Chapter 7 - SHATTERED GLASS AND BROKEN TRUST
The chandelier didn't just fall—it exploded.
A thousand razor-sharp shards of crystal rained down on the mahogany dining table. The massive brass fixture tore free from the ceiling plaster with a sickening groan, plummeting directly toward Luca and Teresa.
"Mom, move!" Luca roared.
He wrapped his body over his seventy-eight-year-old mother, tackling her backward. They crashed to the floor just as the two-ton chandelier slammed into the table where they had been standing a second before. The heavy wood splintered in half, sending fine china, silver cutlery, and spilled champagne flying through the air like shrapnel.
The dining room plunged into semi-darkness, lit only by the emergency wall sconces.
Screams filled the air. The remaining guests scrambled on their hands and knees, desperately clawing at the locked mahogany doors, trying to escape the warzone.
I was thrown backward by the shockwave of the impact, my head striking the wainscoting. For a moment, the world dissolved into a high-pitched ringing. I blinked through the dust and plaster floating in the air.
Through the haze, I saw Vincent Bellini scrambling over the ruined table.
His face was contorted with absolute madness. His expensive charcoal suit was torn, and blood dripped from a cut on his forehead. He didn't care about his daughter, who was sobbing on the floor clutching her bruised shoulder. He didn't care about his brother.
Vincent’s eyes were locked on the hollowed-out Bible lying in the wreckage of the table.
The brass key to the Geneva vault was still sitting inside it.
"The key!" Vincent screamed, lunging for the book.
"Emily, get the key!" my father shouted over the ringing in my ears.
I didn't think. I reacted with the sheer instinct of someone who had spent her life invisible, navigating the edges of rooms. I scrambled forward on my hands and knees, ignoring the shards of crystal biting into my palms and tearing my maid's uniform.
Vincent’s hand closed around the heavy leather cover of the Bible just as my fingers closed around the brass ring of the key.
We yanked in opposite directions.
The scrap of red silk snapped. The key came loose in my bloody fist.
"Give it to me, you worthless little bitch!" Vincent roared, raising his silver revolver and pointing it directly at my face.
Time seemed to freeze. I stared down the dark barrel of the gun. This was how my mother died. Not in the barrel of a gun, but at the hands of this monster who valued money over human life. I squeezed the brass key so hard it cut into my palm. I wasn't going to let him win. Not again.
Before Vincent could pull the trigger, a massive shadow slammed into him from the side.
It was my father.
Thomas Carter tackled the mafia boss with the fury of twenty-seven years of stolen life. The two older men crashed through the wreckage of the dining chairs, rolling violently across the floorboards. The silver revolver fired wildly into the ceiling, raining more plaster down on us.
"Dad!" I screamed, trying to scramble toward them.
"Emily, stay back!" Luca commanded.
Luca was on his feet, his tuxedo torn and dusted with white plaster. He had pulled his mother safely behind an overturned buffet table. Now, the mafia boss drew a sleek black Glock from his shoulder holster.
But he couldn't get a clear shot. My father and Vincent were locked in a vicious struggle, rolling over the shattered glass. Vincent was fighting with the desperation of a cornered rat, violently elbowing my father in the ribs, trying to bring the revolver down to point at my father’s chest.
"Shoot him!" Vanessa suddenly shrieked.
I spun around. Vanessa was on her feet. Her face was smeared with makeup and dust, her red dress torn at the knee. She wasn't yelling at Luca. She was yelling at Arthur.
Arthur Bellini, the scarred, broken man who had lived as a ghost, had picked up a fallen assault rifle dropped by one of Vincent’s wounded guards.
"Arthur, shoot the chauffeur!" Vanessa commanded hysterically. "Kill Thomas! Save my dad! We can take the key and get out of here!"
Arthur stood shaking, the heavy black rifle gripped in his scarred hands. He looked at Vincent, who was currently trying to bash my father’s head into the floorboards. Then he looked at Vanessa.
"He left me to burn, Vanessa," Arthur wept, the gun wavering. "He made me a monster."
"You were always a monster!" Vanessa spat venomously. "Shoot him, or the cartel kills us all tonight!"
Vincent managed to shove his knee into my father's stomach, breaking free for a fraction of a second. He leveled his silver revolver at my father's head.
"Goodbye, Thomas," Vincent snarled.
BANG.
The gunshot echoed so loudly it made my ears bleed.
I screamed, closing my eyes, waiting for my father to fall.
But the scream of pain didn't come from my father.
I opened my eyes.
Vincent Bellini dropped his silver revolver. He looked down at his own chest with an expression of profound, childish confusion. A dark, blooming stain of crimson spread rapidly across the white fabric of his dress shirt, just below his collarbone.
Vincent fell backward, crashing into the shattered remains of the chandelier.
I turned my head slowly.
Arthur stood there, lowering the smoking assault rifle. Tears streamed down his ruined, scarred face. He had shot his own brother.
Vanessa let out a bloodcurdling scream. She ran to her father, dropping to her knees in the glass, clutching his bleeding chest. "Dad! Dad, no!"
Luca’s tactical guards finally moved in, kicking the dropped revolver away and surrounding Arthur, who immediately dropped the rifle and fell to his knees, raising his hands in surrender.
My father groaned, rolling over and clutching his ribs.
"Dad!" I sobbed, sliding across the floor and throwing my arms around him. "Are you okay? Did he hit you?"
"I'm fine, Emily," my father wheezed, sitting up and wrapping his arms around me. "I'm okay, baby girl. I'm right here."
I buried my face in his shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably. The nightmare was over. The man who had destroyed our family was bleeding out on the floor. We were safe.
"Don't move!" a voice shrieked.
I froze. I slowly turned my head.
May you like
Vanessa had grabbed her father’s dropped silver revolver from the floor. But she wasn't pointing it at me, or my father, or even the man who shot him.
She was pointing it directly at Teresa Moretti's head.
