Chapter 6 - Blood and Marble
The alarms in the estate began to shriek—a high-pitched, terrifying wail that rattled my teeth.
I didn't wait for Marcus to guide me. I sprinted back down the hallway toward the guest suite.
"Sophia!" I screamed.
She was already sitting up in bed, her hands covering her ears, her eyes wide with terror.
"Hannah!"
I scooped her up in my arms just as the sound of automatic gunfire erupted from the front of the house.
The heavy oak doors downstairs were splintering. Glass shattered.
"We're playing a game, sweetie," I lied, my voice shaking as I ran out into the corridor. "We have to go to the secret room."
Marcus was waiting. He shoved a heavy tapestry aside, revealing a reinforced steel door. He punched in a code, and the heavy door hissed open.
"Get in. Don't come out until the Boss opens it," Marcus commanded, shoving us inside and pulling the door shut behind us.
The safe room was a bunker. Thick concrete walls, emergency lighting, monitors showing every camera feed in the house.
I set Sophia down on a leather couch and pulled her into my lap, hiding her face against my chest so she wouldn't look at the screens.
But I couldn't look away.
On the monitors, the Moretti estate had turned into a war zone.
Men in tactical gear poured through the shattered front windows.
But they were completely unprepared for Luca.
I watched the man who had just gently touched my cheek turn into a force of absolute destruction.
He moved with terrifying precision. He didn't waste bullets. He didn't hesitate.
He and his men trapped the Rossetti hit squad in the grand foyer, using the high marble pillars for cover.
It was brutal. It was bloody.
I clamped my hands over Sophia's ears to drown out the muffled sounds of violence seeping through the concrete walls.
"Is Daddy okay?" she whimpered.
"He's fine. He's protecting us," I promised her.
For twenty agonizing minutes, the firefight raged.
Then, one by one, the monitors showed the Rossetti men falling or fleeing.
Luca stood in the center of his ruined foyer. His white shirt was stained with blood—none of it his own.
He looked up directly at the camera feed he knew I was watching.
He gave a single, sharp nod.
The estate fell silent.
Ten minutes later, the heavy steel door hissed open.
Luca stood there. He had changed into a clean black shirt, washing the blood from his hands, hiding the brutality of his world from his daughter's eyes.
Sophia threw her arms out.
He walked in, dropping to his knees, and buried his face in her hair.
"It's over, piccola," he whispered. "The bad men are gone. Elias is gone. We are safe."
He looked over Sophia's shoulder at me.
His eyes were exhausted but filled with a fierce, burning resolve.
"I am ending this," Luca said to me, his voice a low vow. "The war, the violence. I will not have her grow up in a fortress. And I will not have you looking over your shoulder."
I reached out, my hand trembling, and touched his shoulder.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I'm going to dismantle the Rossetti family by dawn," he said calmly. "And then, I am retiring."
I stared at him, stunned. "Can a mafia boss just... retire?"
Luca smiled faintly. "When he controls the entire city, he can do whatever he wants. Especially when he finally has something worth living for."
May you like
He stood up, pulling Sophia into his arms, and offered his free hand to me.
"Come. Let's get you both out of this basement."
