legacy

Chapter 15 - THE STAIRWELL

Fire trucks reached the Montenegro mansion before Dante's car. By the time Marina arrived with him, orange flames had swallowed the doorway to the basement treatment room.

Rosa stood on the lawn wrapped in a borrowed coat. She had returned with police to identify the storage cabinet, and someone had locked a service door behind her. A firefighter had pulled her out through a window.

"The files," Rosa sobbed. "They were still inside."

"You're alive," Marina told her. "That's what matters."

Dante studied the building's west wing. "Luca had the original servers installed there."

Detective Price arrived and caught the look on his face.

"Do not go inside," she said. "Fire investigators will handle it."

Gabriel showed her a live security feed from an off-site backup. The footage captured a masked person entering the basement minutes before the fire. On their wrist was a distinctive gold watch with a cracked blue face.

"I've seen that watch," Gabriel murmured.

"Where?" Price asked.

"On Celeste's driver. He used to work security for Luca."

The fire crew contained the flames. The main server had been damaged, but the cloud archive survived. The house's secrets weren't gone.

Then Gabriel's phone buzzed with a message from his sister.

They took Ben from school. Someone claiming to be family signed him out.

Ben was her nine-year-old son.

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Gabriel sank onto the curb.

"They've got my nephew," he whispered.

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