Chapter 4 – The Brother’s Debt

I couldn’t breathe.

I stared at the black-and-white security monitor, my hands pressed flat against the cold glass.

Tommy was kneeling on the marble floor of the grand foyer. His face was swollen, his college sweatshirt torn and stained with blood. A man in a dark suit held a pistol casually against the back of my brother’s head.

“Claire?” Rosa asked softly from her wheelchair. “Who is that boy?”

“It’s my brother,” I choked out, tears blurring the screen. “Tommy. He’s supposed to be at his dorm in Boston. Why do they have him?”

Lily grabbed my hand, her small fingers wrapping tightly around mine. “Are they going to hurt him, Claire?”

I didn’t know what to say.

The man on the screen tapped the gun against Tommy’s skull, pointing again at the handwritten sign.

Victoria had planned this. She knew I would run to the bunker with Anthony’s family. She knew the only way to get Anthony to surrender was to breach the safe room. And she knew I had the code to open the door from the inside.

“They want me to open the door,” I whispered, staring at the heavy steel vault separating us from the war above.

Rosa wheeled herself closer to the screens. She looked at Tommy’s battered face, then at the armed men surrounding him.

“Claire,” Rosa said gently, but with the firm authority of a Mafia matriarch. “If you open that door, they will kill all of us. And they will still kill your brother.”

“I can’t just let him die!” I cried, panic rising in my throat. “He’s twenty-one! He’s just a kid!”

“Victoria paid his tuition, didn’t she?” Rosa asked quietly.

I spun around. “What?”

Rosa sighed, her frail hands resting in her lap. “When you were hired eleven months ago, Victoria told Anthony she found a charity case. A poor girl whose brother was drowning in gambling debts. She said she paid the debts off in exchange for your loyalty.”

My stomach dropped.

“Tommy doesn’t gamble,” I said, shaking my head. “He’s pre-law. I send him my paychecks every week. I pay his tuition.”

Rosa’s eyes filled with pity. “Oh, my sweet girl. You’ve been sending your money into a black hole.”

I looked back at the screen. Tommy looked terrified, mouthing words to the camera.

He was mouthing, I’m sorry, Claire.

Victoria hadn’t hired me out of charity. Tommy had racked up debt with the Rossi family. Victoria bought that debt to force him into compliance, using him to plant me in the Marino house. I was the perfect, unwitting pawn.

Suddenly, a massive explosion rocked the bunker.

Dust fell from the ceiling. The monitors flickered.

On screen, the Rossi men scattered as the grand foyer’s windows shattered inward.

Anthony and Marcus stormed through the smoke.

Anthony moved with terrifying precision. He wasn’t the loving father carving a turkey anymore. He was a weapon.

In seconds, the Rossi men holding Tommy were on the floor.

Anthony grabbed Tommy by the collar of his ruined sweatshirt and hauled him to his feet. He shoved Tommy behind Marcus, putting his own body between my brother and the remaining Rossi shooters.

I let out a loud, shuddering breath. He saved him. Anthony saved my brother.

Anthony pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it.

A second later, the radio on the bunker desk crackled to life.

“Claire,” Anthony’s deep voice echoed in the small room.

I grabbed the receiver. “I’m here! We’re safe!”

“Is your brother named Tommy?”

“Yes! Thank you, Mr. Marino. Thank you for saving him.”

There was a long pause on the radio. The sound of gunfire echoed in the background.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Anthony said, his voice cold. “He just told me how Victoria got the cottage floorboards open.”

I froze. “What?”

“He says he’s the one who stole the diary, Claire. Victoria made him sneak onto the estate yesterday. He gave the evidence to the Rossis.”

My heart stopped. Tommy had stolen the diary?

“He’s lying!” I panicked. “He wouldn’t do that!”

“He did,” Anthony replied. “And now the Rossis have the diary. They’re demanding safe passage out of the city, or they’ll release it to the Feds and destroy my entire family.”

“I didn’t know,” I sobbed into the radio. “I swear I didn’t know!”

“I believe you,” Anthony said softly. “But the Rossis don’t want money anymore. They want an exchange.”

“An exchange for what?”

“They want my mother.”

Rosa stiffened in her wheelchair.

“They know my mother is the only one who can authenticate Elena’s diary,” Anthony explained over the radio. “If they have her, they control the narrative. They control me.”

“I won’t open the door,” I swore, gripping the radio tight. “They’ll have to kill me first.”

“I know,” Anthony said. “That’s why I’m going to end this right now.”

“Anthony, wait!” Rosa shouted, grabbing the microphone from my hand. “Don’t do anything foolish!”

But the radio went dead.

On the monitors, Anthony handed Tommy over to Marcus.

Then, Anthony dropped his weapon.

He raised his hands in the air and walked slowly out the front doors, straight into the blinding headlights of the Rossi SUVs.

He was surrendering.

“No!” Lily screamed, hitting the glass screen. “Daddy!”

The Rossi men quickly surrounded him, forcing him to his knees in the snow.

A tall man in a heavy winter overcoat stepped out of the lead SUV.

He walked up to Anthony.

But as the man stepped into the light of the porch, Rosa gasped.

She pressed her trembling hand against the monitor.

“That’s impossible,” Rosa whispered, her face completely drained of blood.

“Who is it?” I asked, terrified.

Rosa pointed at the heavy winter coat the man was wearing.

“That coat,” Rosa breathed. “That’s my husband’s coat. The one he was wearing the night he was murdered twenty years ago.”

Share