Chapter 17 - CLARISSA'S LAST MESSAGE
The darkness lasted less than twenty seconds.
When emergency lights came on, Clarissa was gone.
Her phone lay on the concrete floor beside a broken bracelet.
Giovanni shouted her name until police pulled him away from the loading bay.
A delivery truck had left during the blackout.
Security footage showed Sofia driving and another figure holding Clarissa in the passenger compartment.
Giovanni wanted every road closed.
The detective in charge told him to stop giving orders and start giving information.
For once, Giovanni listened.
He handed over the ledger, the island files, Rafael, and everything he knew about Vale.
Then Clarissa's phone produced a delayed voice message.
Her whisper was barely audible beneath engine noise.
"Dad, don't follow the truck."
Giovanni closed his eyes.
"They want you to."
Clarissa said she could see a sign through a gap in the door.
It read Marina San Pietro.
Luca knew the place.
It was an abandoned marina once owned by Giovanni's father.
Police moved quietly while Giovanni and Emilio waited in an unmarked car nearby.
Inside the marina office, Sofia argued with an older man whose face matched the old photographs of Sebastian Vale.
Vale was alive.
Clarissa sat tied to a chair between them.
Giovanni listened through a police receiver as Sofia demanded her promised freedom.
Vale laughed.
"You were never a partner, Sofia."
A gunshot followed.
Giovanni ran before anyone could stop him.
He burst through the door and found Sofia wounded on the floor.
Vale had vanished through a rear passage.
Clarissa was alive.
On the drive to the marina, Giovanni listened to Clarissa's delayed message again and again, using the rhythm of the truck to estimate turns and distance.
Emilio recognized a church bell in the background from childhood boat trips with Elena.
The children were helping solve the route their mother once taught them without realizing it.
Giovanni felt pride and terror arrive at the same time.
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And in Sofia's hand was a key engraved with one word.
MORETTI.
