Chapter 4 - THE BLUE LEDGER
"Get down!" Luca roared, shoving me to the floor just as the shotgun blasted, tearing a massive hole through the plaster wall where my head had been a second earlier.
My father grabbed Catherine's arm and pulled her into the dark kitchen, dragging me along the linoleum floor behind them.
Luca didn't retreat. He ducked behind the heavy oak console table in the hallway, firing two precise shots from his handgun. One of Victor's men screamed and dropped in the doorway.
"Victor!" Luca shouted over the ringing in my ears. "You're breaking a twenty-year truce! You want to start a war over Michael?"
Victor chuckled, the sound dark and wet in the hallway. "Michael is an idiot, Luca. He thinks he's using my daughter to secure your empire. He doesn't realize my daughter has been using him for three years."
In the dark kitchen, Catherine dropped to her knees beside a loose floorboard near the stove. She pried it up with trembling fingers, pulling out a small, blue leather-bound ledger.
"Grace, take this," Catherine whispered, shoving the book into my hands.
"What is it?" I asked, my heart pounding against my ribs.
"It's the Bellini accounts," my father answered, crouching beside us. "Vanessa didn't want Teresa's bedroom because of the view. She wanted it because she knew your father kept his private safe hidden in the wall behind Teresa's headboard. She’s been tearing that room apart trying to find this ledger."
I stared at the blue book. "Why?"
"Because it proves Victor Bellini ordered the hit on Luca's first fiancée ten years ago," Catherine said. "And it proves Vanessa has been poisoning Teresa's tea for six months to make her seem incompetent, so Michael could force her into a nursing home and take this house."
Bile rose in my throat. Vanessa hadn't just been cruel to Teresa; she was actively destroying her mind to steal her home.
Gunfire erupted again in the hallway.
"I'm out!" Luca yelled, backing into the kitchen, his magazine empty. He grabbed a heavy cast-iron pan off the stove. "Is there a back way out?"
"Through the cellar doors," my father said.
We scrambled down the dark basement stairs, the sounds of heavy boots stomping across the first-floor hardwood following us. My father threw open the storm doors leading out to the overgrown backyard.
The rain was pouring down now, masking our footsteps as we ran through the wet grass toward the alley.
"We need a car," Luca said, wiping rain and plaster dust from his face.
"I have a truck parked two streets over," my father said, tossing Luca a set of keys. "Take them. Take the girls and go. I'll hold them off."
"No!" I screamed, grabbing my father's jacket. "You just came back! I'm not leaving you again!"
My father smiled, a sad, broken look. He touched my cheek. "Tell your mother I never stopped loving her, Gracie. Tell her the money in the coffee can wasn't a lie."
Before I could ask what he meant, Victor's men burst out of the cellar doors behind us.
My father pushed me toward Luca. "Run!"
He turned and tackled the first man into the mud.
Luca didn't hesitate. He grabbed my arm and Catherine's, dragging us down the alley as the sound of a gunshot echoed behind us, silencing the struggle in the yard.
"Dad!" I screamed, but Luca's grip was iron.
We made it to the rusty pickup truck and scrambled inside. Luca hotwired it in seconds, peeling out into the rainy streets.
I sobbed into my hands, the blue ledger pressing against my chest.
Catherine reached over from the back seat and touched my shoulder. "He knew what he was doing, Grace. He prepared for this."
"He's gone," I cried. "Michael and Vanessa took him away again."
Luca's eyes were fixed on the road, dark and lethal. "No. Victor Bellini took him. And Victor Bellini is going to burn."
He slammed his foot on the gas. "We're going back to the mansion."
"Are you insane?" Catherine asked. "Michael and Vanessa are there! They'll kill you!"
"They don't know we know," Luca said. "They think Victor finished us at the house. We're going to walk into that mansion, and we're going to tear them apart in front of everyone."
I looked down at the blue ledger in my lap. I thought about Teresa, sleeping on a thin mattress near the laundry, believing she was losing her mind. I thought about my father, lying in the mud so I could escape.
"Do it," I whispered.
Luca nodded.
As we pulled onto the highway, my phone buzzed in my apron pocket.
I pulled it out.
May you like
It was a text message from my mother.
Grace, please come home. Vanessa Bellini just walked into my living room.
