Chapter 3 – The Traitor’s Blood

The revelation hung in the air like a guillotine blade waiting to drop.

Luca’s uncle. Frank’s brother. Silas Moretti.

“Silas?” Luca whispered, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. “Silas helped Antonio kill Mom?”

Frank leaned heavily on his cane, his aged face pale and drawn. “Margaret never trusted him. She always said Silas was too ambitious, too eager to make deals with the Bellinis behind my back. I didn’t listen. I told her he was blood.”

The betrayal was staggering. Silas Moretti wasn’t just a relative; he was Luca’s second-in-command. The man who had mentored Luca after Margaret’s death, teaching him the ruthless ways of the syndicate. Silas had stood by Luca’s side for twenty years, acting as the grieving, loyal uncle, while secretly being the architect of their tragedy.

“Why?” Luca demanded, his voice cracking with a mix of fury and heartbreak. “Why would Silas help the Bellinis kill his own sister-in-law?”

“Because Margaret was the only one who knew he was skimming from the family accounts,” a smooth, chilling voice echoed from the doorway.

We all turned.

Standing in the entrance of the dining room, flanked by four heavily armed guards, was Silas Moretti.

He was a tall, imposing man in his late sixties, impeccably dressed in a tailored charcoal suit. His silver hair was perfectly slicked back, and his dark eyes held a cold, calculating amusement.

“Silas,” Luca snarled, instinctively stepping in front of his father and me, his hand dropping to the holster hidden beneath his jacket.

“Ah, Luca,” Silas sighed, stepping into the room. He glanced at the rusted lockbox and the silver revolver on the table. “I see Vanessa failed to clean up my mess. I told her that little box would cause problems if it was found.”

“You knew about the box?” Luca demanded.

“Of course I knew,” Silas chuckled darkly. “Margaret was clever, but she wasn’t invisible. I knew she hid something in the workshop before she ran that night. I just didn’t know exactly where. When Vanessa’s snooping finally uncovered it yesterday, she panicked and called me instead of her own father. She wanted to leverage it to guarantee her position as your wife.”

Silas’s eyes drifted to me, sitting frozen in the plush chair.

“And she would have succeeded, if not for the bleeding heart of a pregnant maid,” Silas sneered.

“Don’t look at her,” Luca warned, his gun now drawn and pointed squarely at his uncle’s chest. “You killed my mother.”

“I secured our future,” Silas corrected smoothly. “Your father was weak, Luca. He wanted to take the family legitimate. He wanted to build houses instead of empires. Margaret encouraged him. If I hadn’t stepped in, the Moretti name would be nothing but a memory in this city.”

Frank let out a choked cry, gripping the edge of the table. “You murdered my wife for power.”

“I murdered her because she was going to expose my embezzlement to the commission,” Silas said, dropping the pretense. “And I wasn’t about to let a carpenter’s wife destroy what I built.”

Luca’s finger tightened on the trigger. “You’re a dead man, Silas.”

“Am I?” Silas smiled, raising a hand.

The four guards flanking him immediately raised their assault rifles, pointing them not at Luca, but directly at Frank and me.

“You might be fast enough to drop me, Luca,” Silas said, his voice dripping with venom. “But my men will tear your father and this girl to shreds before my body hits the floor. Are you willing to lose the rest of your family tonight?”

Luca froze. The lethal confidence that usually radiated from him faltered as he looked at his elderly father, then at my swollen belly. He was trapped.

“Lower the gun, Luca,” Silas commanded softly. “Or I’ll have them shoot the maid first. Just to make a point.”

My breath hitched in my throat. I pressed my hands protectively over my stomach, my heart pounding a frantic, terrifying rhythm. I looked at Luca, begging him silently not to risk it.

Slowly, agonizingly, Luca lowered his weapon and tossed it onto the dining table. It clattered against the mahogany, coming to a stop near the broken rocking horse.

“Smart boy,” Silas smirked. He gestured to his guards. “Take the old man and the girl to the study. Lock them in.”

Two guards moved forward, grabbing Frank by the arms and hauling him out of his chair.

“Get your hands off him!” I shouted, trying to stand, but the other two guards grabbed me, hauling me roughly to my feet. A sharp pain shot through my lower back, causing me to gasp.

“Don’t hurt her!” Luca roared, lunging forward, but a fifth guard stepped out from the hallway, slamming the butt of his rifle directly into Luca’s temple.

Luca collapsed to his knees, blood pouring from the gash on his head.

“Luca!” Frank cried out as the guards dragged us toward the hallway.

“Secure him,” Silas ordered, looking down at his bleeding nephew. “I’ll deal with you once the Bellinis arrive. We have a peace treaty to renegotiate.”

As the guards dragged me down the long, dimly lit corridor toward the study, the sharp pain in my back flared again, wrapping around my abdomen like a tight, burning band.

I stumbled, letting out a sharp cry.

“Keep moving,” the guard grunted, shoving me forward.

“I can’t,” I gasped, clutching my stomach as a gush of warm fluid soaked through my dress, pooling on the expensive carpet. “My water… my water just broke.”