Chapter 4 - Echoes of the Past
The mansion’s primary lights flickered twice and died, plunging the Rose Room into the deep amber glow of the dying cedar fire.
The backup generators hummed somewhere deep in the basement, but before the auxiliary lights could engage, the unmistakable chatter of automatic gunfire erupted from the southern courtyard below.
Glass shattered on the lower floor.
“Down!” Luca roared, moving with blinding speed.
He didn't hesitate. He grabbed the arm of Sofia’s wheelchair with one hand, hooked his other arm around my waist, and dragged both of us toward the reinforced corner of the room behind a massive marble hearth just as three high-caliber rounds punched through the heavy bay windows, sending wood splinters and heavy velvet drapes showering over the carpet.
Sofia gasped, but she didn't scream. Her life as the matriarch of the Moretti family had prepared her for violence. She clung to my arm, her knuckles white.
“Marco Bellini didn't wait for six in the morning,” Luca muttered, his voice dangerously calm. He drew a custom black semi-automatic pistol from beneath his jacket, chambering a round with a smooth, lethal *clack*.
He pressed a button beneath the mantle. A heavy oak bookcase shuddered and swung forward an inch, revealing a steel-reinforced panic shelter built directly into the mansion’s nineteenth-century stone foundation.
“Get inside,” Luca commanded, shoving the door open. “Both of you. Now.”
“Luca, no,” Sofia tried to force the words from her damaged vocal cords, a guttural sound tearing from her throat. Her hands flailed, signing frantically. *Don't leave us. They know the layout!*
“They know the old layout, Ma,” Luca said gently, brushing a gray curl from her forehead with a thumb that didn't shake. “They don't know the upgrades I made last month. Claire, take the radio on the shelf inside. Frequency four. Do not open that door for anyone unless you hear my voice giving the code phrase: *The sparrows sleep at dawn.* Do you understand?”
“The sparrows sleep at dawn,” I repeated, my teeth vibrating in my jaw from the adrenaline coursing through my veins.
“Good girl,” Luca said, his eyes lingering on mine for a split second, an intense, searing look that sent an electric shock through my chest. “Lock it from the inside.”
He pushed the wheelchair through the narrow opening, thrust me inside behind it, and pulled the steel door shut. The deadbolts slammed into place with an industrial thud.
The panic room was small, lit by a soft green emergency strip along the baseboards. It contained two leather cots, a rack of bottled water, medical supplies, and a bank of six black-and-white monitor screens displaying the estate’s closed-circuit security cameras.
Outside, the muffled sounds of war echoed through the concrete walls—bursts of gunfire, the heavy concussions of flashbang grenades, and the shouting of men dying in the gardens.
I knelt beside Sofia, wrapping a wool blanket around her shivering shoulders. “I’m here, Mrs. Moretti. We’re safe in here. Luca is going to handle it.”
Sofia pointed a shaking finger at the middle monitor screen.
I looked up. The camera showed the ground-floor hallway outside the grand ballroom.
Two men in tactical gear, carrying suppressed submachine guns, were moving methodically through the corridors. But they weren't wearing the street clothes of hitmen hired from the alleys. Their gear was professional, matching the private security contractor that Don Marco Bellini employed for his shipping operations.
And walking right behind them, completely unharmed, was Vanessa.
She had been freed from the west wing.
“She had someone on the inside,” I breathed, staring at the screen in horror. “She didn't wait for her father. She had a sleeper agent among the staff.”
Sofia grabbed my wrist with surprising strength. Her fingers began to move rapidly in the green light of the monitors.
*Look at the man leading them,* she signed. *Look at his helmet.*
I zoomed in slightly using the console joystick on the desk. The lead tactical operative paused beneath an archway, turning his head toward the camera. Beneath his ballistic visor, a distinct scar ran from his right ear down to the corner of his jaw.
*Dante Rossi,* Sofia signed, her eyes wide with terror. *Luca’s underboss. My husband’s nephew.*
A cold knot formed in the pit of my stomach. Dante Rossi was Luca’s second-in-command. He was the man who had supposedly coordinated the security detail for the estate tonight. If Dante was leading the hit squad, then the outer guards hadn't been overpowered—they had been betrayed from within.
Luca was walking into an ambush.
He was hunting down Bellini’s men on the ground floor, unaware that his own right-hand man was coming up behind him with a firing squad.
“We have to warn him,” I said, looking at the two-way radio resting on the shelf.
Sofia grabbed the radio and shoved it into my hands, nodding fiercely.
I switched the knob to frequency four. Static hissed softly through the small speaker.
May you like
I pressed the transmit button, my voice barely a whisper. “Mr. Moretti? Luca, do you copy?”
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