Page 26 of Beautiful Evidence

I study the shape of her mouth, the delicate rise of her cheek, and the tension that’s finally drained from her body. For a while, I let myself believe she’s safe here. That whatever storm waits for us can’t reach her in this moment. But one wrong choice, one wrong move and everything will crumble around her. It's why I have to go.

Before the sun fully rises, I slip out of bed, gather my clothes, dress in silence, and leave the apartment without waking her. By the time I reach the abandoned shipping yard, where the trail from the SIM card has led me to a rusted chain-link gate outside Luca Bernardi’s old research lab, it's almost midday. Before he was hired by the Ministry of Justice. The building is supposed to be shuttered, but a dim light flickers inside.

I push open the door very slowly and step into a mostly gutted workspace. Dust clings to every surface. Cabinets stand half-open and the air is stale with disuse. In the far corner, Luca is bent over a box of papers, stuffing files into a leather satchel. When I discovered the information in the SIM led here, I wondered why. But it makes sense if Vescari was trying to send a message to him. One that I will never deliver.

He looks up when he hears me. His face remains expressionless for a moment before he scowls. He doesn’t flinch or recoil, and he doesn’t bother to feign surprise. He simply straightens slowly, like he’s been expecting interference, and lets his hand rest deliberately on top of the box in front of him.

"Cleaning house?" I ask, keeping my tone even.

He zips the satchel closed with an exaggerated slowness. "They’re shutting down the lab for good. Thought I’d take my souvenirs."

I carefully circle as I ask him, "What have you been feeding thepolizia?" I'm not hopeful he will give me any real answers, but curiosity killed the cat.

He laughs—actually laughs. "They don’t need me to feed them anything. The 416-bis task force already has enough to burn every syndicate from here to Palermo."

My grip tightens. "If that were true, there would be a manhunt going and I would be in prison instead of here with you." His expression darkens further and he picks up his bag defensively, jerking it toward himself.

Before he can answer, a metallic clatter sounds outside. I step back into a shadowy place by the window, drawing my gun in one smooth motion. I angle toward the door just as it bursts open.

Inspector Elena Greco storms in, two plainclothes officers flanking her. She takes one look at me and pulls her weapon before I can think. I will not fire first and be tried for attacking an officer of the law, but I won't hesitate to defend myself.

Greco looks annoyed, but her men look terrified. They know who I am, by the looks of it, and the weaselly way Bernardi slithers out the door to his own escape only makes this ripe with questions.

"Put it down, Morelli! Now!" Greco points her gun at me but doesn't fire.

One of her men doesn’t wait, though. He fires, and the shot cracks past my ear and punches a hole in the wall behind me.

I duck and return fire once—just enough to make them scatter. The man dives to the floor following his buddy beside him, and Greco shouts again, but I’m already moving. I cut through the back hallway, shove through a rusted exit door, and disappear into the yard’s maze of shipping containers.

Gunfire explodes behind me as I run, the sound tearing through the warehouse like thunder. The two plainclothes officers shout to each other, their boots pounding after mine. I vault over a tipped cart and duck behind a support column as bullets chewinto the walls around me. Concrete dust showers down from the roofing overhead.

I catch my breath for half a second, then move again quickly with focus. I round the corner and hear them split—one looping left, the other trying to flank me. Greco’s voice cuts through the chaos, barking orders I don’t stop to decipher.

The back gate is rusted, but not locked. I slam it open with my shoulder and spill out of the shipping yard into an alleyway only blocks from my car. Sunlight flashes off the metal containers, disorienting me for just a second, but I keep moving, weaving between parked cars and listening for pursuit.

One of them fires again. The round hits a shipping container with a hollow clang just on the other side of the fence, but they can't get to me without going to the gate first. I don't stop. I dive between two cars, leap a broken pallet, and disappear down a side alley choked with weeds and dumpsters.

By the time they reach the edge of the yard, I’m gone.

Greco probably thought she was going to nail me the second she saw me, and she's likely very pissed that I got away. Her men won't hear the end of it.

But something fruitful came of that. Bernardi is scared stiff. He is boxing up any trace of old casefiles he's worked on because he knows we're not going to take this sitting down. Covering his ass is the only play he has since he doesn't have enough evidence to go full-bore with the investigation without Alessia.

The bad news is now he will lean on her harder, and I'm not sure if she can take it.

15

ALESSIA

The hum of the centrifuge blends with the soft tick of the wall clock, both keeping time in a room where it feels like everything has stopped. I lean over the workstation and label the third vial, double-checking the barcode before slotting it into the rack. The blood samples are from a more recent case—smaller, less politically charged—but my hands still move with care. Repetition is comfort. Procedure is safety.

I key in the parameters for a toxin panel and let the machine begin its cycle. While it runs, I turn to the freezer and retrieve an old sample, not part of any open report. Just something I’ve been holding off on. I log it unofficially, outside the system, and run a quick protein degradation test—not because it’s necessary, but because I want to see how well it’s held up.

The screen lights up with the initial results, displaying a clean molecular structure and only minor signs of degradation. The data is strong—consistent, intact, and suitable for full sequencing without requiring another extraction. I document the findings, write a brief note for my records, and file the reportmanually. Afterward, I back up the file to my encrypted drive, locking it away until I decide what to do next.

It’s not what I planned to do today, but it keeps my hands moving. And right now, with everything on my mind, it’s what I need it to do. I keep glancing at the profile from under Matteo’s fingernails, unable to stop myself. I already know it’s a familial match, but not knowing exactly who it belongs to has been eating at me. I keep wondering if it could be Uncle Emilio. If this whole time, I’ve been assuming one betrayal while missing another, the only way to be sure is to test it against my own blood.

I pull a fresh needle from the sterile tray and secure the tourniquet around my arm. My fingers tremble slightly as I disinfect the skin and slide the needle in. The blood fills the vial in a steady stream. It is bright and warm as it rises to the fill line, clearly and undeniably mine. I remove the tourniquet, press gauze to the puncture, and label the sample, but not with my own name.

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