Chapter 7 - THE LIGHTER IN THE DARK
The air in my lungs turned to glass.
I stared at the little wooden train on the blood-stained marble floor. The paint on the wheels was chipped exactly where Leo had been holding it in the motel.
"Where is he?" I screamed, lunging upward.
Gilbert’s heavy hand slammed into my shoulder, shoving me violently back to the ground. My elbow cracked against the tile, pain shooting up my arm, but I didn't care. The image of little Leo, terrified and alone in the hands of these monsters, made me feral.
"Where is he?!" I shrieked again, tears of pure rage spilling down my face.
Celeste smiled, a slow, sickening curve of her lips. She stepped over the wooden train, looking down at me like I was an insect.
"He's somewhere very cold, Evie," Celeste said softly. "And he's going to stay there until you tell me where you hid my father's ledger."
"Your father was a thief," I spat, my voice shaking with hatred. "He stole from the Morettis, and he murdered my father to cover it up."
Celeste’s eyes flashed with a sudden, vicious anger. "My father was trying to save our family! The Morettis are thugs. They bleed this city dry. We deserved that money. We built Chicago. And your pathetic father thought he could just walk in, crunch some numbers, and destroy our legacy? Arthur Carter was a rat. I was the one who told my father to put him in the ground."
The breath left my body.
She wasn't just a spoiled heiress. She was the architect. She had ordered my father's death when she was barely out of college.
"You're a monster," I whispered.
"I'm a survivor," Celeste corrected coldly. She pulled a small, silver revolver from her coat pocket. She pulled the hammer back with a sharp click. She aimed it directly at my forehead.
"Last chance, Evelyn. Where is the ledger?"
I looked down the barrel of the gun. My heart was pounding, but strangely, the fear was gone. The puzzle pieces in my mind had clicked together.
I looked at the wooden train on the floor.
I had wrapped Leo in my oversized coat when we left the motel. He had been holding the train then. But when I put the coat on him, I tucked his hands inside the sleeves to keep him warm. The train had fallen out in the Greyhound station parking lot.
Celeste didn't have Leo.
She had found the train when her men tracked my route. She was bluffing. Lorenzo and the boy were safe.
I looked up at Celeste, and I smiled.
"I told you," I whispered. "I put it somewhere you'll never find it."
Celeste’s face twisted in fury. Her finger tightened on the trigger. "Goodbye, Evie."
CLICK.
The entire restaurant plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
The emergency generators didn't kick on. The streetlights outside the shattered windows were dead. Someone had cut the main power line to the entire block.
"Gilbert!" Celeste shrieked in the dark, her voice pitching into panic. "Shoot her! Shoot her!"
Before Gilbert could move, a sound echoed through the massive, empty dining room.
It was the heavy, rhythmic sound of footsteps walking across the broken glass.
Slow. Deliberate. Terrifying.
"Who's there?!" Gilbert yelled, his gun waving blindly in the dark.
"You always were a coward, Gilbert," a deep, rumbling voice echoed from the shadows.
Lorenzo.
Tears of absolute relief flooded my eyes.
"Moretti," Gilbert panicked, firing two blind shots into the darkness. The muzzle flashes illuminated nothing but empty tables.
"You took my money for five years, Gilbert," Lorenzo's voice floated from a different direction now, closer to the bar. "You smiled at my face, and you sold my schedule to the Vanes."
"Lorenzo, please!" Gilbert begged, backing up, his shoes crunching on glass. "She made me do it! She threatened my family!"
"Lie," Celeste hissed in the dark.
"Evie," Lorenzo's voice cut through the air, calm and commanding. "Get down."
I flattened myself against the cold marble floor, covering my head with my arms.
A sharp metallic clink echoed in the room.
Suddenly, a small flame sparked to life in the center of the room. It was a vintage silver lighter. The flame illuminated Lorenzo’s face. He looked like a demon rising from the underworld. His white shirt was soaked in blood, his eyes pitch black, holding the lighter in his left hand.
Celeste gasped. "My father's lighter..."
"He dropped it the night he killed Arthur Carter," Lorenzo said softly.
Lorenzo tossed the burning lighter through the air. It landed directly on a spilled pool of high-proof bourbon behind the bar.
A wall of blue fire erupted, illuminating the room.
In the sudden flash of light, Gilbert raised his gun to shoot Lorenzo.
But Lorenzo was already moving. He didn't fire a gun. He lunged forward with terrifying speed, driving his heavy shoulder directly into Gilbert's chest. The impact shattered the wooden bar front. Gilbert dropped his gun, gasping for air as Lorenzo pinned him to the floor.
"Lorenzo, don't!" Celeste screamed over the roar of the fire.
May you like
I looked up. Celeste had her silver revolver raised. But she wasn't pointing it at Lorenzo.
She was pointing it directly at my chest.
