They Took the Bloodied Necklace from My Wife’s Bed, but One Call in the Morning Made the Closest Person to Me Go Pale

At six twelve in the morning I woke up and found only cold silk beside me. Camila’s place was empty. One curl of her hair had remained on the pillow, while on the white marble nightstand beside the bed, her grandmother’s silver necklace had been broken in half.

The necklace had a small copper-colored medallion, inside which was a photograph of Camila from childhood. She never took it off. Not before sleep, not during a shower, not even when she once fell into a Wisconsin lake and I barely pulled her out of the water, laughing.

Now dark stains could be seen on the chain.

Blood.

“Camila?” I called.

There was no answer.

In twenty seconds I was standing barefoot on the floor. Thirty seconds later I was holding a cream-colored letter whose corner was stained with blood.

“Your walls are expensive, Leon. Your guards are loyal. And your cameras never blink. But we still entered your bedroom and took the only thing you cannot replace. Wait for instructions. Do not contact anyone.”

There was no signature below.

I read the letter three times. Each time the same picture appeared before me: Camila frightened, Camila calling me, blood on Camila’s wrist.

“No,” I said quietly.

Then I grabbed the phone.

“Boss?” Carmine Bell answered me immediately.

“Lock down the building. Every door, elevator, garage, and service exit. Let no one leave.”

“What happened?”

“They took Camila.”

Silence fell over the line.

“I’m coming upstairs,” Carmine said.

I hung up and rushed to the wardrobe. Camila’s red apron still hung on its hook. A small wooden spoon lay in the pocket, with a white trace of flour remaining on it. I touched it with my fingers and felt such cold in my heart, as if I had found a window open.

I met Camila two years ago, in her small bakery. A man did not like the price of a cake and was shouting.

“Do you know who I am?” he threatened.

Camila put her hands on the counter.

“No, but I know who I am. I am the woman holding your daughter’s birthday cake. So either we both behave like adults, or I will eat the dragon alone.”

I laughed.

Camila looked at me.

“Is it funny?”

“A little.”

“Then buy something.”

That day I bought a pastry. I went the next day too. And the third day too.

She knew who I was. The whole South knew that I controlled Chicago’s nighttime business and that saying my name made some people forget to hold the glass in their hand.

But Camila was never afraid.

“Are you inviting me on a date or calling me to a meeting?” she asked the first time.

“On a date.”

“Do I have the right to refuse?”

“Of course.”

“Then I agree.”

Now she was no longer in my house.

Carmine and Daniel Rossi came in seven minutes later. Silver hair showed at Carmine’s temples, while Daniel’s fists were clenched as if he had already started fighting the wall.

Carmine read the letter.

“They mentioned the old river terminals.”

“It is too obvious,” I said.

“Then it is a trap?”

“They entered through coded elevators, cameras, and live security. They could not have done it from outside. Someone inside helped them.”

Daniel looked at the necklace.

“There is a traitor among us.”

“No,” I replied. “There are several traitors.”

In the security room we checked the camera recordings. At three seventeen in the morning, the corridor camera repeated footage seven minutes old. Neither a door opened nor a person appeared. Time simply disappeared.

Carmine pressed a finger to the screen.

“It was inserted from the building’s server.”

“Who had access?”

She opened the list and suddenly stopped.

“Only four people.”

“Read it.”

Carmine turned toward me. Her face was pale.

“You, me, Daniel… and Victor Kane.”

The air in the room grew heavy.

Victor Kane was the man who had called me “son” for twenty years. He taught me my first deal, defeated my first enemy, and put a hand on my shoulder after my father’s funeral when he told me: “Now I will protect you.”

The telephone rang.

It was an unknown number.

“Answer it,” Carmine said quietly.

I pressed the answer button.

On the other side I heard Camila breathing.

Then a man’s voice sounded.

“Son, if you want to see your wife alive, go exactly to the place where I first called you that…”

The voice fell silent. I reached toward the folder that Carmine had placed on the table…

…on the folder cover was the address of the old river terminal.

“Do not go alone,” Carmine told me.

“If anyone follows me, they will kill Camila.”

“This may be exactly what they are waiting for.”

“I know.”

At seven in the morning I arrived at the terminal. Snow was falling so heavily that footprints on the asphalt disappeared immediately. I touched the rusty bell hanging in the warehouse door and heard exactly the sound I remembered from twenty years ago.

Victor’s voice.

“Come in, son.”

Camila was sitting on a chair. Her hands were tied, but there was no fear on her face. The necklace was no longer around her neck. In its place a small black ribbon was tied.

“Leon, do not come closer!” she shouted.

My gaze moved to her wrist. The blood had only been a superficial scratch.

Victor came out of the shadows.

“Twenty years have passed,” he said. “Now it is time for you to learn the truth.”

“If you did anything to her, I will not let you leave alive.”

He smiled bitterly.

“You still speak the way I taught you.”

Victor placed a small recorder on the table.

“Listen to the end. After this Camila will tell you why you should fear not me, but your own family name…”

He pressed the recorder’s button. The voice of my dead father sounded in the room…

…a hoarse voice from years ago spread from the recorder.

“If he is hearing this, then he already knows that Leon is my son. Not your adopted boy, Victor. My son.”

My breath caught.

Camila lowered her eyes. Victor raised his head as if he had been waiting twenty years to hear this one sentence.

“Turn it off,” I said.

“No, Leon,” Camila answered. “Listen to it to the end.”

My father’s voice trembled in the recorder.

“Victor knows that my death will not be an accident. He knows where the book of accounts is and who the city lands belong to. If I die, tell Leon that he is my heir. Do not let Victor turn the boy into his weapon.”

The recorder stopped.

I looked at Victor.

“You knew?”

“Not at first,” he said. “Then I found out everything.”

“Did you kill my father?”

Victor lowered his eyes.

“I hastened his death.”

Camila put strength into her tied hands.

“That is why you took me? So that Leon would learn the truth?”

“You found the documents,” Victor told her. “The memory card hidden in your grandmother’s medallion. You knew that Leon’s father had not betrayed anyone. Victor betrayed him.”

My gaze moved to the necklace.

“Open the medallion,” Camila said. “There was a card inside. I hid it in the seam of my dress that morning, before anyone came in.”

Victor lost his composure for the first time.

“Camila, do not make me…”

“What will you do? Frighten me again? You only scratched my hand with blood so that Leon would think something more serious had happened. You always ruled him through fear.”

I took one step.

“Where is the card?”

Camila looked into my eyes.

“With the man Victor expects least.”

At that moment the sound of tires came from outside the warehouse. The door opened and Carmine rushed in with two police officers.

Victor moved his hand toward his pocket.

“Do not take out the weapon!” Carmine shouted.

Victor stopped.

The police officer put handcuffs on him, but he still looked toward me.

“You have no idea what you will open if you read that card,” he said.

“Now I am no longer afraid of you.”

Carmine held out her phone to me.

“This call just came in. The card is safe. But it contained not only the record of your father’s death.”

One photograph was visible on the screen: our penthouse bedroom, photographed one hour before the kidnapping.

On the back of the photograph was written: “The third participant is still in the house.”

At that same moment Daniel called me.

“Leon,” he said, “someone dead was found beside Carmine’s car. He had your house’s second key in his pocket…”

And the most frightening thing was that Camila’s missing medallion was no longer in front of me—Victor had quietly hidden it before the handcuffs…