Chapter 7 – THE POISON IN THE AIR VENTS

The freezing wind whipped Vanessa’s dark hair around her face. She looked like a nightmare painted against the white snow.

“Step away from the car, Anna,” Vanessa commanded, her hands perfectly steady as she aimed the silver revolver at my heart.

Lily screamed and hid behind my legs, clutching my apron.

“Vanessa, please,” I begged, holding my hands up. My left hand was dripping blood onto the pure white snow. “It’s over. Luca knows everything. Your father’s men can’t hold the mansion forever. Just let us go.”

Vanessa laughed, a sharp, hysterical sound.

“My father is dead,” Vanessa said coldly.

My breath caught in my throat.

“Luca shot him,” Vanessa continued, her eyes burning with a terrifying, unhinged fury. “Your precious mafia boss took a bullet to the shoulder, but he put two in my father’s chest before he bled out in the foyer.”

Luca was alive. But he was severely wounded.

“And Thomas?” I asked, terrified of the answer.

Vanessa’s expression didn’t change. “Thomas is a coward. He locked himself in the panic room. My men are cutting through the door right now. He’ll suffocate in ten minutes.”

She raised the gun slightly, aiming it past me, directly at the little girl trembling behind my knees.

“Come here, Lily,” Vanessa ordered softly. “Mommy is going to take you away now.”

“No!” Lily cried, burying her face into my apron. “You’re not my mommy! You’re mean!”

Vanessa’s face twisted in rage. The facade of the loving adoptive mother completely shattered.

“I gave you everything!” Vanessa screamed at the child. “I protected you! I raised you! You are my ticket to this empire, and you are getting in the car right now, or I will shoot this stupid maid in the head!”

I didn’t move. I shifted my body, fully shielding Lily from the barrel of the gun.

“You don’t want her, Vanessa,” I said, my voice shaking but defiant. “You just want what she represents. You want Caroline’s life.”

“I DESERVE Caroline’s life!” Vanessa roared, stepping closer, the gun inches from my face. “I loved Luca first! I was the one who was supposed to marry him! But he chose that weak, pathetic woman over me. So I took the only thing Caroline left behind. I took her legacy.”

She pulled the hammer back on the revolver. The metallic click was deafening in the quiet snow.

“Say goodbye to the maid, Lily,” Vanessa whispered.

I closed my eyes, preparing for the gunshot.

BANG.

The gunshot rang out, echoing off the carriage house walls.

But I didn’t feel any pain.

I opened my eyes.

Vanessa was staring down at her chest in absolute shock. A dark red stain was rapidly blooming across the torn silk of her red gown.

She dropped the silver revolver into the snow.

Then, she collapsed backward, her lifeless eyes staring up at the falling snow.

I gasped, looking past her body.

Walking out of the tree line, clutching his bleeding right shoulder, was Luca Moretti.

His black suit was ruined. He looked like a ghost, pale and swaying, but his left hand held a smoking handgun.

He had tracked us through the snow. He had protected his family.

Luca dropped the gun and fell to his knees in the snow, completely exhausted.

“Daddy!”

Lily didn’t hesitate. The nine-year-old girl ran past Vanessa’s body and threw herself into Luca’s arms.

Luca let out a raw, agonizing sob. He wrapped his good arm around his daughter, burying his face in her dark hair.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Luca wept, kissing the top of her head. “I’ve got you. Nobody is ever taking you away from me again.”

I stood by the car, crying freely as I watched the mafia boss hold the child he thought he had lost nine years ago.

A few minutes later, the roar of approaching engines broke the silence. But it wasn’t Vanessa’s men.

Three black SUVs tore into the carriage house driveway, bearing the Moretti crest. Luca’s loyal backup had finally arrived.

Mrs. Carter, the head housekeeper, jumped out of the first SUV, running toward us with a heavy blanket.

“Mr. Moretti!” she cried, wrapping the blanket around Lily and Luca.

“Secure the mansion,” Luca ordered weakly to his men. “Find Thomas in the panic room. Get him out.”

I walked over to Luca and handed him the folded piece of paper—the clinic records Thomas had given me.

“This proves everything,” I said softly. “It proves Vanessa’s father forged the death certificate. It proves Lily is yours.”

Luca looked at the paper, then up at me. His eyes were filled with profound gratitude.

“You saved my daughter’s life tonight, Anna,” Luca said, his voice thick with emotion.

He looked at my bleeding hand.

“Get her to the hospital,” Luca ordered his men. “And pay off her mother’s home-care nurse for the next twenty years.”

I felt a massive weight lift off my chest. My mother was safe. I was safe.

The nightmare was over. The truth was out. Lily belonged to her real father.

But as I sat in the back of the SUV, getting my hand bandaged by a paramedic, my phone buzzed again.

It was a text message. From an unknown number.

“You think Vanessa was the mastermind? Look closer at the clinic records, Anna. Dr. Bellini didn’t forge the death certificate alone.”

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