Chapter 5 - The Iron Wrench
~1000 words
The flashlight beam trembled wildly as Luca’s hand dropped to his side.
The words echoed in the cold, cavernous storage unit, crashing into my reality like a runaway train.
Clara Moretti. Luca’s cousin.
“No,” I stammered, shaking my head so hard my wet hair whipped across my face. I backed away, pressing my spine against the cold, corrugated metal wall of the unit. “No, you’re lying. Thomas Bennett is my father. He fixed heaters for thirty-six years. He read me bedtime stories. My mother died of cancer four years ago. You’re lying!”
“He’s not lying, Claire,” Luca said softly, his voice thick with a devastating tenderness I had never heard him use before.
He looked at me, truly looking at me, and I saw the recognition click behind his dark eyes. The shape of my jaw, the exact shade of my dark hair. The family resemblance that had been hidden in plain sight beneath a maid’s uniform for a year.
“Thomas Bennett was a good man,” Carlo Bellini continued gently, leaning on his cane. “He used the fifty thousand Teresa gave him to pay off his medical debts, and he took you in as his own. He protected you. But Vanessa found out a year ago when she hired a private investigator to audit the Moretti accounts before the wedding.”
Carlo sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. “When Vanessa realized the true heir to the Moretti fortune was working as a maid in her own house, she orchestrated this entire nightmare. She was going to kill Teresa on the swing today, and she was going to have you killed tonight.”
My heart stopped completely.
“Tonight?” I gasped, panic seizing my throat. “My father... my son! Leo is at my father’s apartment!”
“Get in the truck!” Luca roared, his protective instincts violently overriding his shock.
He grabbed my arm and hauled me toward the armored SUV. Carlo’s men parted instantly, allowing us through.
“Carlo!” Luca shouted over the roaring rain as he threw the driver’s side door open. “If Vanessa’s men touch one hair on that little boy’s head, the peace treaty is dead! I will burn your family to ash!”
“I’m coming with you!” Carlo yelled back, climbing into his own vehicle. “She is no daughter of mine anymore!”
Luca drove like a madman. The heavy SUV tore through the flooded city streets, running red lights, the engine screaming as he pushed it past eighty miles an hour.
I sat in the passenger seat, my hands trembling uncontrollably, tears streaming down my face. My father. My sweet, retired, ailing father, and my innocent five-year-old boy.
If Vanessa sent the nurse in the blue coat—or worse, a hit squad—they wouldn't stand a chance.
“Call him,” Luca ordered, his eyes fixed fiercely on the road.
I fumbled for my cheap cell phone with my bandaged hand and dialed my father’s number.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
“Hello?”
It wasn't my father’s voice.
It was a deep, rough, unfamiliar voice.
“Who is this?!” I screamed into the phone. “Where is my son?!”
“Claire,” the voice chuckled darkly. “Vanessa sends her regards. The old man put up a good fight for a guy with a bad heart. But don't worry, the kid is watching cartoons in the bedroom.”
“If you touch him, I will kill you!” I sobbed, pure, primal rage igniting in my chest.
“You have ten minutes to get to the apartment with the original deed to the estate, or I burn the place down with them inside,” the man threatened.
The line went dead.
“He’s there,” I choked out, dropping the phone. “He hurt my dad. He has Leo.”
Luca didn't say a word. He just slammed his foot harder on the gas pedal.
When we skidded to a halt outside my father’s rundown brick apartment building on the east side, Luca was already drawing his weapon.
“Stay behind me,” he commanded, kicking the SUV door open.
We sprinted up the three flights of concrete stairs. The door to apartment 3B was splintered open, hanging precariously on its hinges.
Luca went in first, sweeping the small living room with his pistol.
I rushed in right behind him.
The tiny apartment was a disaster. The coffee table was smashed, lamps shattered.
And lying on the cheap linoleum kitchen floor was my father.
“Dad!” I shrieked, dropping to my knees beside him, ignoring the agonizing flare of pain in my sprained ankle.
Thomas Bennett was bleeding from a severe gash on his forehead, his breathing shallow, but he was alive. He groaned, his eyes fluttering open when I squeezed his hand.
“Claire-bear,” he rasped, offering a weak, bloody smile. “I tried... I tried to stop him.”
“You did good, Dad,” I sobbed, pressing a kitchen towel to his head. “You did so good. Where is Leo?”
“In the bedroom,” a cold voice sneered from the hallway.
A massive, tattooed hitman stepped out of the shadows, holding a suppressed pistol aimed directly at my father’s head. But what made my blood run cold was the object dangling from his other hand.
He was holding a heavy, ornate silver rosary.
The Moretti family crest was carved into the silver cross.
He wasn't one of Vanessa’s men. He was one of Luca’s own trusted guards. A traitor from inside our own house.
“Drop the gun, boss,” the traitor smiled at Luca. “Or I put a bullet in the old man, and then I go finish the kid.”
Luca’s jaw clenched. He looked at the gun pointed at the man who had raised me, then slowly, agonizingly, lowered his weapon, dropping it onto the linoleum.
“Good choice,” the traitor laughed. “Vanessa pays triple what you do, Luca. She promised me a captain's chair once she takes over.”
The man stepped closer, keeping the gun trained on my father, raising his foot to kick Luca’s discarded weapon out of the way.
But he made a fatal mistake.
He didn't look at me.
He didn't realize that I was kneeling right next to my father’s open metal toolbox.
I didn't think about being a maid. I didn't think about the pain in my ankle or the stitches in my hand. I thought about my five-year-old son crying in the next room.
I reached into the toolbox, my fingers wrapping around the cold, heavy steel of my father’s massive, solid iron pipe wrench.
With a guttural scream of pure rage, I swung the heavy iron wrench upward with every ounce of strength in my body.
The heavy steel smashed directly into the traitor’s kneecap with a sickening, wet crunch.
The man howled in agony, his leg buckling instantly. His finger jerked on the trigger, firing a silenced shot wildly into the ceiling.
Before he could recover, Luca lunged forward like a striking viper.
He drove his fist into the man’s throat, snatching his pistol out of the air before he even hit the ground. Luca pressed the barrel directly against the traitor’s forehead.
“Don't move,” Luca snarled, his eyes burning with absolute, lethal fury.
I dropped the wrench, scrambling frantically down the hallway to my bedroom.
I threw the door open.
Leo was huddled in the corner of the closet, clutching his favorite stuffed bear, trembling like a leaf.
“Mommy!” Leo cried, running into my arms.
I collapsed onto the floor, pulling his small, warm body tightly against my chest, sobbing into his hair. “I got you, baby. Mommy’s got you.”
We were safe.
But as I held my son, Luca walked into the bedroom, holding the silver rosary the traitor had dropped.
His face was completely pale.
“Claire,” Luca whispered, staring at the rosary. “This doesn't belong to the guard.”
He turned the silver cross over.
Engraved on the back were the initials: V. B.
“It belongs to Vanessa,” Luca said, his voice trembling with a chilling realization. “And it’s hollow.”
He twisted the top of the silver cross. It popped open, revealing a tiny, hidden compartment.
Inside was a small, rolled-up piece of parchment paper.
Luca unrolled it, reading the few lines of text.
May you like
When he looked back up at me, the world as we knew it shattered completely.
“Vanessa didn't just want to kill my mother and you for the estate,” Luca breathed, terrified. “She’s trying to find the missing ledger. The ledger my father hid twenty years ago that proves her family stole fifty million dollars from the syndicate.”
