Chapter 6 – THE SCHOOL BACKPACK

Luca’s face lost all its color.

He stared at the text message.

He knows you left. He has Sophie.

“What is it?” Elena asked, panic rising in her voice.

“Call her,” Luca commanded, handing the phone to Elena.

Elena dialed Adriana’s number.

It went straight to voicemail.

“She’s not answering,” Elena said, her voice shaking.

Luca leaned forward between the front seats.

“Emma, turn around. Go to Mia’s house.”

I whipped the SUV around in the middle of the street, tires squealing against the cold asphalt.

The drive took twelve agonizing minutes.

When we pulled up to the large brick house in the suburbs, all the lights were on.

Luca didn’t wait for the car to stop completely.

He threw the door open and sprinted across the lawn.

Elena and I ran after him.

The front door was wide open.

Luca ran inside.

“Sophie!” he screamed.

Silence.

The living room was empty.

Mia’s parents were nowhere to be seen.

But on the floor in the hallway, lying on the hardwood, was a purple school backpack.

Sophie’s backpack.

Elena fell to her knees and picked it up.

She clutched it to her chest, sobbing.

“He took her,” she cried. “He took my baby.”

Luca kicked a side table, sending a vase crashing to the floor.

“Frank is going to kill her.”

“Why would he kill her?” I asked, my voice trembling.

Luca turned to me, his eyes wild.

“Because Sophie is the only other person who knows Elena is alive. If he gets rid of both of them, his secret dies forever.”

Just then, my phone vibrated in my apron pocket.

I pulled it out.

It was an unknown number.

I answered it tentatively.

“Hello?”

“Emma.”

It was Rosa.

Her voice was strained, breathless.

“Mrs. Moretti? Where are you?”

“Listen to me very carefully,” she whispered. “Frank just left the party. He took Adriana with him.”

“Where did they go?”

“The old warehouse on 18th Street. The one Antonio used to own.”

“Is Sophie with them?”

“I don’t know. But Emma… Frank has a gun.”

The line went dead.

I looked at Luca.

“The warehouse on 18th Street,” I said.

Luca didn’t hesitate.

“Let’s go.”

We sprinted back to the car.

I drove faster than I had ever driven in my life.

When we reached the industrial district, the streets were dark and empty.

We pulled into the alley behind the rusted warehouse.

A black town car was parked out front.

Luca grabbed a heavy metal tire iron from the trunk.

“Stay here,” he told Elena and me.

“No,” Elena said fiercely. “That’s my daughter.”

We crept toward the side entrance of the warehouse.

The heavy metal door was slightly ajar.

We slipped inside, hiding behind a stack of wooden pallets.

In the center of the massive, empty space, a single overhead light buzzed.

Underneath it stood Frank.

He was holding a pistol.

And kneeling on the concrete floor in front of him, hands tied behind her back, was Adriana.

But Sophie wasn’t there.

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