Chapter 6 - THE GHOST IN THE RAIN
Smoke billowed into the grand foyer, thick and smelling of sulfur.
The crystal chandeliers violently swayed, casting erratic, terrifying shadows across the dining room walls.
I screamed, throwing myself over Mia. We hit the marble floor hard, my body curling around hers to shield her from the flying glass and debris. Mia clung to me, her hands gripping my dress, her face buried in my chest.
She couldn’t hear the explosion, but she felt the shockwave. She was trembling uncontrollably.
“Marco!” Luca roared over the ringing in my ears.
Gunfire erupted outside, the sharp, terrifying crack of automatic weapons echoing through the estate.
Luca didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the back of my dress and hauled me to my feet, dragging me and Mia behind the massive, overturned oak dining table.
“Stay down!” Luca commanded, pulling a heavy black handgun from a holster at the small of his back.
My mother’s voice was still screaming from the burner phone, which had fallen to the floor near the table leg.
“Natalie! Natalie, answer me! Are you okay?!”
I crawled toward the phone, grabbing it with shaking hands. “Mom! We’re hiding! Luca is here!”
“Carlo is there,” my mother wept. “Oh god, I’m too late. Natalie, listen to me. Under the floorboards in your bedroom closet at home. There’s a lockbox. The key is in the lining of my winter coat. If anything happens to me, you take that box to the police.”
“Mom, stop talking like that!” I cried. “Where are you? We’ll come get you!”
“I love you, Natalie. Tell Mia I love her. Tell her I’m so sorry.”
The line went dead.
“Mom! Mom!” I screamed into the phone, but there was only silence.
Luca grabbed my shoulder, forcing me to look at him. His dark eyes were burning with an intensity that took my breath away.
“Natalie, look at me,” he ordered. “I am not going to let them touch you. Do you hear me? I am not going to let them touch her.”
I looked at Mia, who was watching us with wide, terrified eyes. She raised her trembling hands.
Who is shooting?
I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t tell her that the men outside were coming to kill her because of a night she couldn’t even remember.
Or could she?
I grabbed Mia’s hands. Mia, look at me. The drawing of the house with the blue roof. The one you drew for Dad.
Mia frowned, confused by the sudden change in topic. She nodded slowly.
Why did you draw a blue roof? Our house had a grey roof.
Mia’s hands shook as she signed back. I didn’t draw our house. I drew the house where Daddy went to sleep.
My blood ran cold.
What do you mean, went to sleep?
Mia squeezed her eyes shut, tears leaking down her cheeks. It was cold. It was raining so hard. Daddy hid me in the bushes. He told me to be quiet. Then the bad man came. He yelled at Daddy. Then there was a loud noise, and Daddy went to sleep in the mud. The house behind them had a blue roof.
I stopped breathing.
She remembered. For thirteen years, I thought she got sick from a random childhood infection. I thought the fever had taken her hearing.
But it was the freezing rain. She had laid in the freezing mud for hours, watching our father die, unable to make a sound.
“She remembers,” I whispered, looking up at Luca. “She saw Carlo Bellini kill my father.”
Luca’s face hardened into a mask of pure, lethal resolve.
“Then we make sure she survives to tell the story,” Luca said.
Footsteps crunched on the broken glass in the foyer. Heavy, deliberate boots.
Luca pushed me down, leveling his gun over the edge of the overturned table.
A figure walked through the smoke.
It wasn’t Carlo Bellini.
It was Vanessa.
She was covered in soot, her expensive engagement dress torn at the hem. She was bleeding from a cut on her forehead, and she was holding a heavy gold pocket watch in her hand.
“Luca!” Vanessa screamed, her voice cracking. “Don’t shoot! It’s me!”
Luca didn’t lower his weapon. “Give me one good reason not to put a bullet in you right now, Vanessa.”
Vanessa fell to her knees, raising her empty hands. The gold pocket watch dangled from her fingers.
“Because I know how to get them out,” she sobbed. “My uncle’s men have the perimeter surrounded. But there’s an old bootlegger tunnel beneath the wine cellar. It leads out to the cliffs. I can show you.”
“Why would you help us?” I yelled over the table. “You treated us like garbage!”
Vanessa looked at me, tears cutting through the soot on her face.
“I had to,” she wept. “Carlo had spies at the dinner. If he thought I cared about you, he would have killed me too. I’ve been trying to get the money together to buy your mother’s freedom for months.”
Luca stepped out from behind the table, his gun still aimed at her chest.
“And the watch?” Luca demanded.
Vanessa held it out, her hand trembling.
“It belonged to your father, Luca,” Vanessa whispered.
Luca froze.
He slowly lowered the gun, walking toward her. He snatched the heavy gold watch from her hand and popped open the latch.
I watched as Luca’s expression shattered.
Inside the lid, engraved in delicate, unmistakable handwriting, were the words:
To my beloved husband. With love, Maria.
My mother’s name.
Luca looked at me, his eyes wide with a horrified realization.
“Natalie,” Luca breathed, the color draining from his face. “My father didn’t order the hit on yours.”
Before he could finish the sentence, a deep, raspy chuckle echoed from the shadows of the foyer.
“No, he didn’t,” a voice said.
A man stepped out of the smoke. He was in his late sixties, impeccably dressed in a tailored suit, holding a silver-handled walking stick.
May you like
Carlo Bellini smiled, his eyes locking onto Mia.
“But he did pay me to do it.”
