Chapter 4 - BLOOD IN THE GARDEN
Panic seized my throat, but I forced it down. "I didn't know. I swear to you, Victor, I haven't spoken to him in months."
"I know you didn't," Victor said, his eyes scanning my face for a lie and finding none. "If I thought you were a spy, you wouldn't be standing here breathing. But the Morettis now know that the nanny is a vulnerability."
The attack happened the very next afternoon. We were in the enclosed back garden. The boys were kicking a soccer ball, and I was sitting on a wrought-iron bench, my mind racing with thoughts of Lucia. The security perimeter was supposed to be impenetrable. But the Morettis had paid off a guard.
Two men in black tactical gear vaulted over the stone wall, silenced weapons drawn.
Instinct overrode fear. "Marco! Inside!" I screamed, lunging forward. I grabbed Leo and Alessandro, shoving them behind the thick trunk of an ancient oak tree just as the first bullet shattered the stone bench where I had been sitting seconds before.
Marco and Nico sprinted for the patio doors, but one of the men cut them off. Without thinking, I picked up a heavy garden trowel from the dirt and threw myself at the attacker. I slammed the metal tool into the back of his knee. He roared in pain, dropping to the ground, but managed to backhand me across the face with the heavy barrel of his gun.
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I hit the grass hard, tasting blood, my vision swimming. He raised the gun, pointing it squarely at my chest.
Before he could pull the trigger, a gunshot rang out. The man collapsed on top of me, dead. Victor stood on the patio, smoke rising from the barrel of his silver pistol, his eyes blazing with a fury that could have melted steel.
