The handle turned slowly.
Elena pressed a finger against her lips.
Vincent reached for the weapon hidden beneath his jacket.
The door opened two inches.
A man looked inside.
Nothing.
He closed it.
Footsteps moved away.
Vincent exhaled quietly.
“What file?” he whispered.
Elena looked at him.
“Your father left something behind.”
Vincent’s expression changed.
“My father?”
“He kept records before he died.”
“What records?”
“Everything.”
Elena explained that years earlier, Vincent’s father had secretly documented payments, illegal deals, betrayals, and the names of powerful people who had helped build the Torino organization.
Vincent had never known.
His father had apparently feared that someone would eventually try to destroy the family from within.
The file had disappeared twenty years ago.
Until three weeks earlier.
Elena had found a hidden message inside an old book in the mansion library.
It contained one sentence:
THE TRUTH IS UNDER THE HOUSE.
Vincent stared at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know whom to trust.”
“And now?”
She looked directly at him.
“Now I know.”
Suddenly, Marcus shouted from the bedroom.
“Search the closet!”
Elena grabbed Vincent’s hand.
“There is another way out.”
She moved a row of suits aside, revealing a narrow wooden panel.
Vincent stared at it.
“I’ve lived here twenty years.”
“I know.”
She pushed the panel.
A hidden passage opened.
They slipped inside just before the closet door flew open.
The passage was dark and narrow.
Vincent followed Elena down a staircase.
At the bottom, she stopped beside an old stone wall.
“There.”
She pointed to a metal door.
Vincent recognized it.
His father had forbidden anyone from entering this section of the basement.
He had always assumed it was an old wine cellar.
Elena pulled a key from her pocket.
Vincent stared at it.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your father gave it to me.”
Vincent’s eyes widened.
“My father died fifteen years ago.”
Elena nodded.
“I know.”
She unlocked the door.
Inside was a room filled with boxes.
And on the center table sat a single black folder.
Vincent walked toward it.
On the cover were two words:
VINCENT TORINO.
PART 3 — The Truth About His Father
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