Chapter 6 - The Price of FriendshipSienna refused protection.
For approximately 11 minutes.
Then Matteo threatened to move into her apartment.
She accepted protection immediately.
“I would rather have 6 armed strangers than one permanently irritated Sicilian standing beside my refrigerator,” she said.
Matteo looked at her.
“I am not Sicilian.”
“That is the detail you object to?”
“It is inaccurate.”
She turned toward me.
“Do you see what I endure?”
We were in the Messina kitchen at 7:00 the following morning.
No one had slept.
Luciano had ordered the entire estate searched after discovering the envelope in the locked hall.
Every guard was questioned.
Every camera reviewed.
At 2:14 a.m., they found the breach.
A delivery driver had entered through a service checkpoint using legitimate credentials belonging to a man who had worked for the household for 9 years.
The real driver had been found unconscious in his apartment.
Serafina Bellandi was not merely watching us.
She was entering places we considered safe.
I poured coffee.
Sienna took the cup with both hands.
“I am not hiding.”
“You have been photographed by people trying to restart a mafia war.”
“I have been photographed by worse people at brunch.”
“Sienna.”
“I am serious.”
“So am I.”
Her humor faded.
She looked toward the window.
“I spent 3 days thinking you might be dead.”
I became quiet.
She swallowed.
“I kept seeing the moment they pulled you out of the car. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw your shoe hit the street.”
My throat tightened.
“I am not going to spend the next year locked inside because somebody has decided friendship is a weakness.”
Matteo stood near the doorway.
His face was unreadable.
Sienna looked at him.
“And stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I have already been kidnapped.”
His jaw tightened.
I understood immediately.
He was afraid.
Matteo Greco, who could walk through gunfire with less visible concern than most people showed when choosing wine, was terrified.
Not for himself.
For her.
I looked away.
Some realizations deserved privacy.
The Bellandi strategy became clearer during the next 2 days.
They targeted relationships.
Not businesses.
Not money.
People.
A Caruso attorney received photographs of his daughter walking to school.
A Messina captain found his mother’s medical records copied and placed inside his car.
My father received a photograph of me sleeping in the library, taken through the mansion window.
Luciano destroyed that photograph with his bare hands.
“They want us paranoid,” Tiziano said.
We were gathered in the office.
“Fear makes men isolate themselves.”
“Which weakens communication,” I said.
“Exactly.”
My father had come to the Messina mansion for the meeting.
The first time in 18 years.
He sat opposite Luciano.
Neither appeared pleased by the historical significance.
“Serafina understands families,” my father said. “She always did.”
Luciano’s fingers rested beside mine.
“She understands leverage.”
“She believes they are the same thing.”
I looked at my father.
“Are they?”
His gaze met mine.
Something uncomfortable moved behind his eyes.
“No.”
It was perhaps the first lesson I had ever taught him.
The lead on Enzo came that afternoon.
A bank transfer.
Then another.
Both moved through a company registered to a Bellandi associate.
But the pattern did not prove Enzo had joined them.
The money had traveled from his accounts outward.
Not inward.
“He was paying them,” Matteo said.
Luciano studied the documents.
“Or buying something.”
“Information?” I asked.
Tiziano nodded.
“Possibly.”
My father leaned back.
“Enzo had been investigating Bellandi activity for months.”
I turned.
“You knew?”
“I knew he suspected someone was rebuilding their network.”
“Why did you accuse him?”
“I did not accuse him. I showed you the evidence.”
“You let me believe he sold me.”
“Because I believed it too.”
That admission cost him something.
I could tell.
Before I could respond, Matteo’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
Not dramatically.
Matteo never did anything dramatically.
But all color left him.
“Repeat that.”
The room became still.
He walked toward the window.
“What time?”
A pause.
“Lock the location. No one enters.”
He ended the call.
Luciano stood.
“What?”
Matteo looked at Sienna’s empty chair.
She had left 40 minutes earlier with 4 guards to collect clothes from her apartment.
“The vehicles never arrived.”
My stomach dropped.
“No.”
Matteo’s hand tightened around the phone.
“They found one SUV abandoned on Walnut.”
“Where is Sienna?”
He did not answer.
That was the answer.
I stood so quickly the chair fell backward.
Luciano caught my arm.
“No.”
The word came from me this time.
Not yet.
Not her.
My phone vibrated.
Every person in the room heard it.
I looked down.
Unknown number.
A video.
My fingers became numb.
Luciano reached for the device.
I stepped away.
“It was sent to me.”
“Valyria.”
I pressed play.
Sienna appeared on the screen.
She was seated in a chair.
Not tied.
No visible blood.
Her face was pale but furious.
A woman stood behind her.
Elegant.
Silver-haired.
Perhaps 60.
She wore black.
Serafina Bellandi.
I had never seen her face.
Still, I knew.
Some people carried their names physically.
Serafina rested one hand on Sienna’s shoulder.
“Valyria Messina,” she said.
Her voice was soft.
Educated.
Almost warm.
“You and I have never met, though our lives have been shaped by the same men.”
Sienna rolled her eyes.
Serafina smiled faintly.
“Your friend is unharmed. For now.”
Matteo stepped closer to the screen.
His breathing had changed.
Serafina continued.
“You have until midnight tomorrow to bring me the black ledger your father recovered.”
I looked toward the desk.
“And one more thing.”
Her expression hardened.
“Come without Luciano.”
The video ended.
Silence.
Then Matteo turned toward the door.
Luciano caught his shoulder.
“Where are you going?”
