THE RESURRECTION OF ISABELLA MORETTI

The deafening blast of Vanessa’s shotgun echoed through the graveyard, scattering the remaining gunmen into the shadows.

“Move!” Anthony yelled, pulling me up by my coat collar.

We sprinted through the mud and driving rain toward the black sedan. Luca and Marco fell in right behind us, their guns raised, scanning the dark treeline.

Vanessa stood by the driver's side door, drenched to the bone, her ruined red silk gown clinging to her legs. She was shaking violently, the heavy shotgun slipping in her manicured hands.

Anthony reached her first. He took the weapon from her hands and pulled her behind the heavy steel door of the car.

“Anthony,” Vanessa sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck, burying her face in his wet coat. “You’re alive. Oh my god, you’re alive.”

For a second, Anthony hesitated. This was the sister who had paid to keep his fiancé locked in an asylum.

But blood won out. He wrapped his arms tightly around her, holding her close.

“Get in the car!” Luca barked, grabbing Marco’s shoulder. “They’ll regroup in minutes!”

We scrambled into the vehicles. Luca and I piled into the armored SUV with Marco, while Anthony and Vanessa took the black sedan.

Tires spun in the mud, slinging gravel as both cars tore out of the cemetery gates and sped onto the desolate highway.

Inside the SUV, my heart was hammering against my ribs so hard it physically hurt. I wiped the mud and rain from my face, staring blankly at the dark road ahead.

My grandfather murdered the woman who raised me.

My father was alive.

My bully of a fiancée had just saved my life.

“Are you hurt?” Luca asked gently, handing me a towel from the center console.

I shook my head, wrapping the towel tightly around my shivering shoulders.

“Why did Vanessa follow us?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. “She hates me. She hates you.”

Luca looked in the rearview mirror at the sedan trailing closely behind us.

“She doesn’t hate us, Natalie,” Luca said quietly. “She hates her father. Vincent used her as a pawn her entire life. When she realized Anthony was alive—the brother she thought died because of her father’s ambition—it finally broke her conditioning. She chose her brother over her father.”

Twenty minutes later, we pulled through the heavily guarded gates of the Moretti estate.

The storm was raging, lightning cracking across the dark sky as we hurried up the marble steps and into the grand foyer.

Isabella and Teresa were waiting in the hallway.

When Isabella saw Anthony walk through the doors, time seemed to stop entirely.

Anthony froze, his dark eyes locking onto the woman he hadn't seen in twenty-eight years. The woman he thought was dead.

Isabella took a slow, trembling step forward.

“Anthony?” she whispered, her voice breaking.

He didn’t answer. He crossed the marble floor in three massive strides, dropping to his knees in front of her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, burying his face in her stomach, sobbing with a raw, agonizing grief that had been held back for almost three decades.

Isabella fell to the floor with him, clutching his shoulders, burying her face in his wet, silver-threaded hair.

Teresa watched them from her wheelchair, weeping silently, her hands pressed over her mouth.

I stood in the doorway, watching my biological parents embrace for the first time in my life. A strange, hollow ache settled in my chest.

They were my parents, but they were strangers. The only mother I had ever known was dead, murdered by the man who had caused all this pain.

Luca placed a warm, heavy hand on my shoulder.

“Give them a minute,” he said softly, guiding me into the drawing room.

Vanessa followed us, shivering in her ruined gown. She looked around the opulent Moretti house, looking small and defeated.

“My father will come for us,” Vanessa said, her voice hollow. “He won’t let this go. He’ll send every soldier the Bellini family has to wipe out this house.”

“Let him try,” Marco grunted, checking his weapon. “We have sixty men armed to the teeth on the perimeter.”

“It’s not enough,” Vanessa warned, looking at Luca. “Vincent has the police on his payroll. He’ll frame Anthony for the shootout at the cemetery. He’ll have the cops raid this house by morning, and his men will mix in with the tactical teams. We won’t survive a siege.”

Luca’s jaw clenched. He knew she was right. A full-scale mafia war in the streets of New Orleans would end in a bloodbath.

“Then we don’t wait for a siege,” I said suddenly.

Everyone in the room turned to look at me.

I stepped forward, the fear that had paralyzed me all night finally burning away, replaced by a cold, sharp anger.

“Vincent Bellini killed my mother,” I said, my voice steady. “He locked Isabella away. He tried to kill my father. He’s not going to win.”

Luca looked at me, a hint of admiration in his dark eyes. “What are you thinking, Natalie?”

“Vanessa said Vincent’s blackmail materials are in his vault,” I said, looking at the former fiancée. “We took the hospital records, but there are other things in there, right? Evidence of his bribes? His hits? His political payoffs?”

Vanessa nodded slowly. “Decades worth of it. The ledger he showed you is just the beginning. He keeps physical evidence of everything to control the city.”

“Then we take it,” I said firmly. “We don’t fight his soldiers. We destroy his empire. If we hand that vault over to the FBI, Vincent goes to federal prison for the rest of his life, and his soldiers scatter.”

“We can’t get back into that vault,” Anthony said, walking into the drawing room with his arm wrapped tightly around Isabella’s waist. “It’s biometric. It only opens for Vincent.”

Vanessa looked down at the floor, biting her lip.

“That’s not entirely true,” she whispered.

We all stared at her.

“Vincent has a fail-safe,” Vanessa confessed, looking up at Luca. “In case he ever fell into a coma or died unexpectedly. The vault requires his fingerprint... or a matched blood sample from a direct Bellini heir.”

Anthony frowned. “I’m legally dead. If I walk into a federal building with that evidence, I’ll be arrested for the crimes Vincent framed me for twenty-five years ago.”

“Not you,” Vanessa said softly.

She turned her gaze slowly toward me.

“Natalie is a direct heir. Her blood will open the vault.”

I stared at her, the weight of her words sinking in.

“But getting back into the Bellini estate is impossible,” Marco argued. “They’ll be heavily guarded after what happened tonight.”

“They won’t be guarding the front door if they’re attacking the back,” Luca said slowly, a dangerous plan forming in his mind.

He looked at Anthony.

“You and I take Marco and fifty men. We hit the Bellini compound from the south wall. We draw every guard they have into a firefight.”

“While I take Natalie through the underground servant tunnels,” Vanessa finished, her eyes hardening with sudden resolve. “I know the codes. We can get into the study, open the vault, and get the evidence while Vincent is distracted.”