Chapter 5 – BLOOD AND INK

My ears rang. The crackling of the burning cabin behind us sounded like a distant radio static.

“That’s impossible,” I said, reaching for the paper. “My father was Thomas. He raised me. I look like my mother.”

“You look like my mother,” Luca corrected quietly.

He pulled out his wallet. With trembling, bloody fingers, he slid out a small, faded photograph. He held it up next to my face in the dim trunk light.

It was a picture of a young woman laughing on a boat. She had my exact eye shape. My jawline. My untamable waves of dark blonde hair.

“My father had a younger sister,” Luca said, his voice tight. “Isabella. She disappeared when I was six. My father told me she ran away to Europe to escape the life. To escape the Bellinis.”

Frank stood by the passenger door, holding a sleeping Mia. He wouldn’t look at us. He stared at the dirt.

“Uncle Frank,” Luca said, his tone dropping an octave. “Tell me the truth right now, or I swear to God I will leave you on this mountain.”

Frank squeezed his eyes shut.

“Isabella didn’t run away,” Frank choked out. “She fell in love with a beat cop. Thomas Hayes. When Mr. Bellini found out, he was furious. He wanted to marry Isabella to his own brother to consolidate the families. He ordered a hit on her.”

I touched the crayon drawing. My drawing.

“Thomas got to her first,” Frank continued, weeping now. “He tried to get her out of the city. But they were run off the road. Isabella died in the crash. But she’d just had a baby. You, Emily.”

My knees buckled. Luca caught my arm, his grip firm and steady.

“My father found out,” Luca said, piecing it together, staring at the drawing. “He found out Bellini killed his sister.”

“Yes,” Frank sobbed. “Your father went crazy. He was going to slaughter the entire Bellini family. But Thomas Hayes begged him not to. Thomas said if a war started, they would find the baby. They would kill you, Emily. So, your father made a deal with Thomas. Thomas would raise you as his own, in secret. In poverty, off the radar.”

“And the ledger?” Luca demanded.

“There is no ledger!” Frank cried. “The cabin box was a decoy! Your father’s only secret was Emily. He let Bellini think there was financial evidence to keep him paranoid, to keep him looking the wrong way while Emily grew up safe.”

I couldn’t breathe. My entire life—the struggling to pay rent, my father’s exhausted face after double shifts, the poker games—it was all a shield. I wasn’t a maid who accidentally stumbled into a mafia war.

I was James Moretti’s niece. I was Luca’s first cousin.

Luca dropped my arm as if he’d been burned.

He stared at me, the dynamic between us shifting so violently it made the air feel thin. The maid he’d been protecting was his blood.

Before either of us could speak, my cell phone buzzed in my apron pocket.

I pulled it out. Unknown Number.

I answered it on speaker.

“Did you like the drawing, Emily?” Vanessa’s voice purred through the speaker.

Luca grabbed the phone. “If you touch one hair on—”

“Oh, shut up, Luca,” Vanessa snapped. “You think we went to the cabin for a box of dirt? We went to the cabin to draw you out of the city.”

A cold dread pooled in my stomach. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Vanessa laughed, a sharp, ugly sound, “while you were playing hero in the woods, my father’s men paid a visit to the hospital.”

Frank gasped. “Mia’s mother—”

“Your daughter-in-law is fine,” Vanessa said. “But Marco isn’t our only friend inside your crew, Luca. Check your security cameras at the main warehouse.”

The line went dead.

Luca pulled out his own phone, loading the security feed for the Moretti syndicate’s main import warehouse at the docks.

The screen glowed in the dark.

Every single one of Luca’s men—twenty loyal soldiers—were lined up on their knees. Mr. Bellini was walking down the line, holding a gas can.

“He’s burning it down,” Luca whispered. “He’s taking the whole empire tonight.”