Chapter 6 – THE STANDOFF IN THE MARBLE FOYER

The heavy gold watch plummeted toward the marble floor.

Mark’s eyes tracked it, his greed completely overriding his situational awareness. He lunged forward, dropping his gun to his side, throwing his hands out to catch the prize.

It was exactly the distraction Dante needed.

The watch hit the marble with a loud, metallic crack, shattering the casing.

In that same fraction of a second, Dante vaulted over the marble railing.

He didn’t fire his weapon. He dropped the fifteen feet straight down into the foyer like a shadow, landing directly on top of Mark.

The impact was brutal. Mark let out a breathless shriek as Dante’s weight crushed him against the shattered marble. The wooden music box went skittering across the floor, stopping near the front doors.

“Take them!” Dante roared.

Marco and the estate guards opened fire simultaneously.

Caught off guard by Dante’s suicidal drop, the Moretti hitmen hesitated for a fatal second. It was all Marco’s men needed. In a chaotic, deafening burst of crossfire, six of the hitmen dropped. The rest scrambled for cover behind the ruined doors, firing blindly into the foyer.

I screamed, covering my ears and dropping to the floor of the balcony, pressing my back against the wall. Henry wheeled himself in front of me, using the reinforced steel of his chair as a shield.

Down below, Dante dragged Mark up by the collar of his cheap leather jacket. He slammed him against a marble pillar, pressing the barrel of his gun directly under Mark’s jaw.

“Tell them to stand down!” Dante roared over the gunfire. “Or I blow your head off!”

Mark was sobbing, blood dripping from his nose. “Stop! Stop shooting!” he screamed at the remaining Moretti men.

The gunfire slowly sputtered to a halt. The air was thick with gray smoke.

Marco and his guards stepped out from cover, their assault rifles trained squarely on the surviving hitmen.

“Drop the weapons,” Marco ordered.

The Moretti men looked at Mark, bleeding and pinned against the pillar, and then at Dante, who looked like a demon forged in violence. One by one, they dropped their guns onto the marble.

Dante didn’t let Mark go. He pressed the gun harder into his jaw.

“You brought mercenaries into my house,” Dante whispered, his voice trembling with a rage so profound it made the air feel cold. “You threatened a pregnant woman. You threatened Romano blood.”

“I have the box!” Mark cried, pointing a shaking finger toward the front doors. “I have the music box! You need me!”

“I don’t need you for anything,” Dante said.

“You do!” Mark pleaded, his eyes darting frantically toward the balcony where I was hiding. “The key isn’t enough, Dante! The ledger is double-locked. Arthur didn’t just build a keyhole. He built a weight mechanism. You need the counterweight!”

Dante froze. He looked down at the shattered pocket watch on the floor. There was a key inside, yes, but nothing else.

“What counterweight?” Dante demanded.

Mark laughed, a wet, desperate sound. He looked up at me.

“Look at her neck, Dante,” Mark sneered, spitting blood onto the marble. “Look at the necklace she never takes off.”

Dante looked up at the balcony.

I reached up, my hand trembling as my fingers brushed against the cold metal resting against my collarbone.

It was a heavy, teardrop-shaped emerald pendant enclosed in a custom brass setting. My father had given it to my mother on their wedding day, and my mother had given it to me right before she passed away. I hadn’t taken it off in three years.

“It’s a magnetic counterweight,” Mark gasped. “I found Arthur’s old blueprints hidden in the attic before I left her. You turn the key, and you drop the emerald into the slot on top. Without her necklace, the box burns the ledger.”

Mark smiled a bloody, missing-tooth smile. “You can’t open it without her. And you can’t open it without me, because I know the sequence.”

Dante stared at him. Then, very slowly, Dante pulled his gun away from Mark’s jaw.

Mark let out a breath of relief, thinking he had won. Thinking he was indispensable.

Dante reached out, grabbed Mark by the back of his neck, and slammed his face directly into the marble pillar.

Mark crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

“Bind him,” Dante told Marco, stepping over Mark’s body without a second glance. “Put him in the basement cell next to Vivienne.”

Dante walked over to the front doors, picked up the wooden music box, and looked up at the balcony.

“Caroline,” Dante called out, his voice softening entirely. “It’s over. You’re safe.”

I slowly stood up, my knees shaking, my hand still clutching the emerald necklace. I looked down at the ruined foyer, at the man who had abandoned me lying unconscious in the dust, and at the man who had risked his life to save me holding my father’s legacy.

For the first time in my life, I truly understood who I was.

I wasn’t Caroline Hayes, the abandoned maid.

I was Caroline Romano.