Chapter 4 - THE RESURRECTION FROM THE EARTH
The rain pounded relentlessly against the churned earth of the conservatory trench.
Matteo dropped to his knees in the mud, his men sweeping the area with industrial floodlights. The soil was freshly disturbed—a gaping wound in the earth.
“Dig!” Matteo roared, clawing at the wet dirt with his bare hands, the polished rings on his fingers tearing against rocks and roots.
His men swarmed the trench, shoveling furiously.
Suddenly, a muffled, desperate gasp broke through the sound of the rain.
A hand—pale, caked in mud, and trembling—burst through the surface of the soil.
“Over here!” one of the guards shouted.
Matteo lunged forward, digging frantically with his bare hands until he uncovered Elena’s face. She spat out a mouthful of mud, gasping for air, her eyes wild with adrenaline and survival.
“Gabriel...” Elena choked out, coughing violently as Matteo hauled her upward out of the grave. “The boy... under the... plywood sheet...”
Matteo didn't waste a second. He ripped away a heavy sheet of rotting plywood hidden beneath the mud at the edge of the trench.
There, shivering, soaked, and terrified, lay six-year-old Gabriel.
For three years since the car bomb killed his mother, Gabriel had not uttered a single sound. Psychologists, speech therapists, and high-priced doctors had all failed to unlock his voice.
Matteo dropped his gun, fell into the mud, and scooped his son into his arms, pressing the boy against his chest while tears mixed with the rain on his face.
“Gabriel... Daddy’s here. You’re safe,” Matteo whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, shattered emotion no enemy had ever witnessed.
Gabriel’s wide, terrified eyes blinked against the harsh glare of the floodlights. He looked at his father. Then, slowly, with agonizing deliberateness, the little boy raised a small, mud-stained finger.
He didn't point at the guards.
He didn't point at the trench.
He pointed straight past Matteo, locking his gaze onto the grand terrace where Vivienne stood frozen in horror.
Gabriel’s lips parted. A scratchy, unused, mechanical sound scraped from his throat—the first words he had spoken in three agonizing years.
May you like
“Her...” Gabriel whispered, his small finger remaining locked on Vivienne. “Bad lady... put the sleep in my cup... put us in the dark hole...”
The silence that followed was absolute.
