A violent explosion shook the tunnel.
Concrete cracked.
Smoke rushed toward us.
The filtration door burst open, revealing the room beyond.
Salvatore was gone.
On the wall, the manual valve spun slowly by itself.
Someone had activated it remotely.
I dragged Matteo away as the ceiling collapsed behind us.
We reached the wine-cellar passage seconds before the entire west tunnel caved in.
By the time I carried him into the main hall, Elena and Lily had returned through the north garden entrance with the surviving guards.
Lily saw him in my arms.
“Daddy!”
Elena caught her before she could run through the broken glass.
Matteo opened his eyes.
For one fragile moment, father and daughter looked at each other across the ruined hall.
Then the mansion lights flickered back on.
Every security monitor in the house displayed the same image.
A live video feed.
Salvatore Romano sat in a dark room, smiling into the camera.
But he was not alone.
Beside him sat Vincent Moretti.
No wound marked Vincent’s shoulder.
No blood stained his shirt.
The man I had trusted for fifteen years looked directly at me through the screen.
Then he slowly clapped.
Salvatore raised a glass.
“Congratulations, Adrian,” my father said. “You finally discovered the first traitor.”
Vincent leaned toward the camera.
“And now,” he added, “you are going to learn why Lily was brought into your house.”
The screen changed.
A photograph appeared.
It showed Elena in a hospital bed moments after Lily’s birth.
Matteo stood beside her.
And behind them, holding the newborn child, was a woman I had loved more than anyone in the world.
My mother.
The woman whose death had started the war that built my empire.
The woman I had watched being buried twenty years ago.
She looked straight into the camera, alive.
And on the back wall behind her, someone had written three words in red:
ADRIAN IS NEXT.
