Chapter 5: Four Minutes in the Dark
Emergency lights glowed red above the nursery door.
“Jonas,” Matteo called.
“Get this door open.”
The guard pulled a metal key from beneath his sleeve.
“Marcus ordered us never to carry manual overrides.
I kept one anyway.”
Matteo looked at him.
“Why?”
“My wife said a lock that only one man can open is not security.
It’s a cage.”
He turned the key, and the fire door lifted six inches before stopping.
“I can crawl through,” Liana said.
“You’re holding Nico,” Matteo replied.
“Then take him.”
Nico clung to her uniform and cried.
Jonas dropped to one knee.
“There’s a laundry passage behind the wardrobe.
Staff used it before the renovation.”
Matteo dragged the wardrobe aside.
A narrow door appeared behind it.
“Why are you helping us?” Liana asked.
Jonas removed his security badge and placed it in Matteo’s hand.
“Marcus paid my mother’s nursing-home fees when I joined his team.
Tonight I found out the money came from the children’s fund.”
“You’ll lose your job,” Matteo said.
“I’d rather lose it than explain to my mother why I guarded the man who stole from sick babies.”
They entered the passage.
At the lower landing, a child’s cry echoed from the dark.
Liana froze.
“That isn’t Nico.”
Matteo looked at her empty arms.
The blanket she had been carrying fell open.
“Where is he?” she screamed.
A speaker crackled overhead.
“Laundry lift,” Marcus said.
“You should have checked before entering the passage.”
Matteo slammed his fist against the wall.
“Marcus!”
“Bring me the hospital band and Jonas’s laptop.
Come to the garage alone.”
Liana grabbed Matteo’s sleeve.
“He took Nico through the service panel.”
“I’ll go.”
“No.
He expects you to protect your empire.
He doesn’t expect me.”
The garage doors stood open when Liana arrived.
Marcus waited beside a black car, holding Nico in one arm.
“Give him to me,” she said.
“Bring me the band.”
She raised her closed fist.
“It’s here.”
Marcus shifted Nico.
“Toss it over.”
“You stole Elias’s surgery money.”
“I redirected numbers on a page.”
“My son was not a number.”
“Your son was one child.
The fund had thousands of cases.”
“And how many did you rob?”
Marcus’s jaw moved.
“Enough to build the system Matteo was too sentimental to build himself.”
Nico began crying.
“Don’t frighten him,” Liana said.
“Then hand over the evidence.”
“What happens after I do?”
“You leave.
Matteo keeps his son.
Everyone survives the night.”
Liana opened her hand.
It was empty.
Marcus’s face changed.
Matteo stepped from behind the second car.
“Looking for this?”
He held up the hospital band.
Marcus pulled a g*n from beneath his jacket.
“Put it down,” Jonas called from the doorway.
Marcus pressed the weapon near Nico’s blanket.
“One step and the child pays for it.”
Liana walked forward anyway.
“Stop!” Marcus shouted.
“You need Nico to escape.
You won’t h*rt him while he’s useful.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know cowards.
They always hide behind someone smaller.”
Nico reached toward her voice.
Marcus looked down for half a second.
Liana tore the baby from his arm.
Matteo drove Marcus against the car, but Marcus struck the garage control.
The outer doors slammed between them.
A car engine roared on the other side.
“He’s getting away,” Jonas said.
Liana sank against the wall with Nico crying safely against her chest.
A second vehicle rolled into the garage.
Leah stumbled from the passenger seat, supported by an elderly hospital orderly.
“Liana,” she whispered.
Liana stared at the sister she had not seen in eight years.
Leah held up a small silver recorder.
May you like
“Sofia named Marcus,” she said.
“But he wasn’t working alone.”
