Chapter 2 - The Crest of the Varrics
2 - 15
The silver medallion caught the nursery’s soft recessed lighting, casting a pale, cold gleam across Matteo Varric’s rugged face. He stared down at the small object resting in his palm as if it were a venomous snake about to strike. The engraving on its surface was intricate—a coiled viper entwined with a blossoming olive branch, the ancient heraldry of the Varric syndicate's founding bloodline, untouched and uncirculated outside the inner circle of the family's patriarchs.
"Where did you get that?" Matteo’s voice was barely a whisper, but it carried the terrifying weight of a loaded gun pressed against the base of the skull. He slowly stood up from his kneeling position, his dark eyes locking onto Liana with an accusation so fierce it made the air in the room feel scorching. "Only three medallions of this specific minting were ever forged. One was buried with my grandfather. One was lost in the Palermo harbor during the purge of ninety-eight. And the third... the third was locked inside my personal vault downstairs."
Liana did not flinch, though her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She shifted Nico slightly in her arms, ensuring the baby remained fast asleep and insulated from the sudden spike of tension in the room.
"I didn't put it there," Liana said steadily. "I have never been on the second floor of this mansion before tonight. I didn't even know this nursery existed until your guards escorted me up the grand staircase."
"Then how did you know it was there?" Matteo demanded, taking a slow, menacing step toward her. The space between them vanished until she could smell the expensive scotch and lingering cedarwood on his dark shirt. "How did a twenty-two-day-hired maid from the agency know that my son’s crib had a hollowed-out cavity holding a family relic that hasn't seen the light of day in twenty years?"
"Because," Liana said, her voice dropping into a quiet, haunting register that made Matteo’s advance stutter, "my baby had the twin of that medallion sewn into his hospital blanket the night he was born."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the grandfather clock down the hall seemed to hold its breath. Matteo stopped dead in his tracks, his dark brows drawing together in a sharp, uncomprehending frown.
"What did you say?"
"You heard me," Liana replied, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears that she stubbornly refused to let fall. "Twenty-two days ago, I gave birth to a healthy baby boy at St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital downtown. Four hours later, while I was recovering from the delivery, a nurse came into my room, checked my vitals, and told me to rest. When I woke up... my baby was gone. The crib was empty. The bassinet sheet was still warm, but my son had vanished into thin air. And left behind on my pillow was a scrap of gray linen and a promise that I would never see him again."
Matteo’s gaze dropped from her face down to the sleeping infant in her arms, then back to the silver medallion in his hand. The parallel lines of their nightmares were drawing together with terrifying mathematical precision.
"St. Jude’s," Matteo muttered, his mind racing through the underworld connections and hospital administration payoffs his syndicate maintained across the tri-state area. "That hospital is entirely funded by our shipping front. No one touches a patient in that maternity ward without explicit clearance from my capos."
"Then someone with a very high clearance gave it," Liana whispered.
Before Matteo could process the devastating implication of her words, a sharp, frantic knock rattled the heavy mahogany door of the nursery. Without waiting for permission, the door swung open, and Marco, Matteo’s most trusted capo and head of security, burst into the room, breathing hard, his suit jacket unbuttoned and his hand resting instinctively on the holster beneath his arm.
"Boss," Marco panted, his eyes darting from Matteo to Liana and the open cavity in the crib. "We’ve got a massive breach on the perimeter sensors. A team of unknown armed operatives just bypassed the western gate grid. They’re moving through the lower sculpture garden right now—and they’re carrying heavy breaching gear."
Matteo’s face went from shocked to lethal in the span of a heartbeat. All personal confusion vanished, replaced by the ice-cold ruthlessness of a mafia boss defending his bloodline.
He didn't ask questions. He didn't hesitate.
Matteo shoved the silver medallion into his pocket, drew his heavy 9mm sidearm from his shoulder holster with a smooth, practiced motion, and turned his blazing eyes toward Liana.
"Lock the nursery door from the inside," Matteo ordered, his voice ringing with absolute command. "Do not open it for anyone—not for my mother, not for the guards, not for me—unless I give the exact counter-code: Sotto la luna."
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"Where are you going?" Liana asked, clutching Nico tighter against her chest as the baby stirred restlessly at the sudden noise.
"To welcome our uninvited guests," Matteo said, a terrifying, humorless smile touching the corners of his mouth as he cocked the pistol. "And to find out who thinks they can steal from a Varric twice."
