The Red Sight Over His Chest

Chapter 4 The Forgotten Sonogram

The sonogram shook in my hand. The grainy image gave me no answer about whether the child had been a son or a daughter. It was still my heir, hidden from me in my own house.

Six weeks. My child had been inside that warehouse, close enough for me to save. I had ordered the entrance destroyed instead.

I called Dr. Alessi, physician to the Moretti family for thirty years.

"Don Moretti?"

"My office. Now."

Ten minutes later, the old man stood across from my desk. I held out the sonogram.

He recognized it before he touched it. His face went pale.

"Whose is this?"

"Mrs. Moretti's, sir."

"She was pregnant."

Dr. Alessi looked at the floor. "Six weeks. She came alone and made me swear I wouldn't tell you. She wanted to be certain the baby was safe first."

"Safe from whom?"

He said nothing.

I had left my wife in a burning warehouse. She had been carrying my son or daughter, and I had closed the only exit I thought she had. While guards dragged her away, I had used both arms to protect Chloe's scratched skin.

My hand tightened around the paper until it creased.

"Get out."

After Dr. Alessi left, Chloe's laugh carried down the hall from Sienna's old office.

"Throw out the rest of her junk," she told a maid. "She won't need it now."

I thought of the ambush. Seconds before the first shot, Chloe had stumbled and caught Sienna by the arm.

Then she had clung to me and pulled me toward the main exit, away from the back of the warehouse. At the time, I had called it fear. Now I wanted to hear what the assassin called it.

One of the captured assassins was still alive in the lowest cell beneath the mansion.

I went downstairs and opened his door myself.

He lifted his head from the wall.

"Who gave you our route?"

He spat blood near my shoe. "Go to hell."

I shot him through one kneecap.

His scream bounced through the corridor. I put the hot muzzle against his other knee.

"Who was the source?"

"The girl," he gasped. "Chloe. She gave us the route. She was supposed to stumble and hold your woman back a few seconds. Long enough for the sniper."

The details matched every second I remembered. Chloe had known where the shot would come from and exactly when to move.

I left him on the cell floor and went upstairs.

Chloe was in her new dressing room, telling a maid where to hang a fur coat. She beamed when I entered.

"Dante! Look at it. It's a thousand times better than that awful office."

I drew my pistol.

Her smile dropped. "What are you doing? Dante, you're scaring me."

The first round shattered her left kneecap. The second hit her right.

She fell among the boxes of shoes and screamed. The maid ran.

I crouched beside Chloe. "You took my son from me. I'll take your future. You will spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair, in a room without windows. You will never walk again."

I holstered the pistol and left her bleeding on the carpet.

The sonogram was still in my pocket. Shooting Chloe had changed nothing written on it.

Then I remembered what Marco said at the ruins: no body.

I called him before I reached the end of the hall.

"Get our best trackers. Spend whatever you have to spend and search everywhere. Find Sienna."