Chapter 2 - The Shattered Glass
Camille was already backing toward the door.
Her manicured hand reached blindly behind her, grasping for the heavy brass handle of the gallery exit.
Dominic didn’t shout. He didn’t lunge across the marble floor. He simply stood there, the glowing screen of his phone casting a pale light over his stunned features.
“Lock it, Robert,” Dominic said. His voice was dangerously quiet.
Robert didn’t hesitate. He pulled a small black device from his jacket pocket and pressed a single silver button. A heavy magnetic click echoed through the private gallery, followed by the grinding sound of the deadbolts sliding into place. The museum’s VIP rooms were designed to double as panic rooms.
Camille yanked the handle. It didn’t budge.
She turned slowly back to face her husband. The mask was gone. The warm, philanthropic socialite that Sarah had scheduled charity luncheons for over the last seven years vanished in the blink of an eye. Camille’s posture shifted. Her shoulders squared. Her eyes, usually soft and inviting, turned flat and dead.
“Who sent the text, Danny?” Camille asked. Her voice was entirely devoid of fear.
Hearing the childhood nickname again sent a chill down Sarah’s spine.
“Don’t call me that,” Dominic said, stepping forward. The shock was fading, replaced by a cold, calculating rage. “My father is dead. He died in a car fire on the Tobin Bridge twenty-two years ago. I buried his ashes myself.”
Robert stepped between them. “You buried ashes, Dominic. But they weren’t his. They belonged to a man named Vincente, a soldier for the Moretti family who was sent to kill your father. Antonio survived. And he knew that as long as he was alive, the Morettis would never stop hunting him. Or you.”
Dominic stared at his oldest friend. “You’ve known this for two decades?”
“I helped him stage it,” Robert confessed, his voice heavy with years of guilt. “It was the only way to protect the Caruso empire. And it was the only way to protect Isabella.”
“Isabella,” Dominic repeated. The name hung in the air. The little girl in the photograph. The daughter he never knew existed.
Camille let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “Protect her? You just delayed the inevitable, Robert. You thought hiding her in Miami would keep her safe? My family has owned Miami since the eighties.”
Sarah’s breath hitched. My family.
She looked at Camille. The puzzle pieces violently snapped into place. Camille wasn’t just a wealthy heiress from Chicago. She was a Moretti. A sleeper agent placed in Dominic’s life to dismantle the Caruso empire from the inside out.
“The camera on the balcony,” Sarah said suddenly, her voice cutting through the tension. “It wasn’t pointed at Dominic. It was pointed at you, Camille.”
Robert nodded grimly. “I’ve suspected Camille for six months. Ever since the encrypted financial leaks started. I ordered my private security team to move Isabella tonight because I intercepted a wiretap. Camille’s people found the Miami safe house. They’re moving in.”
Camille checked her diamond-studded watch. “They aren’t moving in, Robert. They’re already there. By the time this little gala is over, Isabella will be on a private plane to Palermo. And Antonio will finally be dead.”
Dominic’s hands curled into fists. “If you touch my family—”
Before Dominic could finish the threat, the massive stained-glass window at the far end of the gallery imploded.
A deafening crack split the air. Glass rained down like diamond shrapnel.
“Get down!” Robert roared, tackling Dominic to the marble floor.
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Sarah dove behind a heavy bronze sculpture, covering her head as bullets tore through the room, shredding the priceless artwork.
Through the chaos and the dust, Sarah looked up just in time to see Camille calmly walk toward the shattered window. A black tactical rope dropped from the roof above. Camille grabbed it, looked back at Dominic with a terrifying smile, and vanished into the Boston night.
