Chapter 4 - Fire in the East Wing
The sharp, rhythmic wail of the fire alarm cut through the mansion like a scalpel. Red strobe lights began to flash against the high ceilings of the corridors, casting an eerie, arterial glow over the portraits of my ancestors.
“Move!” I shouted, drawing my Beretta from its shoulder holster as I bolted out of the study.
Antonio was right behind me, his weapon already drawn, barking orders into his radio for the internal security teams to converge on the eastern courtyard.
The rain had lessened to a cold, miserable drizzle, but the wind still whipped through the open stone archways as we sprinted across the gravel path toward Building E-409. Ahead of us, thick black smoke was already billowing from the shattered windows of the ground floor, smelling sharply of accelerated fuel—gasoline mixed with paraffin.
Someone hadn't just set a fire. They were trying to burn away every piece of evidence left in Room Seven.
“Dr. Ricci!” I yelled over the roar of the flames as we reached the heavy wooden door of the old laundry block.
The door was unlocked, hanging slightly off its hinges where someone had kicked it in earlier.
“Boss! Over here!”
Dr. Ricci emerged from the smoky corridor coughing violently, waving his hand in front of his face. He looked disheveled, his white coat smudged with soot.
“Where is Clara?” I demanded, grabbing him by the lapels.
“She’s... she’s still inside, Alessio,” the doctor gasped, leaning against the damp brick wall to catch his breath. “I tried. God help me, I tried to pull her out when the room started filling with smoke, but the floor near the back wall is compromised. The gas can was sitting right beside her bed.”
I didn't wait for him to finish. I pushed past him into the burning corridor.
The heat hit me like a physical wall. Orange tongues of fire licked up the peeling wallpaper, devouring the old wooden beams overhead. Visibility was down to less than three feet through the dense, acrid smoke.
“Room Seven!” I shouted through the cloth of my handkerchief clamped over my mouth and nose.
I found the door blown inward. Inside, the small room was an inferno.
A figure lay motionless on a narrow cot near the window—a woman with long dark hair spilling over the edge of the mattress, her face pale and slack. Clara.
I rushed forward, ignoring the burning embers dropping from the ceiling, and grabbed her by the arms. She was ice cold—even with the fire raging around us. I checked her neck for a pulse.
Nothing.
The poison Dr. Ricci had detected earlier had already done its work before the fire was even lit. The arson was just a clean-up operation to hide the needle marks and the toxins in her blood.
Flames suddenly roared upward as a section of the wooden ceiling joist gave way, crashing down between me and the doorway, cutting off my exit. The path back was blocked by a wall of fire.
“Boss!” Antonio’s voice boomed from the hallway on the other side of the burning timber.
“I’m blocked!” I shouted back, coughing as the smoke clawed at my lungs.
I looked down at Clara one last time. Even in death, there was an unmistakable angle to her jaw, a familiar curve of the cheekbone that twisted a knife in my chest. She wasn't Isabella—she was Isabella’s sister, Clara, who had hidden her identity and protected my child in the shadows while the world believed we were both gone.
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There was no time to mourn. The fire was eating the floorboards beneath my boots.
Running toward the side window, I raised the butt of my Beretta and shattered the reinforced glass in one violent strike. I threw my weight forward, crashing through the remaining shards and tumbling out into the muddy grass of the courtyard just as the entire roof of Building E-409 caved in with a deafening crash.
