The shadows in the secret basement felt heavier now, clinging to the damp stone walls like a second skin. Above us, the muffled concussions of gunfire rattled the floorboards, but down here, time had stopped in a suffocating bubble of betrayal and dust.
Lorenzo stood frozen, the letter from his dead mother trembling in his grip. The revelation that Giovanni was not his father—that his entire life, his name, and the bloodline he had sworn to protect were built on a foundation of silence—seemed to fracture the very core of his formidable presence.
Giovanni’s rheumy eyes locked onto Lorenzo’s, pleading in that agonizing, soundless language. Four taps. Yes. Salvatore was the man whose blood ran through Lorenzo’s veins. Salvatore, the rival whose name was whispered only in terror, the man who had just breached the gates.
My breath came in shallow gasps. Brody was here. The same Brody who had vanished three months ago, leaving me drowning in debt, fear, and a pregnancy I was facing entirely alone. He hadn’t just abandoned me. He had orchestrated this. The pieces violently collided in my mind: my sudden hiring at the Moretti estate, the way Mrs. Gable had watched me, the subtle manipulations that had guided me straight into this gilded cage. I wasn’t just a random pregnant maid scraping by. I was a pawn in a war decades in the making.
On the flickering security monitor, Brody pressed the barrel of his gun against Mrs. Gable’s temple. The wicked grin stretching across his face bore no resemblance to the man I once knew.
Give me the child, Brody mouthed through the lens, his eyes fixed dead ahead as if he could see straight through the screen into the hidden vault.
Lorenzo snapped out of his trance. The shock vanished, replaced instantly by the lethal, ice-cold fury of a Moretti cornered. He jammed his pistol into its holster, drew a secondary firearm, and shoved the incriminating photograph and letter into his jacket.
“Move,” Lorenzo commanded his remaining guards, his voice cutting through the distant sound of breaking glass above. “Secure the service elevator. If anyone reaches this basement, put a bullet in them.”
He turned to me, his dark eyes burning with an intensity that made my knees weaken. He grabbed my arm, his grip firm but not cruel, pulling me away from the desk.
“You,” Lorenzo said, his voice dangerously low. “You knew him?”
“He was gone,” I choked out, tears finally breaking free, hot and stinging against my cheeks. “I swear to God, Lorenzo, I didn’t know. He left three months ago. He said he was going away for work.”
“Work,” Lorenzo repeated bitterly, casting a glance back at the monitor where Brody was now executing a calculated sweep of the main foyer with Salvatore’s men. “Your boyfriend is an operative for the man who murdered my mother and wants to burn my legacy to the ground. And he knows about the child.”
A sharp, stabbing cramp ripped through my lower abdomen, doubling me over with a gasp. I clutched my stomach, panic suffocating whatever air I had left. Lily stirred violently inside me, sensing the terror, or perhaps responding to the adrenaline pumping through my veins.
Dr. Russo stepped forward, trying to shield me, but Lorenzo was already moving. He scooped me up into his arms before I could protest, ignoring my breathless gasps.
“I can walk,” I whispered, burying my face against the rough fabric of his coat.
“Shut up and hold on,” Lorenzo ordered, his stride unyielding as he carried me toward the elevator.
Behind us, Giovanni slammed his hand against the armrest of his wheelchair.
Three taps.
No.
Lorenzo paused, looking back at the old man who had protected me, the man who had suffered in silence for five years while a monster wore his skin.
“What is it, Papa?” Lorenzo called out.
Giovanni pointed a trembling finger not toward the elevator, not toward the hidden vault, but directly at the heavy steel door leading deeper into the foundation—toward an unmapped exit that led straight out past the estate’s perimeter walls.
A backup escape route. One that Salvatore’s men didn’t know about.
Lorenzo’s expression hardened with grim resolve. He looked from Giovanni to me, then back to the flickering monitor where Brody was stepping over the body of a fallen guard, aiming his weapon directly at the camera lens as if he were looking right at us.
“We go now,” Lorenzo said, adjusting his grip on me as the gunfire overhead grew deafeningly close. “And when I find Salvatore—and your little boyfriend—they will learn what happens when you touch what belongs to a Moretti.”
