Chapter 7 - The Blood on the Linoleum
The interior of the apartment building smelled of burnt cordite, plaster dust, and wet copper.
Emergency exit lights flickered feebly on backup batteries, casting a sickly greenish glow over the wooden stairs.
The third-floor door had been kicked off its hinges, the deadbolt ripped straight through the splintered oak frame.
"Caleb!" I screamed, charging up the steps two at a time, heedless of the glass crunching beneath my sneakers.
Luca caught up to me at the landing, his large frame pushing me behind his back as he cleared the doorway with his weapon raised.
The apartment was completely destroyed.
The small dining table where Caleb and I ate cheap pasta was overturned.
My mother’s ceramic tea set lay shattered across the faded carpet.
In the center of the narrow hallway, a man in a tactical windbreaker lay motionless in a pool of dark blood, a heavy brass pipe wrench protruding from his cracked skull.
"Emma!" a ragged voice gasped from behind the overturned sofa.
Caleb tumbled out from the shadows, his face covered in soot, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold a bloody kitchen cleaver.
His knuckles were split open, his shirt torn to shreds, but his eyes were alive.
"Caleb!" I collapsed onto my knees, throwing my arms around his neck and checking his chest for bullet wounds.
"Are you hurt? Where is Dad? Where is he?"
"In the back bedroom," Caleb choked out, sobbing into my shoulder.
"Three men kicked the door down... they had zip-ties and guns... they were shouting about a key and a combination."
"I hit the first guy with Dad’s industrial wrench from the toolbox... the other two dragged Dad into the rear room!"
Luca didn't waste a second.
He stepped over the dead body in the hall, raised his weapon, and kicked the bedroom door wide open.
A gunshot thundered from inside the bedroom, wood splinters biting into the hallway drywall.
Luca fired twice in return with mechanical rhythm.
A heavy body hit the floorboards with a wet thud, followed by the clatter of a dropped weapon.
I pushed past Luca’s shoulder and stumbled into the room.
The third intruder had Arthur Reed pinned against the rusted metal frame of his hospital bed, an arm wrapped around my father’s throat and a snub-nosed revolver pressed against his temple.
My father was wearing his threadbare grey flannel pajamas.
His paralyzed left side hung limp, but his right hand was clawing desperately at the intruder’s forearm, his chest heaving with silent, wheezing gasps.
"Back up, Moretti!" the gunman screamed, his eyes wild with terror as he realized his entire backup squad had been wiped out in the street below.
"Back the hell up or I blow this old bastard’s brains all over the wall!"
"The Detroit families want the ledger numbers!"
"Tell your dogs outside to drop their guns and give me a clean car, or the old man dies right now!"
Luca lowered his weapon by half an inch, stepping casually into the center of the bedroom as if he were attending an ordinary business meeting.
His face was an unreadable mask of ice.
"You're working for Sal Marcone in Detroit, aren't you?" Luca asked, his tone flat and conversational.
"Shut up! Drop the piece!" the man yelled, pressing the barrel harder into my father’s thin grey hair.
Arthur’s face was turning blue, but his right eye flicked toward Luca, recognizing the features of the boy he had known thirty years ago.
A faint, defiant flicker of pride ignited in my father's tired eyes.
"You made two critical mistakes tonight," Luca continued calmly, taking a slow step forward.
"First, you assumed Arthur Reed would break under torture."
"Arthur spent thirty years working fifty feet underground in ninety-degree heat without ever compromising his dignity."
"He wouldn't give you a sandwich recipe, let alone my father’s ledgers."
"What was the second mistake?" the gunman spat, sweat dripping into his eyes.
"The second mistake," Luca whispered, "was thinking you had leverage."
Before the man could pull the trigger, Arthur Reed used every ounce of strength remaining in his functioning right arm.
He didn't try to knock the gun away.
Instead, he reached out, grabbed the emergency release lever of his hydraulic hospital bed, and yanked it down with all his body weight.
The heavy steel spring mechanism slammed downward with a violent metallic clack.
The sudden shift in leverage pulled the gunman forward by four inches, unbalancing his footing on the slippery linoleum.
That four-inch gap was an eternity to Luca Moretti.
A single suppressed shot coughed from Luca’s barrel.
The intruder’s head snapped back violently, his eyes rolling into his skull as he collapsed across the foot of the bed, dead before his back touched the floor.
The room went dead silent, except for the heavy, ragged breathing of my father.
I dropped to my knees beside the bed, wrapping my arms around my father’s frail shoulders, pressing my face into his cold neck.
"Dad... Dad, you're safe. We're here," I wept, feeling his trembling right hand rise up to stroke my hair.
Arthur couldn't speak—the stroke had taken his vocal cords months ago—but his chest rumbled with a deep, shuddering sigh of relief.
He looked past my shoulder, fixing his gaze upon Luca Moretti standing tall in the doorway, the barrel of his smoking weapon pointed toward the floor.
My father raised his trembling right hand, touched his own forehead, and lowered it in a slow, solemn nod of respect.
Luca slowly bowed his head in return, sliding his weapon back into its leather holster.
"Arthur," Luca said softly, his voice carrying genuine sorrow.
"You gave everything you had to my family, and I allowed their ghosts to follow you to your doorstep."
"That ends tonight."
Silvio appeared in the bedroom doorway, wiping rain from his face with a tactical glove.
"Boss, the block is secure. Detroit's perimeter vehicles have been neutralized."
"The police dispatch has been rerouted to a false alarm on the West Side, but we have less than ten minutes before private security units start poking around."
Luca turned to Silvio, his eyes blazing with cold command.
"Bring Dr. Hayes and an armored medical transport here immediately."
"Arthur Reed and his son are being moved to the safe house at the Lake Forest compound under twenty-four-hour armed guard."
"If so much as a stray cat approaches their perimeter without authorization, shoot it."
"Yes, Boss," Silvio replied, turning to bark orders into his radio.
Luca stepped to the edge of the bed and looked down at my father.
"Arthur, they didn't just come for your silence."
"They came because Vanessa Bellini gave them the coordinates to the foundry vault."
My father’s eyes widened in sudden horror.
His right hand reached out frantically, clutching the lapel of Luca’s expensive wool coat with surprising strength.
He tapped his chest three times, then pointed directly at me, his mouth opening in a silent, desperate struggle to form words.
"Dad, what is it?" I asked, gripping his wrist.
Arthur reached over to the nightstand, grabbed a yellow legal pad and a stubby carpenter’s pencil, and began scribbling with frantic, jagged strokes.
He tore the sheet from the pad and thrust it into Luca’s hand.
Luca read the three lines written in my father’s shaky, uneven handwriting.
His eyes narrowed to razor slits, and the air around him grew instantly frigid.
"Emma," Luca said, his voice dropping into a dangerous whisper.
May you like
"Pack your father’s medical records."
"We are going to the foundry right now."
