Chapter 4 - The Abandoned Station
“L.R.” Isabella breathed, reading the faded ink over Matteo’s broad shoulder. “Lorenzo Rossi. Your father.”
Matteo stared at the ticket, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles jumped beneath his skin. For eight years, he had operated under the absolute certainty that his father was dead. He had mourned him, avenged insults to his memory, and ruthlessly built an empire to honor him. To see those words written by the only man his father truly trusted felt like an earthquake fracturing the ground he stood on.
“It’s not possible,” Matteo whispered, his voice rough with a vulnerability Isabella hadn’t heard before. “I saw the wreckage of his boat. I saw the blood.”
“My dad didn’t lie,” Isabella said fiercely, surprising herself with her own conviction. “He was meticulous. If he wrote this down, and he hid it in a watch that required a secret sequence to open, he meant for it to be found. But only by someone who understood what it meant.”
Matteo looked up from the ticket, his dark eyes locking onto hers. The cold, calculating billionaire was gone, replaced by a son desperate for the truth.
“Central Terminal,” Matteo muttered, looking at the destination printed on the front of the old ticket. “It’s been abandoned for fifteen years. It’s scheduled for demolition next month.”
He threw the SUV into drive, the tires kicking up wet gravel as they merged back onto the highway, speeding toward the city limits.
The rain intensified, hammering against the armored roof of the vehicle. Isabella watched Matteo as he drove. He was intimidating, undeniably dangerous, but she also saw the deep, agonizing loneliness he carried.
“What was he like?” Isabella asked softly, breaking the heavy silence. “Your father.”
Matteo didn’t look away from the road. “He was… formidable. When he walked into a room, the air grew heavy. People respected him, but mostly, they feared him. But to me? He was just my father. He taught me how to play chess, how to spot a liar, and how to tie a tie. He always said, ‘The family you build is more important than the empire you inherit.’”
Matteo’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “And what about Arthur?”
Isabella offered a sad, fond smile. “He was quiet. He loved crossword puzzles and cheap diner coffee. I always thought he was the most ordinary man in the world. But he was so fiercely protective of me. When I was ten, I fell out of a tree and broke my arm. I remember looking at his face in the emergency room. He looked like he wanted to tear the world apart just to stop my crying.”
“He was a good man,” Matteo said quietly. “And he died protecting my family. I will not let that be in vain.”
Forty minutes later, the SUV pulled into the overgrown, chained-off parking lot of the old Central Terminal. The massive, decaying brick building loomed in the darkness like a hollowed-out skull, its grand arched windows shattered and covered in graffiti.
Matteo produced a heavy flashlight from the glove compartment and effortlessly snapped the rusted padlock on the chain-link fence with a pair of bolt cutters.
“Stay close to me,” Matteo ordered, pulling a sleek, suppressed handgun from a holster hidden beneath his jacket.
Isabella swallowed hard, nodding. She followed him into the cavernous, echoing main concourse of the train station. The air smelled of damp concrete and old iron. Water dripped steadily from the ruined vaulted ceiling.
Matteo shined the flashlight over the rotting wooden benches and rusted ticket kiosks.
“The ticket,” Matteo said, holding it up into the beam of light. “Look at the seat number.”
Isabella squinted at the faded type. Locker 404.
They moved swiftly toward the old luggage wing. The metal lockers were rusted shut, covered in decades of grime. Matteo found row 400, his flashlight beam sliding across the dented metal doors until it stopped on 404.
He didn’t bother looking for a key. He stepped back, raised his booted foot, and kicked the lock with a sickening, metallic crunch. The rusted door groaned open.
Inside the locker sat a heavy, fireproof metal lockbox.
Matteo pulled it out and set it on a nearby bench. He used the butt of his gun to smash the latch until it broke free.
Isabella held her breath as Matteo opened the lid.
Inside rested a thick, leather-bound ledger, identical to the one Isabella’s father used to keep for his accounting business. But there was something else resting on top of it.
A photograph.
Matteo picked it up, the flashlight beam illuminating the glossy image.
Isabella leaned in, and the breath was knocked entirely out of her lungs.
It was a picture taken at this exact train station, years ago. Four men stood on the platform.
The first was a younger Matteo’s father, Lorenzo, looking stern and powerful.
The second was Isabella’s father, Arthur, holding a briefcase.
The third was Carlo, grinning widely with a cigar in his mouth.
But it was the fourth man that made Isabella’s blood run cold.
He was young in the photo, maybe eighteen, holding a sleek, suppressed pistol down by his side. It was the groom from the wedding they had just fled.
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But that wasn’t the worst part.
Written in thick black ink across the bottom of the photograph, in Carlo’s handwriting, were the words: To my brilliant son, on his first assignment.