“To find her.”
“With what location?”
“I will get one.”
“You are not thinking.”
“No.”
Matteo looked at him.
For the first time since I had known him, his control broke visibly.
“I am not.”
Luciano did not release him.
“Then borrow mine.”
The words stopped Matteo.
For several seconds, neither man moved.
Then Matteo looked down.
His voice became rough.
“I should have gone with her.”
I heard Luciano’s old confession inside the sentence.
6 minutes late.
I walked toward Matteo.
“This is not your 6 minutes.”
His eyes lifted.
Luciano looked at me.
He understood.
I continued.
“We are bringing her home.”
That evening, the Messina mansion became a war room.
Phones.
Maps.
Traffic cameras.
Bank transfers.
Police contacts who officially knew nothing.
My father’s people joined Luciano’s.
For the first time since before I was born, Caruso and Messina captains sat at one table without guns pointed beneath it.
Serafina had wanted our relationships to become weaknesses.
Instead, she had made us combine every resource we possessed.
At 9:00, Enzo called me.
Alive.
“Val?”
I nearly stopped breathing.
“Enzo.”
Luciano signaled for the call to be traced.
“Do not trace me,” Enzo said immediately.
Matteo looked irritated.
I almost laughed from relief.
“Where are you?”
“Moving.”
“Did you sell my route?”
“No.”
“Then why were payments made to Bellandi accounts?”
“I was buying names.”
I closed my eyes.
My father looked away.
Enzo continued.
“I discovered Serafina was rebuilding 10 months ago. I tried to identify who inside our people had joined her.”
“Why did you run?”
“Because whoever warned Orazio about your route also knew I was investigating. When Emiliano recovered the ledger, I knew I would be blamed next.”
“Who is the leak?”
“I have a name.”
Everyone leaned closer.
“Who?”
Enzo breathed once.
“Raffaele Moretti.”
Luciano’s face hardened.
I recognized the name.
One of my father’s senior captains.
A man who had attended every birthday dinner I could remember.
“He arranged access to your travel schedules,” Enzo said. “But he is not the one who took Sienna.”
“Who did?”
“I do not know. I know where Bellandi is operating.”
Matteo moved closer.
“Where?”
Enzo hesitated.
“Old St. Agnes Hospital.”
The abandoned hospital sat 4 miles from the river.
Closed for 15 years.
Too large.
Too many entrances.
Perfect.
“We go now,” Matteo said.
“No,” Luciano replied.
“Midnight tomorrow gives them time to move,” Matteo snapped.
“That deadline is for Valyria. They expect surveillance tonight.”
“So we wait?”
“We make them believe we are waiting.”
I looked at the map.
Then at the ledger.
Then at Luciano.
“I have an idea.”
Every man in the room looked unhappy before I even explained it.
That was becoming one of my favorite sensations.
At 11:30, a Caruso vehicle left the mansion carrying the ledger in a visible security case.
Serafina’s watchers followed.
At midnight, a second decoy moved toward the docks.
At 12:17, while Bellandi surveillance tracked both, 14 Messina men and 11 Carusos approached St. Agnes from underground service tunnels Enzo identified from old construction plans.
I remained in the command vehicle because Luciano won that argument.
Barely.
Matteo entered first.
The next 18 minutes were the longest of my life.
Radio calls arrived in fragments.
West corridor clear.
Two down.
Second floor locked.
Movement east stairwell.
Then silence.
I held Luciano’s emergency phone so tightly my fingers hurt.
Finally—
“Found her.”
Matteo’s voice.
Two words.
My entire body sagged.
Luciano closed his eyes briefly.
“Condition?”
A pause.
Then Sienna’s voice came through the radio.
“I would like everyone to know Matteo has become extremely emotional.”
I laughed and cried at the same time.
Matteo said something rude in Italian.
Sienna continued.
“I am fine.”
The hospital operation ended before dawn.
Serafina was gone.
Again.
But Sienna returned.
When Matteo carried her from the building, she was wrapped in his coat.
She could walk.
She simply was not.
Her arms were around his neck.
His face was pressed briefly against her hair before he remembered other people existed.
Sienna saw me and extended one arm.
I ran to her.
The three of us nearly fell.
“I hate your life,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I hate his life too.”
She pointed at Matteo.
“I heard that.”
“Good.”
Later, after the doctors confirmed she had only dehydration and bruising, I found Matteo outside her room.
He sat alone.
His hands hung between his knees.
“You love her,” I said.
He did not look up.
“No.”
“Matteo.”
“No.”
“You carried her through an entire parking lot when she could walk.”
“She was tired.”
“You threatened a doctor because he took too long.”
“He was incompetent.”
“You are terrible at this.”
Finally, he looked at me.
For once, there was no dry humor.
Only fear.
“I cannot love someone in this world.”
I sat beside him.
“Why?”
“Because then someone like Serafina knows exactly where to cut.”
I thought of Luciano.
Of the shoe.
Of 63 hours.
“They know where to cut anyway.”
Matteo looked toward Sienna’s closed door.
I continued.
“Loving someone does not create the wound.”
I leaned back.
“It gives you a reason to survive it.”
He said nothing.
But 5 minutes later, he stood and returned to her room.
He did not leave until morning.
At sunrise, Enzo sent another message.
One photograph.
Serafina Bellandi entering a church.
The timestamp was 12 minutes old.
Beneath it, Enzo had written:
She is finished hiding.
May you like
And below that:
She wants Valyria to come hear the truth about why Vittorio Bellandi died.
Related Stories
