Chapter 12 - THE FAMILY NAME
Thick, black smoke began to pour down the stone staircase into the crypt.
“They locked us in!” I screamed, coughing as the acrid fumes hit my lungs.
Luca sprinted up the stairs, throwing his shoulder against the heavy stone slab that concealed the entrance. It didn’t budge. Someone had dragged something incredibly heavy over the trapdoor.
“Help me!” Luca yelled.
I rushed up the stairs, placing my hands next to his. Together, we pushed with everything we had.
Nothing.
The heat radiating from the floorboards above was intense. The chapel was fully ablaze. Carmela hadn’t waited forty-eight hours. She had decided to burn the estate with us inside it tonight.
My mother collapsed at the bottom of the stairs, clutching her chest, gasping for the dwindling oxygen.
“Mom!” I cried, rushing back down to her. I pulled off my jacket and pressed it against her face to filter the smoke.
“Sarah,” Luca coughed, his eyes watering from the fumes. “The walls down here. When the estate was built, my grandfather used these tunnels to run bootleg liquor during Prohibition. There has to be another way out.”
I grabbed the flashlight and swept the beam across the brick walls.
Behind the four steel boxes of fake money, the brickwork looked different. The mortar was crumbling, old and brittle.
“There!” I pointed.
Luca grabbed the crowbar. He swung it like a baseball bat, smashing the heavy iron into the bricks.
CRACK.
The wall shuddered.
He swung again, fueled by pure adrenaline and desperation.
CRASH.
A section of the wall collapsed inward, revealing a dark, earthen tunnel that smelled of damp soil and river water.
“Go!” Luca ordered, grabbing my mother and practically carrying her through the hole.
We stumbled through the pitch-black tunnel, the roar of the fire fading behind us. The tunnel sloped downward for what felt like miles, the air slowly growing cooler and fresher.
Finally, we hit a rusted iron grate. Luca kicked it open, and we spilled out into the freezing night air.
We were on the muddy banks of the river that bordered the far east side of the estate.
I looked back up the hill. The night sky was glowing orange. The ancient stone chapel was an inferno, the flames licking the sky.
“We made it,” I gasped, falling to my knees in the mud.
My mother was coughing, but she was breathing clearly now.
Luca stood on the riverbank, staring up at the fire. His face was covered in soot, his expensive suit ruined.
He had lost his father’s fortune. He had lost his estate. The Commission would likely strip him of his title by morning when they found out he couldn't pay the debt.
“Luca,” I said softly, standing up and touching his arm. “I’m sorry.”
He looked at me. To my absolute shock, he wasn’t angry.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the broken silver pocket watch. He hadn't left it in the foyer. He had picked it up after Carmela dropped it.
“Carmela thought she burned my father’s confession,” Luca said, his voice eerily calm.
“She did,” I said. “She took the paper out of the watch.”
Luca shook his head.
“My father was a paranoid man. He didn’t just write a confession on a piece of paper that could be destroyed.”
Luca took the crowbar he was still holding and wedged it under the thick silver backing of the broken watch. With a sharp twist, he peeled the inner casing completely off.
Hidden beneath the casing, etched directly into the solid silver of the watch itself, were tiny, meticulously engraved words.
I leaned in, squinting in the moonlight.
Roberto Bellini poisoned me. Arthur Vance supplied the toxin. They act on orders from Chicago. Carmela seeks the throne.
My jaw dropped.
“Carmela didn’t just come to collect a debt,” Luca realized, his eyes burning with a triumphant fire. “She ordered the hit on my father twenty years ago. She used Roberto as her pawn so her hands would look clean.”
“She didn’t burn the proof,” I whispered. “Because she didn’t know the proof was carved into the metal.”
“Exactly,” Luca said.
He looked at the burning chapel, then turned to me.
“Carmela just tried to burn us alive to cover her tracks. But tomorrow morning, I am walking into the Commission meeting with this watch.”
“They’ll kill her,” my mother said softly.
“They’ll strip her of everything,” Luca corrected. “And by the laws of the Commission, all of Chicago’s assets will be transferred to the victim’s family as restitution.”
Luca looked at me, a fierce pride in his eyes.
“I don’t need the ten million in the crypt. Tomorrow, we take Chicago.”
The sirens began to wail in the distance. Fire trucks were finally arriving at the estate gates.
Luca turned to my mother.
“Mary. For thirty years, you cleaned the floors of a family that owed you everything. You protected my father’s secret. You protected my sister.”
He took my mother’s rough, calloused hand and kissed her knuckles.
“You will never bow to anyone again. From tomorrow on, you are the matriarch of the Moretti family.”
My mother wept, but this time, there was no fear in her tears. Only a lifetime of heavy burdens finally being lifted.
Luca looked at me.
“And you, Sarah,” he said, pulling me into a tight embrace. “Are you ready to stop running?”
May you like
I looked at the burning ruins of my past, then up at the brother I never knew I had.
“I’m a Moretti,” I said, my voice steady, ringing clear in the cold night air. “We don’t run.”
