Chapter 4 - THE ROSARY IN THE ASSASSIN’S HAND
I stared at the woman holding the shotgun.
The gray hair was exactly the same. The soft lines around her eyes were the same. But the cold, calculating expression on her face belonged to a stranger.
“Mom?” The word barely made it out of my throat.
She didn’t look at me. Her eyes were locked entirely on Luca.
“Put the gun on the floor, Luca,” my mother commanded, her voice steady and commanding. “Or the boy dies first.”
Luca didn’t move. He stood in front of Noah, shielding the child with his body.
“You’re Adrian’s inside woman,” Luca said, his voice laced with venom. “You planted your daughter in my house to spy on me.”
“I didn’t plant Sophie,” my mother said coldly. “Sophie got that job on her own. But when she did, I realized the universe was finally giving me the opportunity I’d been praying for.”
“Mom, stop!” I screamed, stepping out from behind Luca. “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be in the hospital! You had surgery!”
My mother finally looked at me. For a fraction of a second, a flicker of genuine sorrow crossed her face.
“I didn’t have surgery, Sophie,” she said softly. “I needed an excuse to disappear for a few days while Adrian finalized the takeover. I’m sorry I lied to you. But this is bigger than us.”
“Bigger than us?” I cried. “You helped kidnap an innocent man! You’re pointing a gun at a child!”
“That man’s father murdered your father, Sophie!” my mother shouted, her composure finally cracking.
The warehouse went dead silent.
I froze. “What?”
My mother reached into her pocket with her free hand. She pulled out a string of heavy, silver beads and tossed them onto the concrete floor.
They slid across the dust and stopped at my feet.
It was a silver rosary.
I recognized it instantly. It was the only thing I had left of my father. He had died in a car accident when I was three years old. Or so I had been told my entire life.
“Pick it up,” my mother ordered.
I knelt down, my hands trembling as I picked up the cold silver beads.
“Look at the back of the crucifix,” she said.
I turned the small silver cross over. Etched into the back of the metal was the exact same crest that had been on Thomas Reed’s watch.
The lion and the crown. The Moretti family crest.
“Your father wasn’t an insurance salesman, Sophie,” my mother said, her voice shaking with twenty-four years of suppressed rage. “He was a hitman for the Moretti family. He worked directly for Luca’s father.”
I looked at Luca. He was staring at the rosary, his face pale.
“I remember him,” Luca whispered. “Marcus Bennett.”
“Yes,” my mother spat. “Marcus Bennett. The man who did all your father’s dirty work. And when Marcus decided he wanted out, when he wanted to take his family and leave Chicago, your father didn’t let him resign. He ordered a hit. They ran his car off a bridge into the river.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks. My entire life had been a lie built on top of another lie.
“Adrian approached me three years ago,” my mother continued. “He told me who he was. He told me he wanted to destroy the empire that ruined both of our lives. I couldn’t say no.”
“So you helped him kidnap Thomas Reed?” Luca asked, his voice steadying.
“Thomas Reed is the man who drove the car that ran your father off the bridge, Sophie,” my mother said.
I stopped breathing.
I looked down at the little boy huddled in my mother’s coat. Thomas’s son.
“No,” Noah whimpered, crying into my apron. “My daddy isn’t a bad man.”
“Your daddy was a monster,” my mother said to the child, her voice terrifyingly cold.
She raised the shotgun again, aiming it directly at Luca’s head.
“Adrian wants you alive, Luca. But he didn’t say anything about the girl or the boy. Walk toward me.”
Luca slowly raised his hands, the gun dangling loosely from his fingers. He took a step forward.
“You’re right to hate my family, Mrs. Bennett,” Luca said calmly. “My father was a butcher. But Adrian isn’t trying to end the violence. He’s trying to inherit it.”
“I don’t care,” my mother said, her finger tightening on the trigger.
“And Vanessa’s child?” Luca asked, taking another slow step. “The hospital bracelet in your coat. Vanessa had a baby six years ago. Where is it?”
My mother’s eyes flickered. Just for a microsecond.
But that was all Luca needed.
He didn’t shoot her. Instead, he threw his heavy handgun directly at the industrial floodlight illuminating the room.
The glass shattered in an explosion of sparks.
The warehouse plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
My mother fired the shotgun blindly. The blast deafened me, tearing into the concrete wall behind us.
Strong arms grabbed my waist. Luca swept me and Noah off our feet, dragging us behind a massive stack of wooden shipping pallets just as my mother pumped the shotgun and fired again.
“Sophie!” my mother screamed into the dark. “Don’t protect him! He will destroy you just like his father destroyed me!”
We huddled in the darkness, the smell of gunpowder burning my lungs.
Noah was crying silently, his small hands clutching my shirt.
Luca leaned in close to my ear. His breath was warm against my freezing skin.
“Sophie,” he whispered. “In my jacket pocket. There’s a lighter.”
I reached into his soaking wet suit jacket with trembling fingers. I pulled out a heavy gold lighter.
“When I tell you,” Luca breathed, “throw it as far left as you can.”
I nodded in the dark.
“Now,” he whispered.
I flicked the lighter so the small flame ignited, and I threw it hard into the darkness.
The tiny fireball sailed across the room.
May you like
My mother turned toward the light and fired the shotgun.
In that exact moment, Luca lunged from our cover, tackling my mother to the concrete floor.
