Chapter 4 - Bloodline Ties
“Vincent, listen to me!” Gabriel shrieked, his polished facade completely disintegrating as he dragged himself toward the desk on his knees.
“The Morettis were going to wipe us out anyway! The feds have an indictment coming next month!”
“They promised me total immunity and fifty percent of the docklands if I cleared the board!”
Vincent stood up slowly, walking around the perimeter of the desk with terrifying grace.
He didn't pull a weapon; he simply looked down at his younger brother like an entomologist studying a squashed beetle.
“Our father built this family on one unshakeable rule, Gabriel.”
Vincent’s voice resonated through the vaulted ceiling of the library.
“You can steal from the government. You can kill your enemies in the street.”
“You can burn down an entire city block to protect the business.”
“But you never, under any circumstance, plant a bomb under your brother’s bloodline.”
Gabriel wept openly, snot and tears dripping onto the Persian wool.
“We share the same mother, Vincent! You can't kill your own flesh and blood!”
Vincent stopped inches from Gabriel’s trembling shoulders.
“You stopped being my brother the moment you compromised the safety of this house.”
He looked up over Gabriel’s head, catching Dominic’s eye.
“Take him down to the wine cellar under the boathouse. Keep him alive until we identify every contact in the Moretti family he communicated with.”
“And the driver who planted the device?” Dominic asked.
“Frank gave up his safe house address five minutes ago,” Vincent answered coldly. “Send the sweep team. Make sure nothing is left of that apartment by midnight.”
Two guards hoisted Gabriel under his armpits, dragging him backward through the reinforced double doors as he continued to plead for mercy.
When the heavy doors swung shut, the library plunged into absolute silence once more.
I stood frozen by the doorway, Mia clinging so tightly to my hip that my ribs ached.
My heart hammered against my ribcage like a trapped bird.
Vincent turned his attention to us.
He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out an immaculate linen handkerchief, and bent down in front of Mia once again.
With surprising gentleness, he wiped away a smudge of chocolate soup from her lower lip.
“You are very observant, Mia,” Vincent said softly.
Mia looked at him without the slightest trace of fear.
In her innocent child’s mind, this terrifying man had simply listened to her when none of the other adults would.
“The shiny watch was pretty,” Mia whispered, leaning slightly toward him.
A rare, genuine shadow of a smile passed across Vincent’s harsh features.
“It was an expensive watch. But it belonged to a fool.”
He straightened his posture and looked directly into my eyes.
The predatory coldness in his gaze softened into something far more dangerous: profound curiosity and unspoken determination.
“Elena, sit down.”
I obeyed immediately, sitting on the edge of the leather wingback chair while keeping Mia firmly pinned in my lap.
“Mr. Marchetti, we won't say a word to anyone. We can pack our bags, leave Illinois, take a bus to Seattle—”
“You’re not going to Seattle,” Vincent interrupted, walking behind his desk and pouring two fingers of amber bourbon into a crystal glass.
“The Morettis know the hit failed.”
“Within twenty-four hours, their informants inside the local precinct will tell them the bomb didn't detonate because a child intervened.”
“If you step outside those front gates without an armored escort, both of you will be executed at a rest stop before you hit the Iowa border.”
My vision blurred as panic constricted my lungs.
“We can’t live in a fortress forever! I am just a maid!”
Vincent took a measured sip of his drink, his silver eyes piercing through me.
“You were a maid until this morning.”
“Now, you are the mother of the girl who saved the boss of the Chicago outfit.”
“From this day forward, Mia is under my personal protection. She will have private tutors, personal security details, and a trust fund established in her name.”
“And you, Elena, will act as the lady of the third floor.”
I stared at him in utter disbelief.
“Lady of the third floor? What does that even mean?”
“It means you don't clean rooms, you don't sweep hallways, and you don't take orders from anyone in this house except me.”
“People will ask questions,” I stammered, my head spinning wildly. “Your captains, the other crime families... they won't accept an ordinary maid living in your private quarters.”
Vincent placed his crystal glass down onto the desk with a firm, echoing clinking sound.
“Let them ask.”
“The only thing they need to understand is that anyone who looks sideways at you or your child will be buried under six feet of concrete.”
He paused, looking Mia up and down as if searching for something familiar in her features.
“Tell me about her father, Elena.”
The question caught me completely off guard, hitting me with the force of an oncoming train.
My throat turned to sand.
“Her father? I told you when I applied for the job. Sean Miller. He was a shift manager at an auto plant. He left us when Mia was six months old.”
Vincent walked slowly toward us, stopping right beside my chair.
He reached down, his fingertips lightly brushing a lock of Mia’s soft, wavy hazelnut hair away from her forehead.
Underneath that lock of hair was a distinct, diamond-shaped birthmark right at the hairline.
Vincent’s eyes narrowed slightly as he stared at that mark.
“Sean Miller,” Vincent repeated, tasting the name with obvious skepticism.
“Yes, sir.”
Vincent did not press further, but the atmosphere in the room shifted subtly, charged with an unspoken mystery.
“Dominic will take you back upstairs,” Vincent said quietly.
“Eat what the chef prepares. Rest. Tomorrow, Chicago becomes a warzone, and I need to know my home is secure.”
As Dominic escorted us back into the elevator, I looked back through the closing steel doors.
Vincent Marchetti was standing motionless in the center of the library, staring down at an antique framed black-and-white photograph on his desk.
May you like
A photograph of a woman with the exact same diamond-shaped birthmark at her temple.
My hands began to shake all over again, not from fear of the mafia war outside, but from the horrifying realization that my own past was catching up to me faster than any bullet.
