Chapter 8 - THE VOICE IN THE WALLS
I grabbed the microphone. My hands were no longer shaking.
I looked at the twins. "Mia. Sofia. Remember the song Nonna sang? Sing it with me. Sing it as loud as you can."
They looked at each other, then at me. And then, they nodded.
I turned on the PA system. The speakers throughout the entire three-story mansion crackled to life.
I drew a breath and began to hum.
“La luna è stanca, il lupo aspetta...”
My voice echoed through the empty hallways, cold, clear, and haunting. It sounded like a ghost walking through the walls.
On the monitors, I saw the men outside the panic room stop. They lowered their weapons, looking around in confusion and fear.
Then, Mia and Sofia joined in. Their high, sweet, childish voices layered over mine, creating a chilling, beautiful harmony that filled the bloody, dark house.
“Dormi bimbo, la notte è fredda... ma il lupo non ti mangerà...”
Lorenzo Valetti froze on the grand staircase.
He looked around wild-eyed, his sophisticated composure shattering. He knew that song. He knew the Rossi family. He knew the legend of the Rossi sister who had escaped the massacre.
To him, it wasn't a lullaby.
It was a curse. It was the sound of the dead rising to claim their dues.
"Who is that?!" Lorenzo screamed, his voice picked up by the hallway microphone. "Who is singing?! Search the rooms! Find them!"
But his men were hesitant. They were superstitious men, brought up in a culture of blood and omens. To hear the dead Rossi lullaby sung by children's voices in a dark house they had just turned into a slaughterhouse... it broke their nerve.
"It's a ghost," one of the men muttered, backing away from the panic room door. "The house is cursed."
"Shoot them!" Lorenzo roared, running up the stairs toward the source of the sound—the nursery.
But he was too late.
The monitors showed the front doors of the mansion being blown off their hinges.
Antonio Moretti and fifty heavily armed men poured into the foyer.
The distraction had worked. Lorenzo’s men, disoriented and terrified by the ghostly singing, were caught completely off guard. The gunfire was swift, decisive.
One by one, the Valetti soldiers fell.
On the screen, I saw Lorenzo reach the third floor hallway, his face twisted in a mask of panic. He tried to run toward the back stairs, but Antonio’s men were already there, cutting off his escape.
Lorenzo was trapped.
Inside the panic room, I turned off the microphone.
I fell to my knees, pulling the twins into a tight, fierce hug. We had done it. We were alive.
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Dante looked at me, a tear finally escaping his dark eyes, tracing a path through the soot on his cheek.
"You," he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "You are the miracle."
