Chapter 3 – [THE SMELL OF GASOLINE IN THE DARK]

“Hey!” Luca roared, throwing his entire weight against the heavy wooden doors. The ancient timber groaned, but the heavy iron padlock on the outside held firm.

“Let us out of here!” Vanessa screamed, her fists pounding frantically against the wood. “Julian! Julian, I know it’s you! Open the door!”

My blood ran cold. Julian Bellini. Vanessa’s older brother, the ruthless enforcer for their family’s syndicate. He had been upstairs at the engagement dinner, charming the guests and drinking expensive scotch.

“Julian, stop!” Vanessa shrieked, dropping to her knees in her ruined red gown, pressing her face near the crack beneath the doors. “It’s me! It’s Vanessa! I’m still inside!”

A calm, muffled voice drifted through the thick wood.

“I know you are, little sister.”

Vanessa froze. A sound of pure, unadulterated terror ripped from her throat.

“The Morettis know everything now,” Julian’s voice echoed coldly from the other side. “You got sloppy. You left the pawn ticket. You let the old man live. You’re a liability to the Bellini family, Vanessa. And liabilities get erased.”

“No! Julian, please! I protected you! I poisoned him for you!” she sobbed, scratching frantically at the floorboards.

“And I appreciate your sacrifice,” Julian replied smoothly. “Enjoy the fire.”

The sound of a match striking echoed in the night.

A second later, a brilliant, terrifying wall of orange flame erupted beneath the door.

The gasoline ignited with a deafening whoosh, sending a shockwave of heat into the enclosed carriage house. The flames immediately began eating away at the dry, rotting wood of the door frame, climbing the walls like a living, breathing monster.

“Get back!” Luca shouted, grabbing Vanessa by the shoulders and throwing her away from the burning door.

The smoke was instantaneous. Thick, black, and choking. It rolled across the ceiling, sinking rapidly toward the floor.

I started coughing, dropping to my knees. The air was already becoming toxic.

“We have to break the windows!” Luca yelled, grabbing a heavy metal tire iron from the corner of the garage. He swung it with all his strength against the small, frosted glass window near the roof.

The glass shattered, but thick iron security bars remained entirely intact behind it.

“It’s no use, son,” Arthur coughed, leaning heavily against his cane. His face was pale, the smoke taking a rapid toll on his seventy-year-old lungs. “Your father reinforced this entire building. Nobody gets in. Nobody gets out.”

“I am not dying in here!” Vanessa shrieked, completely losing her mind. She lunged toward the Mustang, trying to pry the doors open to hide inside, but the heat was already warping the metal.

I crawled across the dusty floor, my eyes streaming with tears from the smoke. My father had died in a garage fire. The Bellinis had burned him alive to silence him. And now, they were going to do the exact same thing to me.

But as I dragged my hand across the concrete floor, my fingers brushed against something cold.

It was a heavy, iron ring embedded in the floorboards beneath the car.

A memory flashed in my mind. A memory of my father, smiling, his face covered in grease.

“This estate is older than the city, Livvy,” my father had told me when I was a little girl. “During Prohibition, they used underground coal chutes to move whiskey from the carriage house to the main mansion’s cellar. They’re still there, hidden under the floor.”

“Mr. Moretti!” I screamed over the roar of the flames. “Luca!”

Luca dropped the tire iron and rushed to my side, dropping to his knees. “Olivia, you need to stay low! The smoke—”

“The floor!” I choked out, pointing at the iron ring. “There’s a coal chute! My dad told me! It leads to the wine cellar in the main house!”

Luca didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the heavy iron ring with both hands. His muscles strained against his tailored suit jacket. He let out a roar of effort, the tattoos on his hands flexing as he ripped the heavy iron grate upward.

A rush of cool, damp air immediately blasted up from the dark hole, pushing the smoke away.

“Go! Go!” Luca shouted.

He grabbed Arthur by the harness of his suit and practically lifted the old man, lowering him gently into the dark, sloping tunnel.

I went next, sliding down the smooth, slanted brick of the ancient chute. It was completely pitch black, but it smelled of earth and old wine.

Luca grabbed Vanessa, who was paralyzed with fear, and shoved her down the hole ahead of him.

The moment Luca slid into the chute, the burning roof of the carriage house collapsed inward, sending a shower of sparks and burning timber down exactly where we had just been standing.

We slid in the dark for what felt like an eternity, tumbling into a pile of soft, dusty canvas bags at the bottom.

I gasped for breath, my lungs burning, but the air here was clean. We were in the mansion’s sub-cellar.

“Is everyone okay?” Luca demanded, pulling a small gold lighter from his pocket and sparking it to give us light.

Arthur nodded, though he was wheezing heavily. Vanessa sat in the dirt, her red dress ruined, weeping hysterically.

I stood up, brushing the dirt off my apron. We were alive. My father’s knowledge had saved us.

“Julian thinks we’re dead,” Luca whispered, his eyes turning terrifyingly cold in the flickering light. “He’s going to walk back into my house, drink my champagne, and pretend to mourn his sister.”

Luca reached behind his back, slipping his hand under his suit jacket. He pulled out a sleek, black 9mm pistol.

“Mr. Moretti,” Arthur warned softly. “The guests are upstairs. The Commission is upstairs. If you shoot a Bellini boss in your own home without proof, the other families will declare war on you.”

“I don’t care about the families,” Luca snarled, racking the slide of the gun.

Suddenly, a heavy, iron door at the far end of the wine cellar groaned open.

A silhouette stepped into the doorway, silhouetted by the hall light.

It was Julian Bellini. And he was holding a suppressed pistol equipped with a laser sight.

“You’re right, Arthur,” Julian smiled, the red laser dot settling directly on Luca’s chest. “The Commission would be very upset. Which is why it’s a good thing you all burned to death in the carriage house.”