Chapter 8 - The Knock at the Gates
The phone slipped from my trembling fingers, clattering onto the marble floor.
“They’ve dispatched a hit squad to the mansion. They’re already at your gates.”
“Anna, what is it?” Luca demanded, instantly recognizing the terror paralyzing my face. He crossed the room in two strides, dropping to his knees before me.
“It was Vanessa,” I gasped, struggling to pull air into my lungs. “She’s alive. She called the Commission in New York, Luca. She told them you murdered Victor. She told them about my baby. They declared you rogue.”
Luca went completely still. The invincible Don of Chicago looked, for the very first time, utterly blindsided.
Before he could speak, Marco sprinted back into the grand foyer, his assault rifle raised, his face pale.
“Boss!” Marco yelled, pointing toward the heavy mahogany front doors. “We have heavily armed vehicles breaching the perimeter! Black Suburbans, no plates! It’s a Commission sanction squad!”
The blaring sirens of the estate’s security system erupted, a deafening, rhythmic wail that shook the dust from the chandeliers.
“How many?” Luca roared, pulling his Glock from his shoulder holster.
“At least fifty men, heavily armed,” Marco reported grimly. “They’ve surrounded the property. We have fifteen guards left standing after the shootout with Vanessa’s men. We’re hopelessly outnumbered.”
Luca’s jaw clenched so tightly I thought it might shatter. He looked at me, at my pregnant belly, and a fierce, primal desperation ignited in his dark eyes.
“They are not taking her,” Luca swore, his voice a lethal whisper.
He turned to Marco. “Lock down the mansion. Steel shutters on all windows. Fortify the grand foyer. We hold them at the doors.”
“Boss, with respect, that’s a suicide mission,” Marco argued, though he didn't lower his weapon. “We can’t hold off fifty Commission hitters. They’ll breach in ten minutes.”
“Then we buy ten minutes!” Luca shouted. “Move!”
Marco nodded, shouting orders into his radio as steel blast shutters began to loudly grind down over the massive windows of the mansion.
Luca grabbed my arm, hauling me gently but firmly to my feet.
“Listen to me, Anna,” Luca commanded, leading me rapidly toward the back of the house. “You are going to the panic room beneath my father’s study. It’s reinforced titanium. Not even C4 can breach it.”
“I’m not leaving you up here to die!” I sobbed, stumbling alongside him as gunfire erupted outside the mansion, the heavy thud of bullets hammering against the newly lowered steel shutters.
“You are carrying my nephew!” Luca yelled over the noise, stopping and grabbing my shoulders. His eyes were wild, desperate. “If the Commission takes this house, they will execute me. But if they find you, they will kill the baby to ensure my father’s bloodline ends with me. I am not letting Michael’s legacy die tonight!”
He pulled me into a fierce, desperate embrace, kissing the top of my head.
“I lost my brother,” Luca whispered fiercely into my hair. “I will not lose his family. Go to the panic room. Lock the door. Do not open it for anyone but me.”
Tears streamed down my face. I knew he was right, but the thought of hiding while the man who had protected me fought a hopeless battle broke my heart.
“Please survive,” I cried, clutching his blood-stained shirt.
“I always do,” Luca promised, offering a tight, grim smile.
He shoved me into the study, locked the door behind me, and sprinted back toward the foyer where the gunfire was intensifying.
I ran to the massive oak bookshelf, pulling the hidden lever Luca had shown me earlier. The shelf swung open, revealing the heavy titanium door of the panic room.
I scrambled inside, slamming the door shut and spinning the locking wheel until it clicked heavily into place.
The silence inside the panic room was absolute, insulated from the war raging above.
I collapsed onto the small cot in the corner, clutching my swollen belly, sobbing hysterically in the dark. I was alone. Michael was dead. Luca was likely going to die. My baby would be born in a steel box.
I sat there for what felt like hours, jumping at every muffled vibration that shook the ceiling.
Then, the vibrations stopped.
The gunfire ceased completely.
An eerie, terrifying silence settled over the mansion above me.
Who won?
I held my breath, staring at the heavy titanium door in the dim emergency lighting.
Suddenly, a loud, metallic CLANG echoed against the outside of the panic room door.
Someone was out there.
I backed away, grabbing a heavy metal flashlight from the emergency kit on the wall, wielding it like a club.
The digital keypad on the outside of the door began to beep.
Someone was entering the code.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
My heart stopped. Only Luca knew the code. But what if they had tortured it out of him?
The heavy locking wheel spun automatically with a loud clack, and the titanium door slowly swung outward.
I raised the flashlight, ready to swing at the first person who stepped through.
A figure stepped into the dim light of the panic room.
He wasn't wearing a suit. He wasn't holding a gun.
He was wearing a perfectly tailored, pristine white tuxedo, completely untouched by the blood and dirt of the battle outside. He had silver hair, a sharp, aristocratic face, and carried an elegant silver-tipped cane.
He looked at me with cold, calculating amusement.
“Put the flashlight down, Miss Mitchell,” the man said smoothly, his voice dripping with old money and absolute authority. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Who are you?” I demanded, keeping the flashlight raised, my hands shaking violently.
“My name is Don Salvatore,” the man smiled thinly. “I sit at the head of the Commission in New York.”
The head of the entire mafia.
“Where is Luca?” I cried, tears springing to my eyes. “What did you do to him?”
Salvatore sighed, leaning elegantly on his cane.
“Luca Moretti is currently kneeling in his ruined foyer, surrounded by my men,” Salvatore stated calmly. “He fought valiantly, I’ll admit. But one man cannot hold off an empire.”
He took a slow step into the panic room, his eyes dropping to my pregnant belly.
“Vanessa Bellini informed us of your... situation,” Salvatore continued, his tone turning clinical. “A bastard child, born to a dead Underboss, threatening the stability of the Chicago territory. The Commission cannot allow such loose ends.”
“He’s not a loose end!” I screamed, backing away. “He’s innocent! Please, I’ll take him and disappear! You’ll never see us again!”
“I’m afraid disappearance is not a luxury the Commission grants,” Salvatore said coldly.
He raised his hand, signaling someone in the hallway.
Two massive Commission enforcers stepped into the doorway. They weren't holding guns. They were holding medical bags.
“The child will be dealt with,” Salvatore ordered the men, his voice devoid of any human empathy. “Quickly. The mother is irrelevant afterward.”
I screamed, a primal, maternal shriek of pure terror, swinging the heavy flashlight wildly as the two men advanced on me.
“Don't touch me!” I sobbed, kicking frantically as one of the men grabbed my wrist, twisting it painfully until I dropped the weapon.
The other man opened a medical bag, pulling out a syringe filled with a clear liquid.
“Hold her down,” the man with the syringe grunted, moving toward my exposed arm.
I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting with every ounce of strength I had left, praying for a miracle that I knew wasn't coming.
But as the needle neared my skin, a voice echoed from the hallway.
“If that needle touches her, Salvatore,” a calm, deep voice stated, “I will detonate the C4 currently wired to the support pillars of this mansion, and bury us all under three tons of rubble.”
The enforcers froze.
Salvatore turned around, his elegant composure fracturing for a fraction of a second.
I opened my eyes, gasping for air.
Standing in the doorway, bleeding from a cut over his eye but holding a small, black detonator with a glowing red light, was Luca.
But he wasn't alone.
Standing right beside Luca, aiming an assault rifle directly at Don Salvatore’s head, was a man who was supposed to be dead.
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I stopped breathing. The world completely spun off its axis.
“Michael?” I whispered, the name tearing from my throat.
