The Don's Favorite Mistress Vanished novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Shut It Down

At first I thought it was a mistake.

I pounded the steel door with my open palm and screamed for them to open it.

"Open up. It's me."

No one answered, but outside I heard footsteps hurrying away.

Then I smelled it.

It was sweet and thick, and it hit my throat before the fans started roaring.

Gas.

Someone had opened the heating line and let it run into the vault.

I ripped out my earpiece, and Corrado's voice kept buzzing in my head.

Shut it down.

I stopped screaming.

I tore off my coat, tied it over my nose and mouth, and forced myself to breathe slowly.

Ten years with a Don had taught me something useful: panic kills faster than any bullet.

I had designed that vault.

I had drawn every blueprint for Corrado, with its forty meters of insulated walls and its humidity filters.

And under the floor, in case water ever got in, I'd had a drainage channel installed.

No one remembered it, because no one had read those blueprints except me.

I ran to the shelf on the north wall, eyes streaming.

I knocked two boxes of frames to the floor and pried up the iron grate with the edge of my briefcase.

The channel was there, black and narrow, smelling of river.

A dull blast shook the wall across from me.

The fire had already started somewhere, and the air was beginning to heat up.

I dove in headfirst.

The hole barely fit my shoulders, and I dragged myself along on my elbows over the wet cement.

In the second stretch, my right arm grazed a steam pipe.

The pain shot up my neck like a red-hot knife.

I bit down on the coat to keep from screaming and kept crawling, the smell of my own burned skin in my nose.

I counted the meters out of habit, because counting kept me awake.

Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.

The grate at the end gave way after two kicks, and I fell into a channel of ice-cold water that came up to my waist.

I crawled out coughing onto the bank, hands shaking, my arm raw.

Behind me, warehouse number four started to burn.

I stumbled up the embankment to a pile of shipping containers and dropped down behind one.

From there I saw everything.

Flames were licking out of the roof, staining the rain orange, and sirens were already coming down the avenue.

A black truck pulled up at the edge of the dock.

I knew that truck, because I'd picked out the armor plating myself.

The back door opened and Corrado stepped out.

He stood in the rain, hands at his sides, coat plastered to his body.

He stared at the fire for what felt like ten minutes and was, I think, about thirty seconds.

He didn't shout my name, didn't run, didn't ask anyone anything.

Beside him, Fabrizio put a hand on his shoulder, and Corrado shook it off without turning his head.

Then he got back in the truck and closed the door.

He left without waiting for the fire department.

I watched the taillights until they disappeared into the rain.

I wanted to cry and couldn't.

What I felt was something much colder and much clearer.

He knew.

He had known exactly what he was doing when he said that word, and he'd gone home to sleep.

I tore the chain from my neck, the pendant he'd given me on our fifth anniversary.

I threw it into the channel, and the black water swallowed it without a sound.

In the lining of my briefcase, sewn in next to the hinge, I had an unregistered phone I hadn't used in eight years.

I'd kept it for the day I'd have to disappear.

I never thought that day would come from the hand I'd kissed the most.

I dialed a number in Florence from memory, fingers numb.

It rang three times, and someone answered in Italian, voice thick with sleep.

"Who's this?"

"Dad," I said. "It's me."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

Then I heard the breathing of a man who'd been waiting ten years for that call.

"It's about time, Fiora," my father said.

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