Page 106 of Blue in the Deep Blue Sea

“This is all your fault!”

“No,” I whispered, taking one slow step towards him. “No, Gianni.” I sniffed. “It’s me… yoursorella.”

Tears slipped down my cheeks as I moved closer. The barrel stayed fixed between my eyes.

“Remember?” My voice trembled. “You promised that when you came back, you’d take us to the movies.” I swallowed another sob. “Just you and yoursorella.”

He sniffed. His head twitched sharply to the right.

His eyes were empty. There was no shine left in them.

“I see you,” I whispered. “And I’m here.”

Slowly, carefully, I wrapped my hand around the gun. He didn’t resist. I eased it from his grip and tossed it aside.

“Sorella,” he cried, saliva spilling from his mouth as he collapsed into my chest.

“Shhh.” I stroked the back of his head, my palm resting gently against his hair.

Oliver came to my side and carefully pulled him back, trying to ease us apart.

“We have to go,” he said, prying his hands away from me. “You have to let her go, Gianni.”

But he only held me tighter until Oliver pulled me away completely and shoved me behind his back.

“It’s over.”

Andrea Bianchi, who had stayed composed until now, snapped.

“It’s not over until I say so.”

He picked the gun up from the ground and pointed it back at us.

“Luca,” he called to the blond man leaning against the wall with a cigarette between his fingers, “tie them up and drag them inside. We’ll leave them here for Moretti to find. He’ll be happy to see the son of the woman who stole twenty billion dollars’ worth of paintings from him.”

All this time, we’d believed the gold was some lost treasure Gianni had gone to find. We’d spun our own theories about what ship had sunk and how he’d recover it. But all along, it was never gold. It was drugs.

They dragged us inside, forced us into chairs, and tied up Oliver first, then me, placing us side by side next to the bed. Gianni was outside with Lorenzo. I could have sworn I heard him sniff, and deep down I knew those weren’t tears.

Luca tightened the last knot around my wrists, but I noticed it was loose. He looked at me, then winked. As if he’d left it that way on purpose.

He turned to Andrea.

“Boss, what about the treasure?” he asked. “You mentioned on the boat that we were supposed to pick that up too.”

The old man scoffed, sitting down on the bed and waving a dismissive hand.

“There was never any treasure. Henry and I found the map a long time ago. We even hired divers to look for the ship from 1809, but all we found were amphorae full of oil and wine.” He shook his head. “So we used it to smuggle art and drugs instead. When the police started closing in, we had to invent the whole story about the lost gold and send Gianni off to search for it. We needed this deal with Moretti if we wanted to get away from all of it. The treasure was drugs all along. We only called it gold because Lorenzo’s phone was bugged last month.”

Oliver looked at me, and I looked back.

It had all been a lie.

A story they wanted us to believe so they could get away with everything. A story that never quite fit, because it was never meant to. Now, piece by piece, it was finally coming together. Even the paintings from his mum. They still hadn’t realized they were hidden inside the scrolls beneath the very bed the old man was sitting on.

Only a few questions remained. About my dad and his mum.

Luca glanced towards us. “What about them?”