Chapter 7 - THE TRUTH BEHIND THE BURNED FOREARM
The air in the concrete vault grew completely stagnant.
The three armed men kept their rifles trained on Luca, but their eyes darted nervously to the blood-stained notebook in his hand. Even the foot soldiers knew that finding the diary of the murdered Moretti patriarch was a seismic event.
Vanessa’s hand trembled slightly, the silver handgun wobbling as she pointed it at us.
“That’s a lie,” she spat, her voice shrill with rising panic. “My father didn't kill yours. It was a rival gang from Chicago. The Commission ruled on it ten years ago!”
“The Commission ruled on forged evidence,” Luca corrected, his voice a low, terrifying rumble. He didn't break eye contact with her. He didn't even look at the guns pointed at him. “My father knew Carlo was stealing from our ports. He documented every stolen shipment in this journal. He hid it in this coat in this exact vault the morning he was killed.”
Luca took a slow, deliberate step forward.
“And do you know who drove the getaway car for the hitmen who murdered my father, Vanessa?”
The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
Vanessa swallowed hard, her eyes darting to me.
“It was David,” Luca said softly.
My breath caught in my throat. I stumbled back against the cold steel of a filing cabinet, my hand flying to my mouth.
“No,” I whimpered, shaking my head. “No, David wouldn't kill anyone.”
“He didn't pull the trigger,” Luca said, finally glancing back at me, his eyes filled with a tragic, absolute certainty. “But he drove the car. Carlo Bellini forced him to. Carlo knew that if he used a poor, desperate mechanic with a pregnant wife, the man would never talk. David drove the car that killed my father.”
Tears streamed down my face, burning my cheeks. The man I loved. The father of my child. He was an accessory to the assassination of a mafia boss. The guilt must have eaten him alive every single day of our marriage.
“But David couldn't live with it,” Luca continued, turning his lethal gaze back to Vanessa. “He found out Carlo was planning to wipe out my entire family to take over the territory. So David built the skeleton key. He planned to break into this vault, steal my father’s journal, and give it to the Commission to expose your family.”
Vanessa let out a sharp, bitter laugh. “And my father found out. And he ran the little rat off the road before he could get on a train. It’s ancient history, Luca. Give me the journal.”
“No,” I said.
The word slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it.
I stepped out from behind Luca, my hands balled into tight fists, ignoring the heavy Kevlar vest weighing me down. I stared at the beautiful, wealthy woman in the black trench coat who had destroyed my entire life.
“You didn't just kill him,” I cried, the anger finally burning away the fear. “You tried to destroy me, too. You hired me. You brought me into this house on purpose.”
Vanessa smiled, a cold, empty expression. “Of course I did, Mara. We knew David hid the key somewhere. We searched your apartment a dozen times while you were at work, but we couldn't find it. I figured if I brought you into the lion’s den, if I made your life miserable enough, you’d eventually crack and use the key to steal from Luca to pay your rent.”
She gestured toward my bandaged arm with the barrel of her gun.
“The coffee urn. The stove. The docked pay. I was trying to break you, Mara. I was trying to make you desperate enough to lead me to the vault.”
She had orchestrated every moment of my suffering. Every late bill, every tear I shed worrying about Leo’s meals. It was all a calculated psychological torture just to find a piece of metal.
“But you’re too late,” Vanessa sneered, raising her chin. “My father is arriving at the main estate in twenty minutes with fifty armed men. He’s going to announce our families are merging tonight. And when you and the maid turn up dead in a botched robbery attempt... I’ll be the grieving widow who inherits the Moretti empire.”
She cocked the hammer of her silver handgun.
“Kill them both,” Vanessa ordered her men.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the deafening roar of gunfire.
But it never came.
Instead, the lights in the vault suddenly cut out.
The cavernous room was plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
“What’s going on?!” Vanessa screamed, panic finally shattering her composure.
A heavy, metallic thud echoed through the vault as the massive steel blast doors behind us slammed shut, locking into place with a sound like a thunderclap.
The emergency red lights flickered on, casting the room in a bloody, sinister glow.
Luca hadn't moved an inch. He stood in the center of the room, looking like a demon bathed in red light.
“You really think you could walk into my vault without me knowing, Vanessa?” Luca asked quietly.
From the shadows behind the filing cabinets, a dozen laser sights suddenly cut through the dark, painting little red dots across the chests of Vanessa and her three men.
Marco and a heavily armed tactical team of Moretti soldiers stepped out from the darkness, their assault rifles raised and perfectly steady.
They had been waiting here the entire time.
Vanessa’s men immediately dropped their weapons, kicking their rifles away and raising their hands. They weren't paid enough to die in a steel box.
Vanessa stood alone, her silver gun shaking wildly in her hand. She was completely surrounded.
“It’s over, Vanessa,” Luca said, holding up his father’s journal. “Your father is walking into a trap at the main house. The Commission is already waiting for him in my dining room.”
Vanessa looked around, trapped like a rat in a cage. But then, a sickening, triumphant smile spread across her face.
She lowered her gun. She didn't drop it. She just lowered it.
With her other hand, she reached into her trench coat and pulled out her smartphone.
She tapped the screen and held it up for Luca and me to see.
It was a live video feed.
It showed the secure bunker room where I had left my son. Leo was still sleeping soundly under the cashmere blanket.
May you like
But standing directly over his bed, holding a silenced pistol aimed directly at my six-year-old’s head, was one of the Moretti estate guards.
“You have your men, Luca,” Vanessa whispered, her eyes burning with pure malice. “But I bought one of yours. Hand over the journal and the master key, or the boy dies right now.”
