Chapter 14 - The Last Safe Place
The old train station had been closed for twenty years. Its ticket windows were boarded, the platforms covered in weeds, and the underground vault accessible only through a maintenance tunnel.
Rebecca sent a team ahead. Lorenzo insisted on going with them, but Mia refused to stay behind again.
“You can't keep putting me in rooms while everyone else decides my life,” she said.
Luca crouched beside her. “You're right. But being brave doesn't mean walking into danger.”
“Then let me be brave somewhere useful.”
Rebecca offered a compromise. Mia would stay in the armored vehicle with a trusted agent, but she could listen to the radio and tell them what she noticed. It was not what she wanted. It was what they could safely manage.
Inside the vault, agents found the lock forced and the shelves empty. A single photograph lay on the floor. It showed Sofia, Anna, Luca, and a younger Lorenzo standing outside the Cattaneo estate.
On the back was a message:
THE FIRST LIE WAS THAT SOFIA DIED.
Lorenzo read it twice.
“What does that mean?” Rebecca asked.
Luca looked sick. “I saw her after the bombing. I thought she was dead because she wasn't breathing. But I never saw a body.”
“Where was she taken?”
“I don't know.”
Mia pressed her face to the vehicle window. “Mom said the blue bird followed the moon. Maybe the bird is someone who helps people get home.”
Lorenzo turned. “Who helped Sofia?”
Luca shook his head. “A nurse. A woman named Grace. She worked at St. Agnes.”
Rebecca made a call. Within minutes, she had a name and an address.
Grace Holloway had retired to a small house outside the city. When they arrived, she opened the door, saw Lorenzo, and began to cry.
“I wondered when you'd come,” she said.
“Where is my wife?”
Grace looked past him at Mia.
“She's alive,” she whispered. “And she's been protecting your daughter from a distance.”
Mia took one step forward.
“Can I see her?”
Grace's answer was interrupted by a car screeching to a stop behind them.
May you like
Peter Vale stepped out.
And he wasn't alone.
