Chapter 5 - THE HIDDEN HEIR
Isabella’s eyes darted to the silver rosary dangling from Luca’s fingers. Her confident smile slipped, replaced by a look of profound confusion, then intense greed.
“A rosary?” Isabella spat. “You think I’m stupid? Give me the key, Luca!”
“The cross on this rosary isn’t just a religious symbol, Isabella,” Luca said, his voice echoing in the cold cellar. He twisted the bottom of the silver crucifix. With a sharp click, the bottom half detached, revealing a long, intricately carved skeleton key hidden inside the hollow silver.
Mia stared in shock. She had carried that rosary for fifteen years to honor a dying man, never knowing she was holding the key to the Moretti empire.
“Slide it across the floor,” Isabella demanded, pressing the barrel of her gun harder against little Leo’s temple. The boy squeezed his eyes shut, trembling violently.
“No,” Luca said firmly.
Mia grabbed Luca’s arm. “Give it to her! Let her have the waterfront, I don’t care! Just save my son!”
“She doesn’t want the waterfront, Mia,” Luca said, never taking his eyes off Isabella. “Victor wanted the waterfront. Isabella wants something else. Don’t you, my love?”
Isabella’s jaw tightened.
“My father didn’t die of a heart attack,” Luca continued, stepping slowly to his left, drawing Isabella’s aim slightly away from the boy. “Victor shot him. But Victor was taking orders from someone else. Someone who wanted the Moretti family destroyed from the inside out.”
“Stop talking,” Isabella hissed.
“Your last name isn’t Rossi, is it, Isabella?” Luca asked. “Your real name is Salerno. Victor was your uncle.”
Mia gasped.
Isabella’s face contorted with pure hatred. “My father built this empire with yours! And your father cut him out, left him to rot in prison. Victor was too weak to take it back. I wasn’t.”
“So you played the loving bride,” Luca said, his voice laced with disgust. “You seduced me, planned to murder me on our wedding night, and take the throne as the grieving widow.”
“And it would have worked perfectly,” Isabella screamed, “if this miserable little waitress hadn’t interfered!”
Isabella suddenly swung her gun toward Mia and pulled the trigger.
BANG.
The gunshot was deafening. Mia flinched, preparing for the pain.
It never came.
Luca had lunged forward, taking the bullet in his left shoulder. He crashed to the stone floor with a grunt, dropping his gun.
“Luca!” Mia screamed, falling to her knees beside him. Blood was already soaking through his white dress shirt.
“Mommy!” Leo cried out through the duct tape, struggling against his ropes.
Isabella laughed, walking slowly toward them, her gun still raised. “How romantic. The great Mafia king, dying in the dirt for the help.”
She reached down and snatched the silver key from Luca’s hand.
“I’ll take my empire now,” Isabella sneered. “You two can bleed out together.”
She turned her back, heading toward the heavy vault door at the far end of the cellar.
Mia ripped the duct tape off a nearby box and pressed it hard against Luca’s bleeding shoulder. “Keep pressure on it,” she sobbed. “I’m going to get his gun.”
“No,” Luca gasped, catching her wrist with his good hand. He was smiling. A bloody, terrifying smile.
“Luca, she has the key! She’s going to open the vault!”
“I know,” Luca whispered, gritting his teeth against the pain. “That’s exactly what I want her to do.”
Across the room, Isabella jammed the silver key into the heavy iron vault. She turned it with both hands. The ancient locks groaned, and the heavy door swung open.
Isabella stepped inside, her eyes wide with greed.
Then, she screamed.
It wasn’t a scream of victory. It was a shriek of pure, absolute terror.
She stumbled backward out of the vault, her face pale as a sheet. She dropped her gun.
Stepping out of the darkness of the vault, holding a heavy double-barreled shotgun, was Elias. The old enforcer cocked the weapon.
May you like
And behind him, sitting calmly in a leather chair inside the vault, was an old man with a scarred face, holding a glass of scotch.
Luca’s father.
