Chapter 7 - THE BRIDE’S REVENGE
“Leo, listen to me,” I knelt down, gripping the boy’s small shoulders. We were standing in the shadows of the servant’s corridor. “I need you to run out this door, across the grass, and hide inside the old greenhouse. Do not come out until Uncle Luca comes to get you. Do you understand?”
Leo shook his head, his eyes welling with tears. “Don’t leave me.”
“I have to stop the bad lady,” I said, my voice urgent but steady. I pressed the silver pocket watch—the one with his picture inside—into his palm. “Keep this safe for him. Go!”
I pushed the heavy exit door open, watched the boy sprint into the darkness of the estate grounds, and locked the door behind him. He was safe. Now I had to save Luca.
I checked the clock on the wall. 11:54 PM. Six minutes.
I sprinted up the back stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. My lungs burned, and my split lip throbbed with every heartbeat, but I didn’t slow down. If Vanessa triggered that bomb, Luca, the remaining loyal guards, and this entire beautiful house would be vaporized.
I burst onto the third-floor landing. The guard who had been stationed outside Vanessa’s door was gone. Not dead, just gone. He must have been one of Julian’s men.
The guest room door was wide open.
I grabbed a heavy brass candlestick from the hall table and crept into the room. It was empty. The window was thrown wide open, the cold night air billowing the velvet curtains. A knotted rope made of ripped bedsheets dangled from the sill down to the balcony below.
She had escaped.
Panic seized me. Where would she go? She couldn’t run far in an eighty-thousand-dollar gown.
“The detonator is on a remote trigger.” Marco’s words echoed in my head.
She needed a vantage point. Somewhere safe from the blast, but close enough to ensure the job was done.
I rushed to the window and looked out. The estate grounds were vast, lit by old-fashioned streetlamps. Beyond the manicured gardens was the massive garage where Luca kept his vintage car collection. The roof of the garage overlooked the entire mansion.
And there, moving like a pale ghost across the dark roof, was a figure in white.
I didn’t think. I just moved. I flew back down the stairs, racing through the empty grand hall. The silence of the house was deafening, a countdown ticking in my blood.
I shoved open the side doors and sprinted across the frozen lawn toward the garage. There was an exterior iron fire escape leading to the roof. I scrambled up the rusty steps, my black work shoes slipping on the frost.
When I reached the flat roof, the wind whipped my hair across my face.
Vanessa was standing at the edge of the roof, looking down at the mansion. She had ripped the heavy tulle skirt of her gown off at the knees to run faster, leaving the jagged, expensive silk blowing in the wind.
In her right hand, she held a small, black electronic device with a red toggle switch. The detonator.
“Vanessa!” I screamed over the wind.
She spun around, startled. When she saw it was me, her shock morphed into a hideous, mocking smile.
“The little maid,” Vanessa laughed, taking a step backward toward the edge. “I’m surprised you didn’t run away like a good peasant.”
“Don’t do it,” I gasped, holding my hands up, slowly walking toward her. “Luca has the boy. Julian is captured. It’s over, Vanessa. If you press that button, you’re murdering dozens of people.”
“I’m erasing my mistakes!” she screamed, her eyes wild, manic. “Julian is a fool. He got caught. But if Luca dies, I am still technically his fiancée. His will leaves everything to me. I’ll be the richest widow in Chicago!”
“You’re not his wife,” I argued, taking another slow step. “The papers you forged won’t hold up in court. You’ll go to prison forever.”
Vanessa raised the detonator, her thumb hovering over the red switch. “I’ll take my chances. Goodbye, Sophie.”
“Wait!” I shouted, playing my last, desperate card. “If you press that, you kill your own man! The guy watching my mother! You told me you needed him to keep me quiet!”
Vanessa paused. She looked at me, tilting her head. A cruel, hollow laugh escaped her lips.
“Oh, Sophie. You really are naive,” Vanessa sneered. “There is no man watching your mother. I made that up to shut you up upstairs. You think I care about some old woman in a nursing home?”
Relief—pure, dizzying relief—crashed over me. My mother was safe. It had been a bluff all along.
But my relief lasted only a second, because Vanessa’s thumb pressed down on the red switch.
Click.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the thunderous roar, the fire, the shockwave.
Nothing happened.
Only the wind howled across the roof.
Vanessa frowned. She aggressively flicked the switch back and forth. Click. Click. Click.
“Why isn’t it working?” she shrieked, hitting the side of the plastic device against her palm. “Julian said it was wired!”
“Because Julian is an idiot,” a deep voice said from the shadows behind me.
I spun around.
Luca stepped out from the darkness of the fire escape access door. His suit jacket was gone, his white shirt stained with dirt and grease, holding a massive pair of heavy-duty wire cutters in his hand.
“I found the basement charges three minutes ago,” Luca said, his voice as cold as the winter air. “I cut the receivers. The only thing you’re blowing up tonight, Vanessa, is your own life.”
Vanessa stared at him, horror finally breaking through her madness. She looked at the useless plastic box in her hand, then threw it at Luca’s chest.
She lunged toward the fire escape, trying to run.
But Luca was faster. He grabbed her by the arm, spinning her around and pinning her against the brick parapet.
“Where are they?” Luca demanded, his voice shaking with a rage that had been building for seven years. “The people who killed my brother. Did you and Julian do it?”
Vanessa sobbed, thrashing against his grip. “No! It wasn’t us! I swear! We just bought the boy from his mother! Julian found out the truth last year. He knows who ordered the hit on your brother!”
Luca froze. “Who?”
Vanessa looked at him, tears streaming down her ruined makeup. She smiled a bloody, broken smile.
“If I tell you,” she whispered, “you have to let me go.”
Before Luca could answer, a gunshot ripped through the night air.
Vanessa gasped. Her eyes widened in shock. She looked down at her chest, where a dark crimson stain was rapidly blooming across the white silk of her bodice.
She collapsed onto the roof.
Luca and I spun toward the source of the gunfire.
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Standing on the mansion balcony directly across from the garage, holding a scoped hunting rifle, was a man I recognized instantly.
It was Julian Rossi. He had escaped the warehouse. And he had just silenced his wife permanently to protect the final secret.
