Chapter 15 A Confession From Pietro’s Shadow #5
Matteo didn’t take his gaze off Pietro. “I’m not.”
Pietro’s brows drew together. “Then read it.”
Matteo’s throat tightened. He didn’t want to.
He’d already been reading it in his head since he’d received it.
Every line felt like a trap disguised as handwriting.
But Pietro’s instruction carried weight - not because Pietro had earned it, but because Pietro seemed to be trying to control the one thing Matteo could still control.
Matteo slid the note free with his left hand, keeping his right arm braced against Elena’s back. The paper came out damp, the edges curled. The ink looked smeared in places like someone had tried to erase it and failed.
He unfolded it slowly, careful of the gas and the way his hands shook.
The note wasn’t a list of names.
It was coordinates - an address format he recognized from the back channel directives that had routed them through maintenance corridors and sealed rooms. But the coordinates weren’t for a meeting. They were for a storage location. A vault.
A church vault.
Matteo’s stomach dropped.
Elena’s breath caught. She reached for the note, then stopped herself when she saw the blood on it. “That’s not what it was before,” she whispered.
Matteo stared at the paper. “It’s not what it was before.”
Pietro’s eyes fluttered with satisfaction so brief it looked like pain. “The note changes,” he said. “Not the ink. The purpose.”
Elena’s voice sharpened with something like betrayal. “You gave me partial truth. You’ve been steering me.”
Pietro’s gaze snapped to her, and for the first time his fear flared into anger. “I’ve been trying to keep you alive.”
Matteo barked a laugh without humor. “You don’t get credit for that.”
Pietro’s shoulders rose and fell with a shallow breath. “Then listen to this part,” he said, forcing the words out like he was pushing through a door that didn’t want to open. “Elena was never the target. She was the key. But the key can turn in the lock and open a door that wasn’t meant for her.”
The stairwell groaned. The door behind them shifted with a grinding mechanical sound, like the seal mechanism had decided to lock harder.
Guards surged forward, their hands reaching for Matteo’s arms, for Elena’s laptop. The air smelled so strong Matteo’s eyes burned. His body wanted to cough. He refused.
Elena moved first. She slid the laptop out farther, angling the screen toward Matteo as if she could shield the data with proximity. “Matteo,” she said, and her voice was steady now, stripped of panic. “The note is bait.”
Matteo’s mind clicked over the coordinates on the paper. A church vault meant a location that could be accessed without attracting attention, a place where old secrets could be stored behind new locks. Pietro had known Matteo would see it.
He looked up at Pietro. “Who wrote this?”
Pietro’s lips parted.
But his answer didn’t come.
His head tipped back against the wall, and his eyes went unfocused. The guards shouted something - Matteo couldn’t catch the words over the gas hiss and the mechanical grind of the stairwell door locking again.
Elena’s hand flew to Pietro’s throat like she’d been trained to check for life. She stopped short of touching, then pressed her fingers to the air above him as if contact would confirm something she didn’t want confirmed.
“He’s collapsing,” Elena said, voice tight.
Matteo’s pulse hammered. “He already collapsed.”
Elena’s eyes lifted to Matteo, and for a second the anger in her face looked like grief that hadn’t been allowed to breathe. “He said Elena was never the target,” she said. “But he also said the key could open the wrong door.”
Matteo stared at the note again. The blood on it smeared across the paper as his thumb pressed too hard. The purpose had changed mid-confession. If Pietro had been alive enough to collapse on cue, then the enemies were alive enough to use that collapse.
Matteo folded the note and shoved it back into his jacket pocket, close to the concealed sidearm. Not because he wanted to carry it - because he needed to keep it from being taken by the same hands that were reaching for Elena.
The guards grabbed Matteo by the sleeves, pulling him toward the stairwell door. Elena’s laptop was yanked from her hands at the same time, her body twisting with a sharp, involuntary jerk.
Matteo surged forward, breaking free with a violent twist of his shoulder. His jacket tore slightly at the seam. The sound of fabric ripping in that confined space was loud enough to make his ears ring.
He didn’t draw his sidearm. Not yet. Not while guards crowded the space and Elena was being pulled farther away from him.
Instead, Matteo used what his body could do without announcing a weapon.
He drove his knee into the gap between two men, boots scraping against wet concrete. The impact made one guard stagger back, giving Matteo half a second to pivot toward Elena.
“Elena!” he snapped.
Her head whipped toward him. Her eyes were bright with fury and fear, and her mouth tightened when she saw she was being moved.