Chapter 6 - THE SILVER ROSARY
I threw myself backward as the serrated blade slashed through the air, missing my face by inches. My back slammed against the heavy stainless-steel refrigerator. Vanessa didn’t pause. She raised the knife again, her face contorted in a mask of desperate fury. I grabbed the closest thing I could find—a heavy cast-iron skillet left on the stove—and swung it with both hands. It connected hard with Vanessa’s wrist. She screamed, dropping the knife. It clattered across the tile floor. Before she could recover, I drove my shoulder into her chest, shoving her backward. She tripped over her ruined satin gown and crashed into a stack of aluminum flour bins. A cloud of white powder exploded into the air, covering her. She scrambled to her feet, coughing, looking wildly for the knife. “Don’t move,” a dark voice commanded from the doorway. Through the settling flour dust stepped Luca. His tuxedo jacket was gone. His white shirt was stained with blood—not his own. His gun was raised, aimed dead center at Vanessa’s chest. Behind him, the dining room was eerily quiet. The gunfire had stopped. Vanessa froze, her hands raised slightly, her chest heaving. “Luca,” she breathed, trying to force a pathetic, trembling smile. “Thank God. My father… he tried to force me—” “Save it,” Luca said, his voice devoid of any warmth. He walked into the kitchen, his eyes burning with a cold, terrifying clarity. “Where is Don Bellini?” I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs. “Dead,” Luca said simply. “His men surrendered.” Vanessa let out a strangled gasp. She looked at Luca, finally realizing that all her manipulation, all her lies, had come to nothing. She looked at me, then at the service elevator. Suddenly, she grabbed a heavy brass fire extinguisher off the wall and hurled it directly at Luca’s head. Luca ducked. The extinguisher smashed into the glass front of the industrial oven. In that split second, Vanessa spun and slammed her hand against the emergency fire-lock button on the wall. A deafening siren blared through the mansion. Heavy steel fire doors immediately slammed down over the kitchen exits, locking us inside. The vents hissed loudly as thick, suffocating chemical fire-retardant smoke began pouring into the room. “If I can’t leave with the boy,” Vanessa screamed over the siren, her voice unhinged, “none of you are leaving at all!” She pulled a silver rosary from her cleavage—a rosary I recognized from the photographs upstairs. Isabella’s rosary. The one Vanessa had stolen off the dead woman’s body. She wrapped it around her knuckles like a weapon and charged at Luca. Luca didn’t shoot her. He sidestepped her reckless charge, caught her arm, and twisted it sharply behind her back. Vanessa screamed as she crashed to the floor, completely subdued. But the smoke was getting thicker. The chemical retardant burned my lungs. I started coughing violently. “The doors are deadlocked!” Luca shouted, pulling his jacket over his mouth. “The system thinks there’s a massive fire. It’ll suck the oxygen out of the room in three minutes to suffocate the flames!” I looked at the heavy steel doors. We were trapped. Then, I remembered the drawing. Matteo’s drawing. The wine cellar. “The coal chute!” I yelled over the alarm. “The old kitchen pantry connects to the original coal chute that runs down to the sub-basement!” Luca didn’t hesitate. He dragged Vanessa by her arm, forcing her to her feet, and pushed her ahead of him. “Show me,” he ordered.
