Chapter 8 - THE HEIRLOOM RING
I stared at the blank pages, the cruel poetry of Elias Romano’s final trick sinking in.
He had let his ambitious son, Lorenzo, tear the family apart for five years, searching for a ledger of power that never existed.
Elias hadn’t hidden blackmail material. He had hidden a test.
And Lorenzo had failed it spectacularly.
“It’s empty,” I said, walking back to Alessandro and handing him the book.
Alessandro looked at the blank pages. A dark, bitter laugh escaped his lips, quickly turning into a cough as pain radiated from his wound.
“My father was a bastard to the very end,” Alessandro muttered, tossing the book aside.
Answer One: The vault was a decoy to expose traitors within the family.
But we were still trapped inside it.
I pressed the blood-soaked apron harder against Alessandro’s stomach. “We need to get you a doctor. We need to get out of here.”
“The iron door locks from the outside,” Alessandro winced, leaning his head back against the cold stone. “Rocco is clearing the house. He will find us. We just have to wait.”
Open One: Would Rocco arrive before Alessandro bled to death?
Open Two: Would Lorenzo wake up?
I looked over at Lorenzo. He was lying entirely still, a pool of dark blood forming beneath his head.
I looked down at my left hand.
I was still clutching the small glass vial. The antidote for my father.
Alessandro saw me looking at it.
“Your father,” Alessandro said softly. “You saved the cure.”
“I almost dropped it when I hit him,” I confessed, a tear slipping down my cheek. “If it had broken…”
“It didn’t,” Alessandro said, reaching out with his bloodstained hand to gently wipe the tear from my face.
His touch was warm, surprisingly tender for a man who had just nearly beaten his brother to death.
“You are the bravest woman I have ever met, Clara Hayes,” Alessandro said, his voice thick with emotion.
I blushed, looking away. “I was terrified.”
“Courage is not the absence of fear,” Alessandro replied. “It is acting in spite of it. You acted. For me. For Sofia.”
Sofia crawled over to us, her white dress ruined with dust and dirt. She squeezed herself between me and her father, wrapping her arms around Alessandro’s neck.
“I love you, Daddy,” she whispered.
“I love you too, piccola,” Alessandro kissed the top of her head.
Suddenly, a loud, metallic scraping sound echoed through the room.
Lorenzo was moving.
Reversal: He wasn’t unconscious. He was faking it.
Before Alessandro or I could react, Lorenzo lunged forward.
He didn’t go for the gun. He didn’t go for the knife.
He grabbed my left wrist.
The wrist holding the glass vial.
With a sickening crack, Lorenzo twisted my arm backward.
I screamed in agony, my fingers instinctively opening.
The glass vial slipped from my grasp.
Time seemed to slow down.
I watched the small cylinder of glass fall toward the concrete floor.
It hit the stone.
It shattered into a hundred pieces.
The clear liquid splashed across the dirty floor, instantly soaking into the dust.
“No!” I shrieked, dropping to my knees, desperately trying to scoop the liquid up with my bare hands.
But it was gone.
The cure for my father’s poison. Destroyed.
Lorenzo laughed, a wet, gargling sound as he struggled to sit up against the pedestal.
“If I don’t win,” Lorenzo spat, blood covering his teeth, “nobody wins.”
Alessandro roared in fury. He pushed himself off the wall, ignoring his massive injuries, and grabbed Lorenzo by the throat, pinning him to the stone.
“Where is the rest of it?!” Alessandro demanded, his voice shaking the walls. “Tell me where the antidote is!”
“There is no more,” Lorenzo smiled through the choking grip. “That was the only batch. Victoria made sure of it. Her father will be dead by morning.”
I collapsed onto the floor, staring at the wet patch of concrete.
My father was going to die. I had failed him. I had survived the mafia, I had survived the gunfire, but I had lost the only thing that mattered.
I sobbed, burying my face in my hands.
“Clara,” a small voice said.
I didn’t look up. I couldn’t.
“Clara, look.”
I felt a tiny hand tugging on my ruined apron.
I slowly lifted my head.
Sofia was kneeling beside me.
In her small, dirty hands, she was holding something out to me.
Cliffhanger: It was a heavy, ornate gold ring. A family heirloom.
“When Mommy was sick,” Sofia whispered, her eyes wide, “she told me a secret. She told me to hide this if bad people ever came.”
I stared at the ring.
May you like
The top of the heavy gold band was hinged. It was a poison ring.
And hidden inside the small hollow compartment was a tiny, secondary glass capsule filled with clear liquid.
