Chapter 5 – THE INSIDE MAN

The cold steel of Enzo’s gun pressed harder against my skull.

I couldn’t breathe. My hands gripped the metal railing of the catwalk.

“Enzo,” Luca said. He didn’t raise his voice, but the terrifying calm in his tone made the air feel heavy. He didn’t turn around. He just slowly lowered his handgun and set it on the grating at his feet. “You’ve been with my family for ten years.”

“I’ve been with Marco for twenty,” Enzo replied smoothly in English. “He paid my way through private investigator school. He made sure I was the one you hired to check the security of your estates. I’ve been feeding him your blind spots for a decade.”

A sickening realization washed over me. Enzo was the one who had cleared my background check. Enzo was the one who placed me in the Moretti household.

Down below, Sophia let out a terrified wail.

“Shut the kid up!” Dominic Bellini barked, pacing nervously. He looked up at Marco. “You said this would be clean, Marco! You said we force Michael out, pin the faulty permits on him, and split the fifty million from the waterfront budget.”

Marco smiled, a cold, reptilian curving of his lips. “Dominic, you are a brilliant businessman, but a terrible criminal. Did you really think I was going to share the money with you?”

Dominic froze. “What are you talking about?”

“The money is already in an offshore account in the Caymans,” Marco said smoothly. “Under your name, Dominic. With a very obvious paper trail linking you to the embezzlement. When the FBI raids this warehouse in exactly thirty minutes, they will find you, the forged documents, and a kidnapped child. You’re going away for life.”

Dominic’s face turned purple with rage. “You son of a bitch! I’ll tell them everything! I’ll tell them you orchestrated it!”

“Who will they believe?” Marco laughed. “The desperate shipping magnate caught red-handed with his kidnapped niece, or the grieving uncle who tried to stop him? Enzo is going to shoot Luca up there. We’ll say you killed him in a panic.”

Vanessa’s father realized he was a dead man walking. He lunged at Marco.

Marco didn’t even blink. He raised his pistol and shot Dominic in the leg.

The gunshot was deafening in the metal warehouse. Dominic screamed and collapsed onto the concrete, clutching his bleeding thigh.

Sophia shrieked, covering her ears and curling into a tiny ball on the wooden crate.

“Sophia!” I screamed, unable to stop myself.

“Quiet, maid,” Enzo snapped behind me, grabbing my hair.

“Let her go, Enzo,” Luca commanded, his voice lethal. “This is between me and Marco. Let Emily take the child and walk out. You have me. That’s what you want.”

Marco looked up at us, his eyes gleaming with malicious delight. “Oh, Luca. You still don’t understand why the maid is here, do you?”

Luca’s eyes narrowed. “You stole her trust fund. You brought her here to use her as leverage against my conscience.”

“Leverage?” Marco laughed darkly. “No, Luca. She’s not leverage. She’s the final piece of the puzzle.”

Marco gestured with his gun toward me.

“Twenty-six years ago, a man took a bullet meant for your father. Your father felt so guilty, he wrote a clause into the family’s ironclad bylaws before he died. A clause he entrusted to his lawyer—me.”

Marco smiled.

“If the child of that innocent man ever came forward and demanded restitution, the Moretti family was legally bound to pay a blood debt. Ten million dollars. Immediately liquid. No questions asked.”

My mind spun. Ten million dollars?

“I couldn’t just steal the ten million,” Marco explained casually. “The bylaws require the heir to physically claim it. So, I found Emily. I engineered her mother’s financial ruin. I brought her into this house. Tonight, after Dominic takes the fall, Enzo is going to forge Emily’s signature on the restitution claim.”

Marco pointed his gun at my chest.

“And then, Enzo is going to throw Emily’s body into the river. An unfortunate casualty of Dominic Bellini’s madness.”

My knees went weak. I wasn’t just an insurance policy. I was a walking, breathing bank withdrawal. And my expiration date was tonight.

“You’re a monster,” I whispered, tears streaming down my face.

“I’m a pragmatist,” Marco corrected. He looked at Enzo. “Shoot my nephew. Make it look like a struggle. Then bring the girl down here.”

Enzo shoved the barrel of the gun against Luca’s back.

“Sorry, boss,” Enzo said.

In that split second, I didn’t think about the ten million dollars. I didn’t think about the waterfront fraud. I thought about the way Luca had handed me a clean napkin when Vanessa humiliated me. I thought about how he defended me.

I threw myself backward, slamming my elbow directly into Enzo’s throat.

Enzo gagged, stumbling back. The gun fired into the metal ceiling, raining sparks down on us.

Luca moved with terrifying speed. He spun around, grabbing Enzo’s gun arm and twisting it until a sickening crack echoed through the catwalk. Enzo screamed, dropping the weapon. Luca delivered a brutal strike to Enzo’s jaw, sending the investigator crashing unconscious against the railing.

Down below, Marco cursed and aimed his pistol up at us.

“Get down!” Luca roared, tackling me to the grated floor just as two bullets pinged off the metal where we had been standing.

Luca grabbed his own gun from the floor. He rolled to the edge of the catwalk and fired twice.

Marco ducked behind a forklift, returning fire. The warehouse erupted into a deafening shootout.

I covered my head, terrified. But over the sound of the gunfire, I heard something worse.

A heavy, metallic groaning noise.

Dominic Bellini, bleeding and desperate on the floor, had crawled over to the warehouse control panel. With a bloody hand, he had pulled a massive red lever.

“If I’m going to prison, you’re all dying with me!” Dominic screamed maniacally.

The rusted chains of the warehouse crane began to move. Suspended directly above the crate where little Sophia was crying was a massive, ten-ton shipping container.

And the chains were releasing.

“Sophia!” I screamed, scrambling up from the floor.

The container began to plunge.