225.🩹 The Bandaged Hand That Exposed the Secret in the Mafia Boss’s Office

Chapter 10 - The Lullaby Code

I had not thought of my mother’s lullaby in years.

Not because I had forgotten it.

Because remembering it hurt in a way memory had no right to hurt after so much time.

She used to sing it while folding sheets in the kitchen, back when my father still came home with ink on his cuffs and flowers from corner markets. It was not a pretty song. It wandered. It had too many pauses and one note that always fell lower than expected.

Sleep where the river bends,

Count seven bells, my sparrow,

Three for the saints,

One for the door,

And two for the road home.

I had never understood why the numbers did not add cleanly.

Children accept such things. Adults spend years learning that nothing in a family is accidental.

Luca drove back to the mansion faster than he had driven to St. Agnes, though the car never seemed reckless. Rain spread across the windshield. The city shone in long broken lines.

I sat beside him in the back while Enzo spoke quietly into a phone in front.

“You don’t have to do this,” Luca said.

I laughed once. It surprised both of us.

“I have been doing this since I was sixteen. I just didn’t know the room would have chandeliers.”

He looked at me.

I looked out the window.

It was easier not to meet his eyes when he was being human.

Mrs. Bianchi met us at the service entrance with a coat over her nightdress and a look that could have shamed a pope.

“She took it,” she said. “And if that red peacock comes back, I’ll put salt in every sweet she eats for the rest of her life.”

Luca said, “Remind me never to cross you.”

“You already did when you invited her here.”

For a second, Luca almost smiled.

Then Mrs. Bianchi took my face in her hands. “You should be in bed.”

“I’m fine.”

“No woman who says that is fine.”

She was right, of course.

The office felt different when we entered it this time. Earlier it had been a crime scene. Now it felt like a room waiting to confess.

Luca placed the ledger on the desk. Enzo pulled up camera feeds. Matteo, who had come despite Luca telling him not to, stood near the window with his hands in his pockets.

Brothers, I thought, are born knowing how to disobey one another.

Luca looked at me.

“The lullaby.”

I sang it softly.

My voice cracked on the second line.

Mrs. Bianchi, standing by the door, wiped at her eyes with the corner of her apron and pretended she had dust in them.

When I finished, Matteo said, “Seven, three, one, two.”

“No,” Luca said. “Count seven bells, three for saints, one for door, two for road home.”

Enzo frowned. “7312?”

Luca looked at the old photograph of Beatrice.

“Or locations.”

I stepped toward the desk. “My mother sang it while folding sheets. Always when she was worried.”

“River bends,” Matteo said. “South River.”

“Seven bells,” I added. “St. Camillus has a bell tower.”

“Three saints,” Luca said. “There are three statues in the side chapel.”

“One door,” Enzo said.

“And two roads home,” Luca finished.

I stared at him.

“You know the church.”

“My parents were married there.”

I saw the grief in that sentence and did not touch it.

The phone on the desk rang.

No caller ID.

Everyone went still.

Luca answered and put it on speaker.

For a second there was only static and rain.

Then Vanessa’s voice filled the room.

“Hello, Luca.”

He said nothing.

“I assume by now you’ve met the spare brother.”

Matteo’s face tightened.

Vanessa continued, her tone almost bored. “Don’t look so wounded. Families like yours collect secrets the way other people collect china.”

“What do you want?” Luca asked.

“The drive. The ledger. And Nora.”

Mrs. Bianchi muttered something under her breath that would have made the priest blush.

Luca’s voice stayed even. “No.”

“Then I open what Beatrice hid, and every name inside goes to men who will burn your world down simply to stay warm.”

“You don’t have the code.”

A small pause.

Then Vanessa said, “Not yet.”

My skin went cold.

“She has the letter opener,” I whispered.

Vanessa laughed softly. “Nora, dear, I always knew you were more useful than you looked.”

Luca’s hand closed around the phone.

“You speak to her again and this conversation ends.”

“How protective. Does she know what happens to women you protect?” Vanessa asked. “Ask your mother. Ask your brother. Ask the father she found in a care home.”

Luca’s face went still, but I saw the blow land.

I stepped closer to the phone.

“My father is alive,” I said.

“For now.”

The room froze.

Then Vanessa sighed, as if bored by our horror.

“Bring Nora to St. Camillus by two. No police. No guests. No loyal dogs with guns. Just Luca, Nora, and the ledger.”

Luca said, “You’re not in a position to give terms.”

“No?”

A soft metallic sound came through the line.

The chime of bells.

Church bells.

“Listen carefully,” Vanessa said. “You have forty minutes before Marco stops pretending he likes old men.”

The call ended.

For a moment the only sound in the office was rain.

Then Luca turned to me.

“I won’t trade you.”

“I know.”

“And I won’t let them touch your father.”

“I know that too.”

What I did not say was this: knowing did not solve anything.

The lullaby had led us to a church. Vanessa had led us to a trap. And somewhere between those two truths sat the last secret Beatrice Moretti died trying to protect.

I looked at the old photograph on Luca’s desk.