Chapter 6 - THE SHATTERED CRYSTAL
The chandelier exploded into a thousand glittering shards.
Glass rained down on the dining table, plunging the room into near darkness.
Julian screamed, covering his face as sharp fragments cut into his expensive suit.
He blindly fired a shot toward the fridge.
The bullet buried itself into the stainless steel, inches from my head.
I dropped to the floor, clutching the USB drive to my chest.
Before Julian could aim again, a massive figure tackled him out of the shadows.
It was Luca.
The two men crashed into the marble floor, the handgun skittering away under a serving cart.
“Get them out of here!” Luca roared over the sound of the struggle.
Vanessa didn’t need to be told twice. She scooped up Lily and sprinted down the service hallway, sobbing into her daughter’s hair.
I crawled on my hands and knees, trying to find cover.
Julian was fighting dirty. He drove his knee into Luca’s ribs, then reached into his jacket and pulled out a tactical folding knife.
The blade gleamed in the dim emergency lighting.
“I should have killed you when you were a kid,” Julian hissed, slashing wildly at Luca’s chest.
Luca dodged, but the blade caught his forearm. Blood instantly soaked his white dress shirt.
Luca didn’t back down. He grabbed Julian’s wrist, twisting it with brutal force.
Julian cried out, dropping the knife.
Luca drove a heavy punch into Julian’s jaw, snapping his head back. Julian collapsed, completely unconscious.
The room went dead silent, save for the heavy breathing of the guards rushing in to secure the underboss.
Luca leaned against the wall, clutching his bleeding arm.
He looked exhausted. Defeated by the weight of thirty years of lies.
I slowly stood up, brushing glass off my uniform.
“Mr. Moretti,” I whispered.
He looked at me.
I walked over and handed him the black USB drive.
“I don’t know what’s on this,” I admitted. “I found it taped to Lily’s drawing this morning. I just used it to distract him.”
Luca took the drive.
He walked over to a laptop sitting on the grand piano, plugging it in.
His security chief, Marco, stood behind him, shining a flashlight on the screen.
The files opened immediately.
It wasn’t a ledger.
It was a series of audio recordings.
Luca clicked the first one.
A voice filled the room. A voice I hadn't heard clearly in over a year.
“If anything happens to Michael, Julian is the one pulling the strings. You have to protect the boy.”
I gasped.
It was my father’s voice.
Strong, clear, and perfectly lucid.
But the recording wasn’t from thirty years ago.
The date stamp on the file was from last Tuesday.
May you like
My father hadn’t had a stroke.
He was faking it.
