Chapter 6 - BENEATH THE STONE FLOOR
The air inside the aluminum laundry chute smelled of bleach, damp stone, and decades of dust.
Emily wedged her shoulders against the smooth metal walls, using her bare feet to brake her descent in total darkness. Every muscle in her twenty-eight-year-old body burned, her heart hammering against her ribs in a frantic rhythm.
Down below, through the wooden slats of the cedar linen closet, she could see the dim amber glow of the wine cellar’s vintage Edison bulbs.
And she could hear voices.
"Hurry up, you idiot!" Vanessa’s voice was shrill, echoing off the arched brick walls. "Turn it left to forty-two! Left!"
"My hands are sweating, shut up!" Dominic snarled.
Emily eased herself down onto a mountain of soiled tablecloths at the bottom of the chute. Silently, she gripped Rosa’s heavy brass-headed walking cane and peered through the louvered slats of the closet door.
The inner vault room was ten feet away, separated from the main cellar by a locked wrought-iron security gate.
Sofia was sitting on an overturned wooden wine crate near the back wall, shivering in her pink Thanksgiving dress. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her small face buried in her arms.
Dominic was on his knees in front of the floor safe, pulling thick stacks of cream-colored bearer bonds and velvet jewelry pouches out of the ground and shoving them into two leather duffel bags.
Vanessa stood behind him—not watching the iron gate at the top of the main stairs, where Salvatore and Leo would soon appear.
She was pointing a small, silver .38 revolver directly at the back of her husband’s head.
Emily held her breath.
"That’s the last of the bonds," Dominic panted, zipping the second leather duffel shut. He reached for the velvet pouches inside the safe. "Help me grab Grandma’s diamonds, Van. We have to get through the coal chute before my father brings the whole crew down here."
"Leave the diamonds," Vanessa said. Her voice had gone completely flat. "They’re too easy to trace."
Dominic paused, looking back over his shoulder. He froze when he saw the barrel of the .38 leveled between his eyes.
"Van?" Dominic laughed nervously, raising his hands slightly. "Baby, what are you doing? Put that away. We’re on the same side."
"You threw me under the bus upstairs in front of my father and sixty made men, Dominic," Vanessa said coldly. "You blamed the forged medical records and the wire transfers on me. Did you really think I was going to get on a plane with you after that?"
"I was stalling!" Dominic pleaded, slowly rising to his feet. "I was trying to buy us time to get down here! You’re my wife, Vanessa!"
"I was your father’s insurance policy," Vanessa spat. "My father married me off to a weak, whining mama’s boy because he thought he could control you once Salvatore died. Instead, you blew eight million dollars at high-stakes poker tables in Manhattan trying to prove you were a big shot like your Uncle Anthony!"
Emily’s eyes widened behind the closet slats. So that was where the stolen trust money and Frank’s three-million-dollar loan had gone. Dominic hadn't been building a rival empire; he was a compulsive gambler drowning in debt to the Russian mob in Brighton Beach.
"I can win it back," Dominic stammered, his eyes darting toward the duffel bags. "With forty million in bonds, we can clear my markers in New York and still live like kings in Grand Cayman!"
" We aren't doing anything," Vanessa said, cocking the hammer of the revolver. "My father’s pilot is waiting at Teterboro for me. I’m going to tell Salvatore that you went crazy, dragged me and Sofia down here, and when I tried to protect your daughter, I had to shoot you in self-defense. I walk out of here a hero, and I keep one of the bags."
On the wine crate, seven-year-old Sofia looked up, her eyes wide with terror. "Daddy?" she whimpered.
Dominic looked at his little girl, then back at the woman he had betrayed his entire family to impress. For the first time in his life, the arrogance stripped away from Dominic’s face, leaving only pathetic, naked ruin.
"You wouldn't shoot me in front of my kid," Dominic whispered.
"Watch me," Vanessa smiled cruelly. "And honestly, Dominic? A seven-year-old is a terrible witness to leave behind."
She shifted the barrel slightly toward the wine crate.
Two things happened at the exact same instant.
At the top of the main cellar stairs, the heavy oak door was kicked off its hinges as Leo, Anthony, and Salvatore charged down the steps toward the locked wrought-iron gate.
And inside the vault room, Emily kicked the louvered closet door open.
"Hey, Mrs. Bellini!" Emily shouted.
Vanessa spun around in shock.
Before she could pull the trigger, Emily swung Rosa’s heavy brass walking cane with three years of pent-up humiliation behind it.
CRACK.
The solid brass lion’s head struck Vanessa’s wrist with sickening force. Bones snapped. Vanessa shrieked in agony as the .38 went flying across the stone floor, skittering beneath a rack of vintage Bordeaux.
"You filthy little bitch!" Vanessa howled, cradling her shattered wrist against her silk dress as she lunged at Emily with her left hand, her nails clawing for Emily’s eyes.
Emily didn't back down. She wasn't a helpless maid anymore. She ducked under Vanessa’s wild swing, grabbed a heavy, unopened magnum bottle of 1982 Cabernet from the rack beside her, and brought it down squarely across Vanessa’s shoulder.
The thick green glass didn't break, but Vanessa did. She hit the stone floor hard, groaning and gasping for breath in a puddle of cellar dust.
"Emmy!" Sofia scrambled off the crate and threw herself into Emily’s arms. Emily scooped the trembling seven-year-old up, burying the child’s face against her neck so she wouldn't have to see the ugliness around them.
At the wrought-iron gate, Leo was already smashing the padlock off with a heavy crowbar while Salvatore and Anthony aimed their weapons into the vault room.
"Don't move, Dominic!" Salvatore roared through the iron bars.
Dominic stood frozen between the two forty-million-dollar duffel bags and the narrow coal chute door at the back of the vault.
He looked at his father’s gun. He looked at Emily holding his crying daughter.
Then, slowly, Dominic bent down toward the open floor safe.
"Dominic, don't!" Anthony warned, his finger tightening on his trigger. "There’s a spare piece kept in that safe! Don't reach for it!"
Dominic’s hand came out of the safe. He wasn't holding a gun.
He was holding an old, fire-scorched metal box—and he threw it across the floor so it slid right to Emily’s bare feet.
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"I didn't take the five million for poker, Emily!" Dominic yelled, tears streaming down his face as he backed into the dark opening of the coal chute. "Vanessa’s father took it! And what’s in that box is the reason I couldn't stop him!"
Before the iron gate swung open, Dominic pulled the heavy steel coal chute door shut behind him and bolted the heavy iron latch from the inside.
