Chapter 3 - The Darkest Secret
I stared at Marcus in absolute disbelief. "Why would the head of the Moretti family want a four-year-old child?" I demanded. Marcus grinned, exposing his blood-stained teeth. "Because of what her father hid before he died," he gasped. I did not wait for him to finish his sentence. I knocked him unconscious with the heavy grip of my pistol and sprinted into the tunnel. I caught up to Maria and Sofia near the rusty iron gate that led to the forest. The cold night air hit us as we pushed through the brush into the freezing rain. "We have to keep moving," I whispered, guiding them through the dense trees. My mind was racing with Marcus's terrifying words. "What did Leo hide before he died?" I asked Maria as we ran. Maria hesitated, clutching Sofia tightly against her chest. "Leo stole Vincent's master ledger," she confessed breathlessly. "It contains the account numbers for every illegal offshore bank the Moretti family uses." "Without that ledger, Moretti cannot access billions of dollars." I realized instantly why they had been hunting her. "Where is the ledger now?" I asked. "I do not know," Maria cried. "Leo hid it, and he only left one clue." "He encoded the location into a nursery rhyme he taught Sofia." I looked down at the little girl shivering in the rain. A four-year-old child was walking around with the key to a criminal empire in her head. We reached the edge of the highway where I kept an untraceable emergency vehicle hidden in a storage unit. I punched in the code and pulled up the heavy metal door. Inside was a reinforced black SUV fully stocked with cash and weapons. I strapped Sofia into the back seat and threw Maria the keys. "You drive," I told her, climbing into the passenger seat to keep my weapon ready. Maria sped onto the slick, rain-soaked highway. We drove in terrifying silence for twenty minutes. I constantly checked the rearview mirror for any sign of headlights. The road seemed completely deserted. Then, a massive tow truck suddenly pulled out from a side road without turning on its lights. It accelerated violently and rammed directly into the side of our vehicle.
