Chapter 7 – BLOOD ON THE MARBLE

“Giovanni!” I screamed as his weight crashed into me, driving us both to the wet pavement.

Behind us, standing near the mouth of the alley, was Marcus. He was bleeding from a head wound, a stolen police revolver gripped in his hand. He had escaped the raid.

“If I don’t get the family, nobody does!” Marcus roared, aiming the gun for a second shot.

Giovanni’s guards opened fire. Marcus was hit multiple times, his body jerking backward before collapsing onto the asphalt, lifeless.

But the threat was over too late. Giovanni was bleeding heavily from his shoulder.

“Get him inside! Call a doctor!” I shouted to the guards.

We rushed him up the private elevator to the hotel suite. Elena screamed when we carried him in, quickly ushering little Mia into the adjoining bedroom so she wouldn’t see the blood.

We laid Giovanni on the sofa. I pressed my coat against his shoulder, my hands stained crimson.

“Hold pressure,” the head guard ordered, dialing their private underground surgeon. “Doc is ten minutes away.”

Giovanni was pale, his breathing shallow. He looked up at me, his gray eyes struggling to focus.

“Claire…” he rasped.

“I’m here, sir. Just stay quiet.”

“No… listen to me.” He reached up with a trembling, bloody hand and grabbed my collar. “If I don’t make it… the quilt. Take the quilt.”

“Stop talking like that. You’re going to be fine.”

“Teresa hid one more thing,” he whispered, his voice fading. “In the center… the blue square. The deed. She left it to…”

His eyes rolled back, and he lost consciousness.

“Giovanni!” I pressed harder on the wound, tears blurring my vision.

The next few hours were a nightmare of blood, medical equipment, and hushed voices. The doctor arrived and managed to extract the bullet, but Giovanni had lost a dangerous amount of blood.

As dawn broke over Chicago, he was stable but unconscious.

Elena sat beside him, holding her brother’s uninjured hand. Mia was asleep in my lap.

I couldn’t stop thinking about his final words. The blue square.

When a fresh guard arrived to relieve the night shift, I made a decision.

“Keep them safe,” I told Elena, gently moving Mia to the bed. “I have to go back to the mansion.”

“It’s not safe, Claire!” Elena warned.

“Marcus is dead, and Bianca is gone,” I said. “I need to finish repairing the quilt.”

I took a cab back to the Vitale estate. The house was eerily silent, the lavish wedding decorations mocking the tragedy of the night before.

I walked into the dining room. The quilt was exactly where I had left it.

I found the center blue square—the one cut from Giovanni’s childhood pajamas. I carefully snipped the threads.

Inside was a folded piece of heavy parchment.

I opened it. It wasn’t just a deed to the house. It was Teresa’s official, notarized will.

And as I read the name of the beneficiary, the room spun.

She hadn’t left the estate to Giovanni. She had left everything—the house, the trust, the charities—to Mia.

But below that, in Teresa’s familiar, elegant handwriting, was a second clause.

“To my dearest friend, Claire Dawson. I leave the guardianship of this trust, and a sum of two million dollars, so she will never have to scrub another floor or fear for her future again.”

I dropped the paper, sobbing into the quiet room.

But I wasn’t alone.

“Well, well,” a voice sneered from the doorway.

I spun around. Bianca stood there, her arm in a makeshift sling, holding a lighter in her good hand.

“If I don’t get this house,” she smiled viciously, “nobody does.”

She dropped the lighter onto the kerosene-soaked wedding drapes.

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