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Chapter 4 - The Coordinates of Blood

The rain had stopped, but the city still felt soaked in tension. I stood at my apartment window, watching the gray skies press down over Barcelona, and I couldn't shake the way they mirrored the storm in my chest.

 

The coordinates burned in my mind like a second heartbeat:

 

42.3419° N, 13.3976° E

L'Aquila, Italy.

 

My father's birthplace. The last place he had promised to take me before he died.

 

The painting. The note. The stranger. They all pointed me there.

 

I zipped my suitcase shut, the leather edges cold under my fingers. Traveling meant commitment. It meant chasing a truth that might not exist. It meant stepping into the world my father had spent his life hiding from me.

 

And something deep inside whispered that there was no turning back.

 

Meanwhile, Nico Romano watched me pack through a secure feed.

 

"She's moving," Leo said from behind him, arms crossed. "Going to L'Aquila."

 

Nico didn't answer.

 

"I still think this is insane," Leo muttered. "We could've just taken her. Got the map. Forced the intel. Why play the long game?"

 

"She's more than leverage," Nico said, staring out at Barcelona from the penthouse window. The city stretched beneath him, quiet, deceitful, unaware of the storm brewing in its alleys.

 

Leo raised an eyebrow. "You're not falling for her, are you?"

 

Nico didn't answer. Silence passed between them like a living thing.

 

She wasn't a bystander. She was a Cruz. Blood, power, and war ran in her veins.

 

"She needs to see the truth for herself," Nico said finally. "If she doesn't believe it, we can't use her. But if she does…"

 

Leo nodded slowly. "Then she becomes the weapon."

 

"She becomes the heir," Nico murmured, turning back to the screen. I closed my suitcase with finality.

 

The flight to Italy was short, but suffocating. I barely looked up from my notebook, filled with frantic sketches, scribbles, and notes, anything that might make sense of the map, the painting, the stranger, my father.

 

Rome passed in a blur. I took a train northeast toward the mountains. Villages thinned into hills, hills into jagged ridges of stone. Something familiar settled in my chest, a mix of fear and anticipation.

 

L'Aquila was quiet when I arrived, a town scarred by history and earthquakes but refusing to surrender its bones. I booked a room near the old cathedral square and began to follow the trail my father had left in paint.

 

The clues had been subtle. Church ruins. Archways overgrown with ivy. A date carved in stone.

 

By dusk, I found it. A crumbling abbey on the edge of town, abandoned and half-swallowed by vines. The stones whispered secrets. The wind carried memory. My father's landscapes had painted it into the background, and I had dismissed them as scenery.

 

I stepped through the iron gates, flashlight in hand. The stone beneath my feet felt alive, murmuring of things long buried.

 

Beneath the shattered rose window, I found it: a sealed alcove behind the altar, carved with the Cruz family symbol, a candle wrapped in thorns.

 

My hands shook.

 

I pressed the USB Nico had given me against the small panel. A faint click.

 

The alcove opened.

 

Inside was a small wooden box, dark and polished, etched with coordinates and dates. I lifted the lid, heart hammering.

 

And inside… a ledger.

 

Names. Dates. Bank codes. And one name circled again and again in red ink:

 

Nicolo Romano.

 

I sank to the stone floor, staring at it. My hands trembled. My heart raced.

 

Why had Nico helped me find this?

 

The man who warned me. The man claiming to be my ally. The man my father had marked as a traitor.

 

I didn't know whether to scream or to run.

 

From the shadows outside, Nico watched through the scope of a long-range lens.

 

He saw the moment I found the ledger. The moment my face twisted with shock and betrayal.

 

Good.

 

Let her feel it. Let her question everything.

 

Because the truth was coming.

 

And when it arrived, there would be no mercy.

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