Chapter 2 - Eleven Missing Minutes

By eight in the morning, Luca Moretti’s house had become a command center.

Screens filled the library. Maps covered a long table. Security officers moved between rooms with coffee, laptops, and clipped voices. Maya sat in borrowed sweatpants and one of Dr. Kim’s sweaters, wondering how she had gone from missing a bus to watching organized men rebuild a kidnapping minute by minute.

Marco Reyes stood at the center of it all.

“St. Catherine’s dismissal, 3:45,” he said, tapping a screen. “Alessia entered the Moretti car at 3:52. Driver Daniel Cho took his normal route. Traffic camera catches the car at 4:03. At 4:09, the municipal cameras on Halsted go dark.”

“Only those cameras?” Maya asked.

Marco glanced at her. “Four in sequence.”

“That isn’t random.”

“No.”

Luca stood behind them, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. “At 4:21?”

“Your car reappears empty. Daniel is unconscious in an alley. No Alessia.”

Maya looked at the timeline. “Eleven minutes.”

Marco nodded. “Exactly.”

“What knocked the cameras out?”

“Remote maintenance credentials.”

“City employee?”

“Credential was stolen.”

Luca’s mouth flattened. “From whom?”

“A contractor named Owen Bell.”

Maya looked up. “Bell?”

Marco noticed. “Mean something to you?”

“No. Just memorable.”

Luca pushed a file toward her. “Why are you asking like you’re in class?”

“Because patterns don’t care where you sleep.”

He stared at her for a moment, then said, “Keep asking.”

The hotel key card had already been sent to a private lab. No fingerprints. No visible logo. Its magnetic strip had been wiped.

“It was planted,” Maya said.

Marco nodded. “Probably.”

“Then why sew it into the dress? If they wanted you to find it, they could put it in her pocket.”

Luca’s attention shifted.

Maya continued. “Maybe the person who hid it didn’t want the kidnappers to know she had it.”

“Alessia?” Marco asked.

“She’s six.”

“Six-year-olds hide things.”

“Not with needle and thread.”

Luca’s face changed.

“The dress was changed by someone who helped her,” he said.

“Or by someone trying to send a message without being caught,” Maya replied.

A woman entered the library carrying a tablet. She was in her fifties, silver streaks in her dark hair, posture rigid with contained worry.

“Mr. Moretti.”

“Rosa.”

“Alessia is awake and asking for Maya.”

Maya stood immediately.

Luca stopped her with a look. “One question first. Why did you stay with her?”

Maya blinked. “What?”

“In the warehouse. You could have left.”

“She was sick.”

“You didn’t know who she was.”

“That made her less sick?”

Marco looked down at the table.

Luca said nothing.

Maya picked up her borrowed slippers. “Your daughter was six years old and alone. There wasn’t a decision.”

Upstairs, Alessia was sitting against pillows with a bowl of untouched oatmeal on her lap. The fever had dropped slightly, but she looked fragile without the strange dignity of the velvet dress.

“Maya.”

“I’m here.”

“You stayed.”

“I said I would.”

Alessia considered this seriously. “People say things.”

Maya sat beside her. “They do.”

“Then they go.”

Luca stopped in the doorway.

Maya heard the silence behind her and understood there was history in that sentence.

She did not ask.

Instead, she pointed to the photograph on the bedside table. “Is that your mom?”

Alessia nodded.

The woman in the picture had warm eyes and a bright smile.

“What was her name?”

“Isabella.”

Luca came into the room. “Her mother died two years ago.”

Maya looked at him. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Alessia said.

The simplicity broke something in the air.

Maya changed direction gently. “Do you remember the dress?”

Alessia’s hand tightened around the blanket.

“You don’t have to tell me everything. Just what you want.”

“There was a lady.”

Luca moved closer. “What lady?”

“She gave me water.”

“Did you know her?”

Alessia shook her head.

“What did she look like?” Maya asked.

“Brown hair. She cried.”

“Did she put you in the blue dress?”

A nod.

“Did she sew something in it?”

Another nod.

Luca’s voice turned low. “What did she say?”

Alessia looked at him.

“She said, ‘Tell your papa the red door is still open.’”

Luca went completely still.

Marco, standing behind him, whispered, “Luca?”

Maya watched the color drain from his face.

“You know what that means,” she said.

Luca looked toward the window, not at any of them.

After a long moment, he answered.

“Yes.”

“What?”

He turned back.

“The red door was Isabella’s name for a storage room beneath one of my oldest buildings.”

Marco frowned. “The Fulton property?”

Luca nodded.

“I sealed it after she died.”

Alessia whispered, “The lady said Mommy left something there.”

Before leaving the room, Maya noticed Alessia tracing circles on the blanket with one fingertip.

“Did the lady say anything else?” Maya asked.

Alessia thought hard. “She said if Papa gets mad, tell him mad is what they want.”

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Luca looked toward the window.

Maya did not comment, but the sentence stayed with her. Whoever had helped Alessia knew Luca well enough to predict his anger, and feared that anger could be turned into a weapon against him. That meant the conspiracy was not merely close to the family. It understood the family.