Chapter 7 – THE FIRE ALARM

“Where are we going?” Emily asked, her voice trembling as she clung to my hand.

“Somewhere he won’t look,” I said, pulling her toward the door.

I cracked it open and listened. The hallway was completely dark. Marcus had cut the breaker for the second floor.

I could hear the faint crunch of glass downstairs. He was in the foyer.

“We can’t go down the stairs,” I whispered. “He’ll see us.”

“The laundry chute,” Emily suggested softly. “It goes straight down to the basement.”

I looked at her. It was brilliant. The chute was wide enough for her, and just barely wide enough for me if I squeezed.

We slipped out of the master suite and crept down the hallway toward the utility closet. My heart pounded so loudly I thought it would give us away.

Below us, I heard Marcus’s heavy footsteps ascending the grand staircase.

“Claire? Little Emily?” he called out in a mocking singsong voice. “Come out, come out. Uncle Marcus just wants to take a little drive.”

We reached the utility closet. I opened the small metal door of the chute.

“You first,” I whispered to Emily. “Slide down. I’ll be right behind you. Land on the pile of towels.”

Emily didn’t hesitate. She scrambled into the dark tunnel and slid out of sight with a soft whoosh.

I grabbed the silver rosary from my pocket, looping it securely around my neck. I couldn’t lose the proof of Vanessa’s presence at the hospital.

I climbed into the chute just as a shadow turned the corner of the hallway.

“Found you,” Marcus snarled.

I let go.

I slid in terrifying darkness for two seconds before crashing into a massive pile of hotel-grade linens in the basement laundry room. Emily was already there, scrambling out of the way.

“He saw me,” I gasped, pulling myself out of the laundry cart. “He’s coming down.”

The basement of the Moretti estate was enormous—a maze of wine cellars, storage rooms, and archaic boiler equipment.

“This way!” Emily tugged my apron.

She led me through the dark toward the wine cellar. We slipped inside, the cold air biting at our skin. The heavy wooden door clicked shut just as the basement stairwell door burst open.

“You’re making this very difficult, Claire!” Marcus shouted, his voice echoing off the concrete walls.

I pulled Emily behind a towering rack of vintage Barolos. We crouched in the dark, trying to quiet our breathing.

Then, the smell hit me.

Gasoline.

I peeked through the slats of the wine rack. Marcus was standing in the center of the basement, holding a red jerrycan he must have grabbed from the garage. He was splashing it over the wooden storage crates.

He wasn’t bluffing. He was going to burn us alive.

“If I can’t have her, Luca doesn’t get her either!” Marcus yelled, pulling a silver lighter from his tuxedo pocket.

“He’s going to light it,” Emily whimpered.

I looked around frantically. My eyes landed on the ceiling.

A red fire sprinkler head protruded directly above Marcus.

If he lit the fire, the sprinklers would activate. But the gasoline would spread too fast. We would be trapped in the cellar.

I needed to trigger the alarm before he lit the fire.

I looked down at the floor. Next to the wine rack sat a heavy, cast-iron fireplace poker.

I picked it up. It weighed at least five pounds.

“Stay here,” I whispered to Emily.

I crept to the edge of the wine rack. Marcus had his back to me, trying to spark the lighter. His hands were shaking too badly to get it to catch.

I didn’t aim for him. I aimed for the ceiling.

I stepped out from behind the rack and threw the iron poker as hard as I could directly upward.

It smashed into the glass bulb of the sprinkler head.

Instantly, a deafening alarm shattered the silence. The sprinkler head burst open, spraying freezing, high-pressure water directly down onto Marcus.

He screamed, dropping the lighter as the water drenched him and washed the gasoline across the concrete floor.

Within seconds, the entire basement sprinkler system activated. Water poured from the ceiling in a torrential downpour.

“Run!” I yelled to Emily.

We burst out of the wine cellar, slipping on the wet floor. Marcus lunged blindly toward us through the spray, roaring in anger.

His wet hand caught the back of my apron.

I jerked forward, the fabric ripping, but I didn’t stop. I shoved Emily toward the basement exit doors that led up to the garden.

We threw open the doors and stumbled out into the freezing night air.

The siren from the house was deafening. Red emergency lights flashed from the eaves.

We ran across the wet lawn, gasping for air, until we reached the edge of the woods.

I stopped to look back.

Marcus hadn’t followed us. The heavy, automated fire-doors in the basement had likely sealed shut when the alarm triggered. He was trapped inside.

“Claire!”

I spun around.

Luca was running up the path from the lake. He looked soaked and exhausted. Behind him, the taillights of his Mercedes were no longer visible.

He dropped to his knees as Emily ran into his arms. He buried his face in her wet hair, his shoulders shaking.

“I’ve got you,” he kept repeating. “I’ve got you.”

He looked up at me. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head, fighting back tears. “Marcus is trapped in the basement. He tried to start a fire. I triggered the sprinklers.”

Luca’s eyes darkened. “He won’t hurt anyone ever again. The police just pulled through the front gates.”

“What about Vanessa?” I asked, my voice trembling.

Luca stood up, holding Emily tightly to his chest.

“Vanessa decided to hit the gas,” he said quietly. “She didn’t realize the ground near the lake edge had frozen over.”

My stomach dropped. “She drove in?”

“The car sank in thirty seconds,” Luca said, his voice void of any pity. “She didn’t get the files out.”

I reached around my neck and unclasped the silver rosary.

I handed it to Luca.

“She had this in her suitcase,” I said softly. “Look at the bracelet attached to it.”

Luca took the heavy silver beads. He traced his thumb over his dead wife’s hospital band.

For the first time all night, a tear slipped down the mafia boss’s cheek.

“She was there,” he whispered.

“She was,” I confirmed. “But Caroline fought back. She pulled the watch off Marcus, and she made sure Emily got it. Your wife saved you, Mr. Moretti.”

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