lowered the pH๏τograph.

“What is this?”

Elena shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I don’t know.”

But Giulia did.

She had been staring at the picture with a strange, quiet certainty.

Then she looked at me and whispered:

“That’s my daddy.”

The words made no sense.

I stared at her.

“Your father is Matteo Marchetti.”

She nodded.

“That’s what Mommy told me.”

“Then how can that boy be your father?”

Giulia pointed to the pH๏τograph again.

“No, Mr. Dario. That’s the little boy Daddy told me about.”

She took a shaky breath.

“The boy who was supposed to be your son.”

Before I could respond, the monitors flickered to life.

One by one, screens illuminated the room.

A man’s face appeared on the largest monitor.

Older.

Thinner.

A deep scar ran from his temple to his jaw.

But his eyes were unmistakable.

Matteo Marchetti was alive.

He looked directly into the camera.

“If you’re watching this, Dario, then Aldo has finally made his move. And if Elena is with you, it means my daughter has found the one person who can help her uncover the truth.”

He paused.

His gaze softened when he mentioned Giulia.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I wanted to come home.”

Elena covered her mouth.

Giulia began to cry.

Then Matteo’s expression changed.

“Dario, listen carefully. Your illness is only the beginning. The compound they’re using was never designed to kill you immediately. It’s designed to weaken your body while leaving your mind intact.”

He leaned closer to the camera.

“They need you alive long enough to make one final decision.”

“What decision?” I whispered.

As if he could hear me, Matteo answered.

“They want you to transfer ownership of the eastern harbor to a company that doesn’t officially exist.”

A document appeared on the screen.

A corporate registration.

A list of anonymous shareholders.

And at the bottom, the name of the company’s sole beneficiary.

CAMELIA VOSS.

Camilla.

My missing companion.

The woman who had vanished with my diamond bracelet.

Matteo continued.

“She isn’t working for Aldo. Aldo is working for her.”

I felt the room tilt again.

“Who is she?” I demanded, though the recording could not answer.

Matteo’s face grew grim.

“Camilla Voss is the last surviving member of the family you destroyed twelve years ago. She has spent years building this operation, and she has one objective.”

He looked directly into the camera.

“To make you suffer exactly as you made her father suffer.”

My mouth went dry.

I remembered a warehouse fire.

A rival family.

A shipment that had disappeared.

A man who had begged me to spare his son.

I remembered ordering Aldo to handle the problem.

Then nothing.

A blank space in my memory, stretching across an entire night.

Matteo’s final words came slowly.

“Dario, you didn’t just fund Project Lazarus. You were its first successful human subject.”

The screens went black.

For several seconds, I couldn’t breathe.

Then the speakers crackled again.

A new voice filled the room.

A woman’s voice.

Smooth.

Familiar.

“Hello, Dario.”

I turned toward the monitors.

Camilla appeared on the screen, wearing the diamond bracelet she had stolen from my safe.

She smiled as if we were meeting for dinner rather than standing on opposite sides of a war.

“I wondered how long it would take you to find the room.”

I gripped the edge of the desk.

“Where are you?”

“Somewhere you should have looked twelve years ago.”

“What do you want?”

Her smile faded.

“Justice.”

“You’ve been poisoning me.”

“No,” she replied. “I’ve been giving you a small taste of what you ordered for other people.”

She lifted a glᴀss of water toward the camera.

“Forty-one nights, Dario. Forty-one nights of wondering whether you would wake up. Forty-one nights of being unable to trust the people standing beside you.”

She tilted her head.

“Now you understand what my father felt.”

The name struck something deep inside me.

Her father.

The man from the warehouse.

The man whose son had disappeared after the fire.

I looked at the pH๏τograph again.

The little boy.

The hospital bracelet.

My surname.

“What happened to the child?” I asked.

Camilla’s expression changed.

For the first time, she looked genuinely surprised.

“You found the pH๏τograph.”

“Who was he?”

She stared at me for several seconds.

Then she laughed softly.

“Oh, Dario. You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Tell me!”

“He was the reason your doctors couldn’t find the source of your illness. He was the reason Matteo disappeared. And he was the reason Aldo agreed to work for me.”

She leaned toward the camera.

“But there’s one thing you still don’t know.”

The lights in the hidden room suddenly went red.

A loud metallic clank echoed from somewhere above us.

Then another.

The mansion’s emergency sirens began to wail.

Camilla looked offscreen.

“Ah. They’re here.”

“Who?”

She looked back at me.

“The people who built Project Lazarus.”

My blood turned to ice.

“I thought you were running it.”

“I was.”

Her smile returned, but there was no triumph in it now.

Only fear.

“Until they discovered what Matteo stole.”

The screen behind her changed.

A live camera feed appeared.

It showed the eastern gate of my mansion.

Three black vehicles were pulling into the courtyard.

Men in dark suits stepped out.

They weren’t my guards.

They weren’t Aldo’s men.

And when the lead man looked up toward the mansion’s cameras, I recognized the face.

My personal physician.

The man who had examined me every week for forty nights.

The man who had told me, with solemn compᴀssion, that my condition was progressing beyond anything modern medicine could explain.

He was holding a medical case in one hand.

In the other, he held a pH๏τograph of Giulia.

Camilla’s voice became a whisper.

“Dario, whatever you do, don’t let them take that little girl.”

Elena pulled Giulia against her chest.

“Why?” I demanded.

Camilla’s eyes filled with something that looked almost like pity.

“Because the boy in that pH๏τograph wasn’t your son.”

She paused.

“He was your first patient.”

The door behind us began to shake.

Someone was trying to force it open.

Then a man’s voice boomed through the pᴀssage.

“Dario Castellano! We know you’re inside!”

The monitors flickered again.

A final message appeared on the screen.

PROJECT LAZARUS: SUBJECT TWO — GIULIA MARCHETTI.

My entire body went cold.

I turned toward the little girl.

She was staring at the screen, tears running silently down her face.

“Mommy?” she whispered.

Elena shook her head in disbelief.

“No, baby. No…”

Then Giulia looked at me.

And for the first time since she had entered my bedroom, she seemed less like a fearless child and more like someone who had just discovered that her entire life was a lie.

“Mr. Dario,” she whispered, “why does that screen say they already tested it on me?”

The hidden door exploded inward.

And standing in the smoke was my personal physician.

He looked at Giulia.

Then at me.

“I’m sorry, Castellano,” he said, raising his weapon. “But the girl was never supposed to survive.”

PART 3 TEASER: Dario thought he was fighting to save his own life—until he discovered that Giulia had been part of Project Lazarus since before she was born. But when Matteo finally reveals the truth about the boy in the pH๏τograph, Dario will face an impossible choice: save the little girl who trusted him… or uncover the secret that could prove he was never the monster he believed himself to be.