Chapter 7 - THE TICKET TO GENEVA
The drive to the mansion took twenty-two minutes. Nobody spoke. The silence in the SUV was heavier than the kevlar vests Michael handed out from the trunk.
I refused the vest.
“I can’t move fast enough in that,” I told Michael. “If people are bleeding in there, I need my hands free.”
Luca grabbed my arm before I could step out of the vehicle. We were parked a block away from the estate’s iron gates.
“Emily, you stay in the car,” Luca ordered. “This is a tactical breach. You are not a soldier.”
“I’m the only medical professional you have left,” I shot back, locking eyes with the mafia boss. “If your mother is hurt, or if that little boy goes into shock, your guns won’t save them. I’m going.”
Luca stared at me. The absolute authority he wielded over everyone else shattered against my stubbornness. He nodded once, a gesture of profound respect.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
We moved through the heavy oak trees bordering the estate. Michael took the left flank with five men; Luca took the right with the remainder. I stayed directly behind Luca’s massive frame.
The front doors of the mansion were already blown open from the previous attack. The silence inside was terrifying.
Luca used a small tactical mirror to peer around the corner into the grand ballroom.
I looked over his shoulder.
In the center of the massive room, tied to heavy dining chairs, sat Rose, Celeste, and a beautiful, terrified woman who looked exactly like Grace.
Sofia.
Clinging to Sofia’s leg, crying silently, was a six-year-old boy. Leo.
Standing over them were six mercenaries in heavy armor. The leader held a pistol pressed directly against the back of Rose’s head.
“Thirty seconds, Luca!” the leader shouted, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. “Walk through the door with the code, or the old woman dies!”
Luca looked at the torn parchment paper in his hand. The key to destroying the Board. The only leverage he had.
He folded it, tucked it into his shirt pocket, and stepped out from behind the wall.
He walked into the ballroom with his hands raised. Unarmed.
“I have the code,” Luca said calmly, walking steadily toward the mercenaries.
“Dad, no!” Sofia screamed. It was the first time I had heard her voice. It was raw, broken by seven years of isolation, but filled with desperate love.
Luca didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes locked on the leader. “Let them go. All of them. And I’ll give you the paper.”
The leader laughed. “You don’t dictate terms, DeSantis. Hand it over.”
“If you shoot me, the code gets covered in blood and becomes unreadable,” Luca bluffed smoothly. “And without my biometric scan, the vault in Geneva stays locked forever.”
The leader frowned, hesitating for a fraction of a second.
It was all Luca needed.
Luca didn’t reach for a gun. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, metallic cylinder.
A flashbang grenade.
He dropped it at his own feet and squeezed his eyes shut.
BANG.
A blinding flash of white light and a deafening shockwave ripped through the ballroom.
The mercenaries screamed, clutching their eyes, blinded by the million-candlepower burst.
From the balcony above, Michael Romano and his men opened fire.
The precision was absolute. In three seconds, five mercenaries were dead before they even realized they were under attack.
But the leader, temporarily blinded, dropped to one knee and fired his weapon blindly toward the center of the room.
The gunshot deafened me.
Rose slumped forward in her chair.
“MAMA!” Luca roared, charging forward and tackling the leader to the marble floor, his fists raining down with lethal force.
I didn’t look at the fight. I sprinted across the ballroom, sliding on my knees across the slick marble until I reached Rose.
She was bleeding from a gunshot wound to her upper right shoulder.
“Rose, look at me!” I yelled, ripping my scarf off and pressing it hard into the wound.
The eighty-year-old woman opened her eyes. She was pale, breathing shallowly, but she managed a weak, defiant smile.
“I told you… I hate this rug,” she whispered, coughing lightly.
“You’re going to be fine,” I said, applying massive pressure. “The bullet passed clean through the deltoid. It missed the artery.”
I looked over at Sofia. She was weeping, clutching little Leo against her chest. Grace ran across the room and collapsed into her sister’s arms. The twins, separated by seven years of torture, finally holding each other.
Celeste sat tied to her chair, weeping silently. She had raised Leo. She had loved him. But looking at Sofia holding the boy, Celeste knew the truth had finally broken her stolen life.
Luca stood up from the shattered body of the mercenary leader. He was covered in blood, but his eyes were entirely clear.
He walked over to his mother, dropping to his knees beside me. He took Rose’s uninjured hand and kissed it.
“You’re safe, Mama,” Luca whispered.
Rose looked at him, then weakly reached into the pocket of her blood-stained cardigan. She pulled out a small, silver ticket.
It was a First-Class boarding pass for a flight to Geneva.
“Anthony bought this thirty years ago,” Rose whispered, her voice fading. “He told me… if the devil ever came for our family… use the ticket.”
She pressed it into Luca’s hand.
“Go to Geneva, my boy,” Rose said. “Burn their empire to the ground.”
Luca looked at the ticket. Then he looked at me.
“Emily,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Keep my family alive. I’ll be back in forty-eight hours.”
He stood up, walking toward the door with Michael.
But as I applied a pressure bandage to Rose’s shoulder, a terrifying thought hit me.
“Luca, wait!” I shouted.
He stopped and turned.
“The note,” I said, my heart pounding. “The sins of the father are locked in the son’s name.”
Luca frowned. “Yes. My name. I have the biometrics.”
“No,” I said, the horrifying realization clicking into place. “Anthony didn’t leave the vault in your name, Luca.”
I pointed at the terrified six-year-old boy crying in Sofia’s arms.
“Leo is your only male heir,” I said softly. “The vault isn’t locked to you. It’s locked to him.”
The room went completely silent.
Luca stared at the little boy.
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“If you go to Geneva without him,” I whispered, “you can’t open the vault. And if the Board figures it out… they won’t come for you. They’ll come for him.”
TITLE: THE HEIRLOOM IN THE GENEVA VAULT
