Chapter 13 - THE FATHER AT THE DINING TABLE
Alessandro didn’t drive to the old house.
He wanted to.
He gripped his car keys hard enough to cut his palm.
Then he handed them to Rosa.
“Keep those.”
She closed her fingers around them.
He called Brooks.
Vittorio was holding Bruno at the family’s former residence outside the city.
The same house where Alessandro had grown up.
The same dining room where his mother’s chair had remained empty for months because nobody dared move it.
Investigators were already seeking warrants connected to the threats, the attempted abduction, and the fire.
The hostage call changed the urgency.
They told Alessandro to keep his father talking if he called again.
He did.
“You’ve made your point,” Alessandro said.
“My point is that you’ve lost perspective.”
“Let Bruno leave.”
“He’s family.”
“Then stop treating him like property.”
Vittorio sighed.
“You sound like your mother.”
Alessandro shut his eyes.
Across the room, Rosa stood silently.
He looked at her instead of the wall.
“What happened to her?”
“She wanted to destroy everything I built.”
“She wanted to leave.”
“With my son.”
“I was her son too.”
Vittorio’s voice sharpened.
“You belonged here.”
Alessandro felt something old finally break.
Not loudly.
Not cleanly.
But all the way through.
“No,” he said. “I belonged to myself.”
Silence.
Then a muffled crash came through the phone.
Bruno cried out.
Alessandro stood.
Rosa caught his wrist, not to restrain him, just to remind him where he was.
Brooks signaled for quiet.
Voices erupted on the line.
Commands.
A door striking a wall.
Vittorio shouted something Alessandro couldn’t understand.
Then the call disconnected.
For nine minutes, nobody told him anything.
He stood without speaking.
When Brooks’s phone rang, she stepped aside.
Alessandro watched her face.
Finally, she turned.
“Bruno is alive. He’s being taken to the hospital.”
Alessandro bent forward, hands on his knees.
“And my father?”
“In custody.”
At the hospital, Bruno had a broken wrist and a bruise along his jaw.
He apologized before Alessandro reached the bed.
Alessandro pulled up a chair.
“No more secrets.”
Bruno nodded.
Then he pointed toward a clear evidence bag on the counter.
Inside lay a small cassette recorder.
“Your mother,” he whispered. “She knew what he was planning.”
May you like
Brooks looked at Alessandro.
“We recovered the tape. There’s something on it you need to hear.”
