Chapter 7 - THE ENGRAVING ON THE GOLD
“Mommy!” Leo screamed, struggling against the massive hand gripping his small shoulder.
Gianna dropped the empty gun. Her cold, calculating demeanor shattered the second she saw her son.
“Leo!” she cried, lunging forward, but Daniel caught her around the waist, pulling her behind a massive stone pillar as Marco’s men raised their rifles.
We were completely trapped in the terminal. Luca pushed me down behind the row of metal storage lockers. Bullets pinged off the steel above our heads, showering us with sparks and chips of concrete.
Answer one: Daniel had secretly disarmed Gianna, proving he wasn't entirely a coward, but Marco had actually tracked down Leo’s real location.
Open two: How did Marco find Leo? And how could we possibly escape four heavily armed hitmen without a weapon?
“You thought you were clever, Gianna?” Marco’s voice echoed through the cavernous station. “You thought you could hide the boy at the Plaza Hotel? Your stupid nanny talks too much when you offer her ten thousand dollars.”
Gianna was weeping uncontrollably behind the pillar. The mastermind who had orchestrated a twenty-year cover-up was reduced to a begging mother. “Please, Marco! Take the letter! Take the empire! Just let my baby go!”
“I intend to take it all, sweetheart,” Marco laughed. “But I can't leave witnesses. Luca, bring me the box! Or I shoot the kid right here!”
Luca looked at me. His arm was still bleeding badly, his face pale, but his eyes were burning with a desperate intensity.
He looked down at the wooden heirloom box. He took the pocket watch and the confession letter and shoved them into his jacket pocket.
Then, he did something I didn't expect. He picked up Gianna’s diamond necklace from the box.
“Emma,” Luca whispered, his face inches from mine. “When I step out, I need you to run to the breaker box on the wall behind you. Pull the master switch. Cut the lights.”
“Sir, they’ll shoot you,” I panicked, gripping his good arm.
“Do it,” he commanded, pressing the wooden box into my hands.
Luca stood up, stepping out from behind the lockers, his hands raised in surrender.
“Hold your fire!” Marco barked to his men.
Luca walked slowly toward the center of the terminal. “I have the box, Marco. Let the boy walk toward his mother.”
Marco smirked. “Toss it over here.”
“The boy first.”
Marco shoved little Leo forward. The boy stumbled, crying, and ran as fast as his little legs could carry him toward the pillar where Gianna and Daniel were hiding. Gianna pulled him into her arms, sobbing hysterically.
The moment Leo was safe, a violent reversal occurred.
Luca didn't throw the box.
He threw Gianna’s diamond necklace.
He hurled it directly at the massive, glass-encased chandelier hanging in the center of the terminal. The heavy diamonds struck the glass with a loud CRASH, shattering the bulbs and raining shards of glass down onto Marco’s men.
“NOW, EMMA!” Luca roared.
I slammed my fist down on the heavy red master breaker switch.
The entire train station plunged into pitch blackness.
Marco’s men fired blindly into the dark, the muzzle flashes illuminating the terminal in strobe-light bursts of terror.
I heard the sickening sound of flesh hitting bone. Luca, despite being wounded, was a highly trained fighter. Moving in the dark, he took down the closest guard with a brutal strike to the throat.
“Get them!” Marco screamed, firing his revolver randomly.
I crawled along the floor, clutching the empty wooden box, terrified a stray bullet would find me. I bumped into someone. I almost screamed, but a hand clamped over my mouth.
It was Daniel.
“Emma, keep moving toward the service exit,” Daniel whispered frantically. He had Leo tucked under his arm, and Gianna was right behind him.
We scrambled toward the heavy metal doors at the back of the terminal.
Suddenly, the emergency backup lights flickered on, casting a dim, eerie red glow over the station.
We were exposed.
Marco stood thirty feet away. He saw us. He raised his revolver, aiming directly at Gianna’s back.
“Say hi to your mother in hell, Gianna,” Marco snarled.
He pulled the trigger.
BANG.
Gianna screamed, but she didn't fall.
Someone else did.
I watched in horror as Daniel, the man who had been called a coward all night, threw his body in front of his wife and son.
The bullet struck Daniel squarely in the chest. He collapsed onto the cold tile floor, gasping for air.
“No!” Gianna shrieked, dropping to her knees beside him.
Marco smiled, cocking the hammer for a second shot.
But he never got the chance.
Out of the shadows, a heavy steel garbage can slammed into Marco’s back, knocking him to the floor. Luca stood over his uncle, grabbing the revolver and pressing it against Marco’s temple.
“It’s over, Uncle,” Luca growled.
The remaining guards, seeing their boss pinned with a gun to his head, slowly lowered their rifles.
I rushed to Daniel. Gianna was holding his head, her burned hands covered in his blood.
“Daniel, stay with me,” she sobbed, pressing her hands against the gaping wound in his chest. “Why did you do that? You hate me!”
Daniel looked up at her, a sad, bloody smile on his lips.
“I never hated you, Gigi,” he whispered, using his old pet name for her. “I hated what this family made you. I just wanted my wife back.”
He closed his eyes, his breathing growing dangerously shallow.
Sirens wailed in the distance. The police were finally arriving.
Luca hauled Marco to his feet, keeping the gun pressed to his head. He looked at Gianna, who was weeping over her dying husband.
“Gianna,” Luca said firmly.
She looked up, her face streaked with mascara and blood.
“You have five minutes before the cops swarm this building,” Luca said. “Take your son and disappear. If I ever see you in Chicago again, I will hand this confession letter to the Commission myself.”
Gianna looked at her brother. She looked at the blood on her hands. The empire she had murdered her own mother for no longer mattered.
She grabbed Leo’s hand and ran out the service doors into the night, leaving Daniel bleeding on the floor.
I knelt beside Daniel, applying pressure to his wound as the police burst through the front doors.
“Drop the weapon!” officers shouted, aiming their guns at Luca.
Luca calmly dropped Marco’s revolver and raised his hands.
“Emma,” Luca said softly, looking down at me as the police rushed to handcuff his uncle.
“Yes, sir?” I whispered, crying.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the old pocket watch. He dropped it onto the floor next to me.
“Look at the back of the watch,” he said.
I picked it up. Through my tears, I turned the heavy silver timepiece over.
There, engraved in the gold plating, were the initials: V.B.
My breath caught.
Vanessa Bellini.
The watch didn't belong to Luca’s father. It belonged to Vanessa.
And inside the empty heirloom box on my lap, my fingers brushed against a small, hidden compartment I hadn't noticed before.
I popped it open.
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Inside was a simple, wooden rosary.
And a handwritten note that read: I survived. Meet me at the cathedral.
