Chapter 4 - The Shattered Crystal Chandelier
The dining room descended into absolute chaos.
Crystals shattered against the marble floor, exploding like shrapnel.
Robert’s men threw their hands over their faces, blinded and bleeding from the falling glass.
Robert stumbled backward, dropping his polished wooden cane.
That was all Luca needed.
Moving with the lethal speed that had made him the most feared man in Chicago, Luca didn't fire his gun.
He lunged forward and grabbed the nearest armed man by the throat, slamming him violently into the banquet table.
Silver plates and wine glasses shattered onto the floor.
Elena didn't scream. She didn't cower.
The seventy-six-year-old woman picked up a heavy silver carving fork from the table and drove it straight into the hand of the second man reaching for her.
The man howled in pain, dropping his rifle.
Luca spun around, delivering a brutal strike to the third man’s jaw, knocking him unconscious instantly.
The guests were screaming, scrambling under tables or fleeing through the kitchen doors.
Up on the balcony, I grabbed Noah’s hand.
“We have to run, sweetie,” I whispered urgently.
But as we turned to flee down the back hallway, a heavy hand grabbed my hair.
I screamed as I was yanked backward.
It was the fourth man. He had slipped away from the chandelier’s fall and run up the stairs.
He shoved the barrel of his rifle into my spine.
“Not another step,” the man growled.
Noah let out a terrified cry. “R-Rachel!”
“Let him go!” I shouted, struggling against the man’s grip.
Down below, the fighting stopped.
Luca stood amidst the broken glass, breathing heavily, his gun pointed at Robert, who was struggling to get back on his feet.
But when Luca heard Noah’s cry, he froze.
He looked up at the balcony.
When he saw the rifle pressed against my back, all the color drained from his face.
“Drop the gun, Luca,” Robert rasped, wiping blood from his cheek. “Or my man shoots the maid, and we take the boy anyway.”
Luca’s hand trembled.
He looked at me. Then at Noah.
“Daddy!” Noah cried.
“It’s okay, buddy,” Luca said, his voice shockingly calm. “Everything is going to be okay.”
Luca slowly lowered his gun.
He tossed it onto the marble floor.
It clattered across the room.
Robert smiled, straightening his suit.
“Very wise,” Robert said. He looked up at his man on the balcony. “Bring the boy down here. Leave the maid.”
The guard shoved me hard against the wall.
I hit my head against the plaster, my vision blurring.
The man grabbed Noah by the collar of his blue Easter suit.
Noah screamed, kicking his little black dress shoes against the man’s shins. “Let me g-go! I want my Daddy!”
“Stop fighting, kid,” the guard snarled, dragging him toward the stairs.
I forced myself up. My head was spinning, but I saw the photograph Noah had dropped on the floor.
The hidden picture.
I grabbed it and stumbled to the railing.
“Luca!” I screamed down to the dining room. “He’s not Anna’s father!”
Robert’s head snapped upward.
Luca frowned. “What?”
I held up the photograph.
“Anna wrote it on the back of this picture!” I shouted. “Robert isn't her biological father! He’s a syndicate boss. He adopted her to use her! He’s working with the Bellinis!”
Vanessa, who was still cowering by the table, gasped.
Robert’s face twisted into pure, unadulterated rage.
“Shut her up!” Robert roared at his guard.
The guard on the balcony raised his rifle toward me.
But the distraction cost him exactly one second.
And one second was all Noah needed.
The eight-year-old boy, terrified and trembling, did the bravest thing I had ever seen.
He sank his teeth directly into the guard’s wrist.
The man yelped in pain, loosening his grip just enough.
Noah broke free and scrambled behind me.
Before the guard could raise his weapon again, a deafening gunshot echoed through the mansion.
Not from Luca.
From the front doors.
The guard on the balcony clutched his chest, his eyes rolling back as he collapsed onto the stairs.
Everyone in the dining room turned.
Standing in the shattered doorway was a woman holding a smoking revolver.
She wore a long, tailored trench coat. Her dark hair was pulled back tightly.
And her face…
It was a face I recognized from every photograph in Noah’s bedroom.
Luca took a step backward, looking as though he had seen a ghost.
The gun slipped from Robert’s hand.
“It can’t be,” Robert whispered in horror.
Noah peeked out from behind my legs. His little eyes widened in absolute shock.
The woman lowered her revolver.
She looked directly at Luca, her eyes filled with tears.
“I told you not to trust him, Luca,” the woman said, her voice shaking with emotion.
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Elena let out a suffocated gasp and fell to her knees.
It was Anna.
