Chapter 5 - THE DEAD FATHER WHO PULLED ALL THE STRINGS
The silence in the SUV was heavier than the smoke we had just escaped.
Rain lashed against the windshield.
Luca stared at the phone.
“You’re dead,” Luca whispered.
“I’m retired,” Vincenzo corrected smoothly. “There is a difference. I let you take over the family business because you were young, vicious, and hungry. But you were always too sentimental.”
“You kept my mother locked away for thirty years?” Luca’s voice trembled with a rage I had never heard before.
“She betrayed me, Luca,” Vincenzo said, his tone devoid of any fatherly warmth. “She found out I was having the union leaders killed. She packed her bags. She was taking you to the FBI.”
Vincenzo sighed.
“I couldn’t let her destroy our empire. But I couldn’t bear to kill her, either. So, I started the fire. I made sure she couldn’t talk, and I gave her to Marcus to hide.”
I felt physically sick.
A father. Doing that to his own wife. His own son.
“Why surface now?” Luca demanded.
“Because you were getting too close,” Vincenzo said. “Vanessa was supposed to marry you. Combine the Bellini and Moretti assets cleanly. But Vanessa is an idiot. She went looking for the old firefighter to tie up loose ends and exposed everything.”
Vincenzo’s voice dropped, becoming razor-sharp.
“Turn the car around, Luca.”
“No.”
“If you come to Wisconsin, I will put a bullet in your mother’s head myself.”
Luca didn’t flinch.
“Then I’ll be there to put one in yours.”
Luca ended the call.
He floored the accelerator. The SUV surged forward, hitting a hundred miles an hour on the dark, wet highway.
We drove in silence for an hour.
Patrick groaned in the back seat. He was losing a lot of blood.
I reached into the emergency kit in the glovebox, grabbed a pressure bandage, and climbed into the back to wrap his shoulder.
As I tightened the bandage, Patrick looked at me.
His eyes were cloudy, feverish.
“Emma,” he rasped.
“Shh, Mr. Donnelly. Save your strength.”
“No.” He grabbed my wrist with surprising force. “I know who you are.”
I froze.
“What?”
“I recognized you the moment you walked into the billiard room,” Patrick whispered. “You look exactly like her.”
“Like who?”
“Your mother. Sarah Sullivan.”
My breath caught in my throat.
My mother had disappeared when I was ten years old. The police said she abandoned us. I never believed it.
“How do you know my mother’s name?” I demanded, my heart hammering.
Patrick closed his eyes.
“She didn’t abandon you, Emma. She was a private trauma nurse. Vincenzo hired her.”
I stopped breathing.
“To take care of Elena,” Patrick continued. “Sarah was the only one who knew the truth. Ten years ago, she tried to smuggle a letter out to the police. Vincenzo found out.”
Tears blurred my vision.
“He killed her?” I choked out.
“No,” Patrick wheezed. “He locked her in the Wisconsin estate. Right next to Elena. To ensure she never spoke a word.”
I fell back against the seat.
My mother was alive.
She had been a prisoner for eighteen years.
Luca looked at me through the rearview mirror. His eyes were entirely different now. They weren't the eyes of a boss looking at a housekeeper.
They were the eyes of a man who realized we were fighting the exact same war.
“Hold on,” Luca said softly.
We tore off the highway exit, speeding down a dark, winding forest road.
The Bellini summer estate loomed at the end of the gravel driveway.
It wasn’t a house. It was a fortress.
High concrete walls. Iron gates. Armed guards patrolling the perimeter with dogs.
Luca didn’t slow down.
“Brace yourselves!” Luca yelled.
He rammed the heavy armored SUV directly into the iron gates.
Metal shrieked as the gates burst open.
Guards opened fire, bullets pinging off our bulletproof glass.
Luca spun the wheel, slamming the SUV into two of the guards, sending them flying into the mud.
He threw the car into park and kicked his door open, firing his shotgun before his feet even hit the ground.
“Emma, stay behind me!” Luca ordered.
We rushed the front doors.
Luca blew the locks off with a single blast.
We stepped into the grand foyer.
It was eerily quiet.
Too quiet.
At the top of the grand staircase stood Vanessa Bellini.
She wasn’t holding a gun.
She was holding a small silver remote.
“I wouldn’t take another step, Luca,” Vanessa smiled.
Behind her, thick metal shutters slammed down over all the windows and doors.
We were locked inside.
“My father left ten minutes ago with your mother,” Vanessa said, her smile widening.
She pressed a button on the remote.
A glass wall in the adjacent living room illuminated.
Behind the reinforced glass, a frail woman with graying hair was chained to a heavy radiator.
I screamed.
It was my mother.
“Say goodbye, Emma,” Vanessa sneered.
She pressed a second button.
May you like
Thick, yellow gas began pouring into the glass room from the ceiling vents.
TITLE: THE GLASS TOMB AND THE IRON POKER
