Chapter 7

The intercom clicked off, leaving only the sound of Grace’s muffled crying and my own ragged breathing.

“She’s bluffing,” I whispered, clutching Grace tighter. “She wants you to walk into a trap.”

“She’s not bluffing,” Luca replied, his eyes cold as he stared at the bedroom door. “Vanessa is Arthur’s blood. And Arthur never leaves loose ends. If I don’t go down there, my mother dies.”

“Isabella destroyed our lives!” I argued, desperation clawing at my throat. “She faked my father’s death, she sent those men to threaten me, she made you think I abandoned you! Let her deal with the monster she helped create!”

Luca turned to me. The moonlight filtering through the window caught the hard angles of his face.

“She did unforgivable things, Emily. But she is the woman who raised me. I won’t let her be executed in my own hallway.”

He walked to the heavy oak closet doors and pushed a hidden panel. With a soft hiss, the back wall of the closet slid open, revealing a steel-reinforced panic room.

“Get inside,” Luca ordered softly.

“Luca, please—”

“I will come back for you,” he vowed, pressing a hard, desperate kiss to my lips. It was the first time he had kissed me in five years, and it tasted like fear and gunpowder. “I promise.”

He gently pushed me and Grace into the small, dark room. The steel door slid shut, plunging us into total silence and darkness.

Inside the panic room, a small row of monitors glowed to life, showing the security camera feeds from around the estate. The backup generators were keeping the cameras rolling.

I set Grace down on a small cot and frantically tapped the screen that showed the grand foyer.

The image was in black-and-white night vision, but it was clear enough.

Vanessa stood at the bottom of the grand staircase. She was no longer wearing her elegant red silk gown; she had stripped down to practical dark clothes. In her hand was a silver revolver, pressed directly against the temple of Isabella Moretti, who was kneeling on the marble floor, weeping.

Surrounding them were six armed men wearing tactical gear.

One of them stepped forward. He was older, with a pronounced limp and a jagged scar over his left eye.

Arthur Vance.

My stomach violently rejected the sight of the man I had mourned, the man I had called ‘Dad’, standing in the flesh, commanding a squad of mercenaries.

On the screen, Luca appeared at the top of the staircase. He had his hands raised, his weapon left behind.

“Well, well,” Arthur’s voice crackled through the audio feed. “The prodigal son-in-law.”

“Let my mother go, Arthur,” Luca said, slowly descending the stairs. “This is between you and me. She has nothing to do with this.”

Arthur laughed, a raspy, awful sound. “Nothing to do with it? She paid me to disappear! She financed my entire operation! I should thank her. But unfortunately, her little pet project to marry you off to my niece here…” He patted Vanessa’s shoulder. “…failed. Because my idiot adopted daughter decided to show up and play maid.”

I gasped in the panic room. Adopted?

Arthur kept talking. “Emily was supposed to stay gone. I gave her the money. I gave her the threat. But she just couldn’t stay away from Chicago.”

“Where is she?” Vanessa demanded, pressing the gun harder against Isabella’s head. “Where is the maid and the brat?”

“They aren’t here,” Luca lied smoothly. “I had Marco take them out the back tunnels when the power cut.”

Vanessa’s face twisted in rage. “You’re lying!”

“Check the house if you want,” Luca challenged. “But let my mother go.”

Arthur stepped forward, raising his own gun and aiming it squarely at Luca’s chest.

“We don’t need the girl right now,” Arthur smiled cruelly. “With you and your mother dead, Vanessa inherits the estate. We’ll hunt Emily down later.”

My heart stopped.

Arthur pulled the hammer back on his gun.

But suddenly, the front doors of the mansion exploded inward in a shower of splintered wood and broken glass.

Red and blue police lights flooded the foyer, blinding the night-vision cameras.

Dozens of heavily armed FBI agents poured into the room, assault rifles raised.

“FBI! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!”

Arthur and his men froze in shock.

But Vanessa didn’t drop her gun. She panicked.

She turned the revolver away from Isabella and aimed it directly up the stairs at Luca.

“NO!” I screamed, hitting the reinforced glass of the monitor.

Vanessa pulled the trigger.

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