My pulse kicks hard as I step forward. The lantern shakes in my grip, its light lurching across the metal. That’s when I see it — a dark streak trailing down the side of the table.
Dried, brownish-red.Old.
Blood.
My knees buckle. I catch myself on the table; the metal freezing beneath my palms.
“This is where it happened…”My voice fractures. “Papa…”
His last breaths — his fear,his pain,his final moments — all lived and died in this room.
My lungs burn.
Behind me, the door slams shut — a violent metallic crack echoes like gunfire.
I whirl around.
The lock hasn’t engaged.Not yet.
But the sound still shakes through me.
The air is cold.The chamber is silent.And I am standing in the room where someone murdered my father.
Alone.
The shadows lean closer, pressing me forward. Toward the safe. Toward the truth Giovanni buried here. Toward the evidence someone killed to hide.
I raise my lantern, its flame trembling across the floor — over the blood stains,over the chains,toward the safe bolted into the far corner like a coffin that’s waited years to be opened.
A shiver crawls down my spine.
Whatever lies locked inside that safe — Giovanni was willing to kill my father to protect it.
And I’m about to open it.
The Evidence No One Was Supposed to Find
The safe sits in the corner as if it’s holding its breath.Like it knows I’m about to rip open the reason my father died.
My hands tremble once, twice, before I wipe them on my thighs and force them still. My entire body buzzes—fear, adrenaline, fury—so sharp it feels like electricity carving through my veins.
“Pull the handle, Pia,” I whisper to myself, voice thin and cracking. “He died so you could.”
My fingers wrap around the cold iron. I brace my feet.I pull.
The latch releases with a heavy, echoing clunk.Dust drifts off the hinges in a soft gray fall as the door creaks open.Inside sits a single lockbox—small, unremarkable, the thing anyone else would overlook in a room marked by dried blood.
My pulse thuds as I lift it out.
It’s lighter than it looks.I open the lid.
Inside, arranged with meticulous care—as if someone intended these pieces to be found only by the right person—are the things my father died for:
Documents folded with surgical precision.A USB drive marked with numbers instead of letters.Old receipts, ink faded at the edges.Bank transfers that look nothing like the ones the Rivas accountants paraded as truth.On a torn napkin in Giovanni’s flowing script, the words fractured like a threat ripped in half.
But none of that stops my breath.
What freezes everything — my mind,my heartbeat,the entire room — is the cassette tape.
