Chapter 11 - THE FLIGHT TO GENOA
The world tilted on its axis.
I grabbed the edge of the steel table to keep from collapsing.
My mother.
After twenty-three years of hiding in plain sight, scrubbing floors, and carrying the weight of two mafia empires on her shoulders, she had finally found peace. She had her restaurant. She had her family.
And in two seconds, the Marchesi family had ripped it all away.
“Emily, breathe,” Luca commanded gently, gripping my shoulders. His dark eyes were burning with a terrifying intensity, but his hands were steady. “Look at me. Breathe.”
I sucked in a jagged breath. “They’re going to kill her, Luca. They’re going to kill her to punish you.”
“No, they’re not,” Luca said, his voice a low, absolute vow. “They want me. Sarah is bait. They know I won’t let the woman who raised my brother die. They want me to fly to Genoa and walk into their slaughterhouse.”
“Then we don’t walk in,” Julian Vance said, adjusting his glasses. The older lawyer looked at the photograph of the Genoa estate in Luca’s hand. “Arthur spent his entire life planning for this day. He didn’t just leave you an address, Luca. He left you an army.”
Luca frowned. “What army? The Moretti family is legitimate now. I disbanded the street crews.”
“You disbanded the soldiers in Chicago,” Julian corrected. “But Arthur kept a shadow faction in Sicily. Men loyal only to him. Men who have been waiting thirty years to avenge Eleanor’s death.”
Julian pulled a thick gold coin from his pocket and pressed it into Luca’s palm.
“When we land in Italy, you show this to the harbormaster in Genoa,” Julian said. “He will give you what you need.”
Two hours later, we were in the air.
Luca’s private Gulfstream jet cut through the night sky over the Atlantic.
I sat in a leather chair, staring out the dark window. I was terrified, but beneath the fear, a cold, hard anger was blossoming in my chest. I had spent my life being quiet. I had spent my life apologizing for taking up space.
But watching my mother hold a gun to Vincenzo’s head had changed something in my DNA. I wasn’t just a maid anymore.
Luca walked over and knelt in front of my chair. He had changed into a dark tactical sweater and cargo pants. He looked every bit the lethal underworld king his father had tried to save him from becoming.
He took my hands in his.
“You shouldn’t have come,” he said softly. “It’s going to be a bloodbath, Emily.”
“She’s my mother, Luca,” I said fiercely, squeezing his hands. “I am not staying in Chicago while you fight for my family. We do this together.”
He searched my face, seeing the unbending resolve in my eyes. He slowly brought my hands to his lips and kissed my knuckles.
“Together,” he agreed.
We landed in Genoa just before dawn. The coastal Italian city was shrouded in thick, gray fog. The smell of salt and diesel fuel hung heavy in the air.
A black SUV was waiting on the tarmac. Michael was driving. He had flown out on an earlier commercial flight to scout the location.
We climbed in.
“The Marchesi estate is a fortress on the cliffs overlooking the sea,” Michael reported as he navigated the narrow, winding coastal roads. “Armed guards, reinforced gates, and a cliff drop of two hundred feet in the back. A frontal assault is suicide.”
“We’re not doing a frontal assault,” Luca said.
We pulled into the bustling shipping port of Genoa. Massive cargo containers towered like skyscrapers. Men shouted in Italian, loading freight onto massive ships.
Luca stepped out of the SUV and walked directly toward a small, rusted shack at the end of Pier 4. An old man with a thick gray beard and a fisherman’s cap sat outside, smoking a pipe.
Luca held up the gold coin Julian had given him.
The old man stopped smoking. He looked at the coin, then looked up at Luca. He saw the dark hair, the broad shoulders, the resemblance to Arthur Moretti.
The old man stood up. He didn’t say a word. He just turned and opened a heavy metal door set into the side of the pier.
We followed him down a flight of concrete stairs into a subterranean boathouse.
Inside, waiting in the dim light, were twenty men dressed in black tactical gear. They were heavily armed, silent, and terrifying.
At the front of the group stood a massive man with a scarred face. He stepped forward and bowed his head slightly to Luca.
“Bentornato, figlio di Arthur,” the man said in gruff Italian. Welcome back, son of Arthur.
“Do you know the Marchesi estate?” Luca asked in perfect Italian.
The man smiled grimly. “We have studied its weaknesses for thirty years. The cliffs in the back are unprotected. They believe no one can climb them.”
“Can we?” Luca asked.
The man pointed to a sleek, black stealth speedboat docked in the water.
“With the right gear, yes.”
Luca turned to me and Michael. “Mike, you take the perimeter with a sniper rifle. Cover our ascent. Emily, you stay in the boat with Julian.”
“No,” I said immediately.
“Emily, you can’t climb a two-hundred-foot cliff!” Luca argued.
“I’m not climbing,” I said, pulling a small, black radio from Michael’s duffel bag. “I’m your eyes. I can monitor their security frequencies. I speak Italian better than anyone here. I can tell you where the guards are moving before they even get there.”
Luca stared at me. He knew I was right.
“Fine,” he relented. “But if things go south, you tell the driver to gun the engines and you get out of here.”
I didn’t promise him that.
Thirty minutes later, the black speedboat cut through the choppy, fog-covered sea. The massive cliffs of the Marchesi estate loomed above us like a jagged black tooth against the gray sky.
The boat idled silently at the base of the rocks.
Luca and his team shot grappling hooks into the stone. They began their ascent, moving like shadows up the sheer rock face.
I sat in the boat, pressing the headset tightly over my ears, scanning the radio frequencies.
For ten agonizing minutes, there was nothing but static.
Then, a voice crackled in my ear in rapid Italian.
“Bring the American woman to the courtyard. The Don wants to make an example of her before the son arrives.”
My blood ran cold.
I pressed the transmit button on my radio. “Luca. They’re moving her to the central courtyard. Now.”
“Copy,” Luca’s voice whispered in my ear. “We’re over the wall.”
I listened to the enemy frequency, my heart pounding.
Suddenly, a new voice spoke on the Marchesi channel. It was an older man, arrogant and cruel. The Don.
“Put her on her knees,” the Don ordered. “Let’s see if Arthur Moretti’s whore bleeds the same as my daughter did.”
“Luca, he’s going to execute her!” I screamed into the radio.
“I have eyes on them,” Luca’s voice came back, cold and deadly. “Mike, do you have the shot?”
“Negative,” Michael’s voice cracked over the comms. “Too much fog. I can’t see the Don.”
I listened to the enemy radio. I could hear my mother crying softly in the background.
“Any last words?” the Don asked my mother.
May you like
“Yes,” my mother’s voice suddenly came through, surprisingly steady. “Duck.”
BANG.
