Chương 8 - The Man at the Gate
Nico moved first.
He pushed the room’s door shut and checked the hallway.
“Stay here.”
Alina grabbed the laptop.
Rosa ran to the nursery through the connecting door.
Dante followed her, returning with Leo held tight against his chest.
A guard called from downstairs.
“Vittorio’s gone.”
The east sitting room window had been broken from the inside.
An outer gate had opened using an authorization code assigned to Carlo Rosselli.
Dante stared at the security screen.
His younger brother’s name glowed beside the timestamp.
Then Alina’s phone rang.
Paul.
Her manager.
“Lena, what the hell is going on?”
“What?”
“A man called.
He says you stole a customer’s watch.
The police are asking for the security footage.”
She gripped the table.
“I didn’t steal anything.”
“I know.
I was there.
But they also sent me a picture of you carrying that baby out of the restaurant.”
“Paul, I never carried him.”
The picture was from another night.
Another woman.
Her face had been replaced with Alina’s.
Dante listened while she explained.
“They want you discredited,” he said.
“And unemployed.”
Her banking app sent an alert.
A withdrawal she hadn’t made.
Then another.
Alina sat down.
Her rent money was gone.
Not thousands.
Not enough to matter to anyone in this house.
Every dollar she had saved.
Dante reached for his wallet.
She pushed it away.
“You think paying me fixes what your people did?”
“No.”
“Then stop reaching for money every time somebody bleeds.”
He put the wallet back.
“What do you need?”
“Copies.
Of everything.
Somewhere you can’t erase them.”
Nico helped her make two encrypted copies of Sofia’s files.
Alina sent one to a legal aid lawyer who had helped her mother with a housing dispute.
Then she called the lawyer.
“I need you to hear this before anyone calls you about me.”
She explained the theft accusation.
The bank withdrawals.
The foundation.
Sofia.
The lawyer, Evelyn Price, listened without interrupting.
Then she said, “Alina, your mother contacted me three weeks before she died.”
Alina stood.
May you like
“About what?”
“She believed someone was following her.”
