Chương 3 - THE NIGHT SOFIA DIDN’T DIELuca’s hand closed around the edge of the table.
“What did you say?”
Matteo shrank against Elena.
She immediately stepped between father and son.
“Not like that.”
Luca stared at her.
“He just told me my wife—”
“He’s six.”
The words stopped him.
Elena knelt beside Matteo.
“You don’t have to tell everything at once.”
Matteo rubbed his eyes.
“Uncle Vittorio said not to talk about the bad night.”
Luca’s face changed.
“Vittorio told you that?”
“He said Papa would get sad.”
“When?”
“A lot.”
Elena looked at Luca.
That was worse than a frightened child remembering a face.
Someone had been managing Matteo’s memory.
For eighteen months.
Luca stood.
“I want Vittorio found.”
Marco pushed himself upright despite his bandaged shoulder.
“Boss, if the ammunition came from our armory—”
“No calls.”
Luca’s voice was cold again.
“No warnings. Nobody contacts him.”
Elena folded Matteo’s drawing carefully.
Something about it bothered her.
The red car.
The woman.
The watch.
The streetlight.
And one small shape near Sofia’s head.
A white cross.
She brought the drawing closer.
“Matteo, what’s this?”
“A hospital.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Did you go to the hospital with your mama?”
He shook his head.
“Uncle Vittorio took me home.”
Luca stared.
“That’s not what I was told.”
“What were you told?” Elena asked.
“That Matteo was asleep at my sister Bianca’s home when Sofia crashed.”
Matteo frowned.
“No.”
Luca looked like someone had hit him.
“You were with your mother?”
“Yes.”
“In the car?”
“Yes.”
Elena stood slowly.
“What hospital was Sofia taken to?”
Luca’s gaze moved to her.
“Santa Rosalia.”
The name struck Elena like another bullet.
For a moment, she heard nothing.
No rain.
No fireplace.
No guards moving through the hall.
Only a woman’s broken breathing.
A trauma room.
Blood on white sheets.
“Elena?”
She looked at Luca.
“I was working that night.”
His face hardened.
“What?”
“I was on trauma rotation at Santa Rosalia.”
She remembered the chaos now.
Not a famous Mafia wife.
Not then.
Just a woman brought through the emergency doors shortly before midnight with massive internal injuries.
Security had suddenly filled the corridor.
Administrators appeared from nowhere.
Police were kept outside.
And Elena had spent twenty desperate minutes trying to keep the woman alive.
“Oh, God.”
Luca stepped toward her.
“You treated Sofia?”
“I didn’t know it was her until later.”
“Was she alive?”
Elena closed her eyes.
She could see the monitor.
A weak rhythm.
Falling blood pressure.
A hand clutching her wrist.
“Yes.”
Luca went completely still.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“They told me she died at the scene.”
“She didn’t.”
His eyes became dangerous.
“Be certain.”
“I am.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“How long?”
“Luca.”
“How long was my wife alive?”
Elena forced herself to remember.
“Long enough to speak.”
His face drained of color.
“What did she say?”
Elena searched the memory.
Fragments.
Blood.
Rainwater in Sofia’s hair.
A surgeon shouting for blood.
A man outside demanding access.
Sofia’s fingers digging into Elena’s sleeve.
“She kept saying Matteo’s name.”
Luca looked toward his son.
“What else?”
Elena’s heart began pounding.
“One word.”
“What word?”
“Watch.”
Luca’s eyes moved slowly to Matteo’s drawing.
The black square on Vittorio’s wrist.
Elena continued.
“She said ‘watch’ more than once. I thought she was asking the time.”
“Who came into the trauma room?”
“A doctor. Two administrators. Security.”
“Anyone from my family?”
Elena hesitated.
Luca saw it.
“Who?”
“There was a man in the corridor.”
“What man?”
“Tall. Dark suit. Soaked from the rain.”
Marco swore softly.
Elena looked at him.
“What?”
“Vittorio arrived at the hospital before Luca.”
Luca turned on him.
“You told me he arrived after.”
“That’s what he told us.”
Luca’s voice dropped.
“And nobody checked?”
“You trusted him.”
That truth hurt more than accusation.
Luca walked to the window.
For the first time, Elena saw the weight of the name Santoro.
Not power.
Isolation.
A man surrounded by people who obeyed him and unable to know which ones loved him.
Matteo climbed down from the chair.
“Papa?”
Luca turned.
The child held out the drawing.
“I’m sorry.”
Luca crossed the room in two steps.
He dropped to his knees and pulled his son into his arms.
“No.”
His voice broke.
“You never say sorry for telling me the truth.”
Matteo buried his face against his father.
Elena looked away.
When Luca stood again, he seemed older.
“Who was the doctor?”
Elena shook her head.
“I remember his face. Dr. Paolo Renzi.”
Luca knew the name.
“The hospital director.”
“He wasn’t director then.”
“What did he do?”
“He ordered everyone except one surgeon out.”
“Why?”
“He said your family demanded privacy.”
“I gave no such order.”
Elena remembered something else.
A detail so ordinary she had forgotten it.
The man outside the trauma room had lifted his hand to stop a security officer.
On his wrist had been a square black watch.
She looked at Luca’s left arm.
Her stomach dropped.
He was wearing one.
Black leather.
Square face.
Red second hand.
Exactly like the drawing.
Luca saw where she was looking.
“This?”
Elena didn’t answer.
He slowly removed the watch.
“My father gave this to me when I turned twenty-one.”
He placed it on the table beside the brass casing.
“Custom made in Geneva.”
Elena swallowed.
“How many exist?”
Luca looked toward the fire.
“Two.”
Marco’s expression darkened.
Elena already knew the answer.
But she asked anyway.
“Who has the other one?”
Luca lifted his eyes.
“Vittorio.”
Then Matteo tugged on Elena’s sleeve.
“There were two watches.”
Every adult in the room turned toward him.
Matteo pointed at the drawing.
One watch was on the black figure.
The other was half-hidden in Sofia’s crayon hand.
Luca whispered, “Why was Mama holding a watch?”
Matteo looked frightened again.
“Because she pulled it off him.”
Elena unfolded the paper completely.
Something tiny had been drawn beside Sofia’s fingers.
A black watch.
With a broken strap.
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And beneath it, written in a child’s uneven pencil, were three numbers.
3 — 1 — 4.
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