Chapter 4 - The Enemy Inside My House
Gunfire shattered the ballroom chandeliers.
Crystal rained onto the tables as Elena crouched behind the balcony railing. Dominic’s surviving security officers entered through the west doors, firing toward Adrian’s men.
I moved through the confusion, searching for Gabriel.
He had vanished.
Luca lay behind the stage, still bound to the chair. I cut the rope around his wrists.
“You should leave me,” he said.
“I may kill you later.”
“That seems fair.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Then help the staff reach the kitchen corridor.”
Luca stared at me.
“You trust me to do that?”
“No. But you owe them.”
He nodded and began guiding employees toward cover.
Across the ballroom, Adrian crawled behind an overturned table. Carlo Vescari appeared beside him, blood spreading beneath his body armor where my bullet had struck.
I fired.
Carlo pulled Adrian away just before the shot hit.
“Elena!” I shouted.
She looked down from the balcony.
“Where is the drive?”
“Transmitted.”
“To whom?”
“Federal prosecutors, three newspapers, and a journalist my mother trusted.”
A bullet struck the railing near her face.
“Get down!”
She disappeared behind the stone.
Gabriel emerged from a side door and fired toward her position.
I crossed the ballroom, using tables as cover.
Before I could reach him, Gabriel grabbed Mrs. Bellini and pressed a gun beneath her chin.
“Stop,” he called.
The remaining gunfire faded.
Rosa stood rigid in his grip.
She had helped raise me. She had taught me to read Italian, cleaned blood from my knees when I fought other boys, and stayed beside my mother during her final illness.
Gabriel dragged her toward the doors.
“Drop your weapon, Matteo.”
I aimed at his head.
“You will not make it outside.”
“I do not need to.”
He looked toward the balcony.
“I only need the girl.”
Elena rose slowly behind the railing.
“No,” I said.
Gabriel smiled.
“She has her mother’s courage.”
“And you have none,” Elena answered.
Rosa’s eyes moved toward me.
Something passed across her face.
A warning.
Then she drove her elbow backward into Gabriel’s ribs.
He fired.
The shot thundered through the ballroom.
Rosa collapsed.
I shot Gabriel in the shoulder.
Dominic’s men opened fire.
Gabriel fled through the side door as I reached Rosa.
Blood covered the front of her dress.
She gasped when I pressed my hands over the wound.
“Stay with me.”
Her eyes found mine.
“I am sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I do.”
Elena descended from the balcony and knelt beside us.
Rosa looked at her.
“I made the tea.”
Elena went still.
“You poisoned me?”
“No. I prepared it. Carlo added something after I left the kitchen.” Her breathing became ragged. “I knew someone was watching you, but I did not know why.”
“Why didn’t you warn her?” I asked.
“I tried.”
“The note,” Elena said.
Rosa nodded weakly.
“I left it beneath the pillow. I thought she would find it while cleaning.”
“You knew about her mother,” I said.
“I helped Margaret hide the evidence.”
My hands tightened against the wound.
“Why did you keep it from me?”
“Because Isabella made me promise.”
The ballroom blurred around me.
“What promise?”
“She said you would try to avenge her before you understood the whole truth. She feared rage would turn you into the men who raised you.”
Elena looked toward the door Gabriel had used.
“Where is he going?”
Rosa’s eyes closed briefly.
“The lake house.”
“What is there?”
“The original records. Names. Payments. Photographs. Adrian never trusted electronic files.”
Sirens sounded beyond the estate walls.
The evidence Elena transmitted had reached someone.
Adrian’s control over local police would not hold once federal authorities became involved.
Rosa gripped my wrist.
“Gabriel has a second plan.”
“What plan?”
“If the records are exposed, he will destroy the lake house.”
“With what?”
“Explosives.”
Elena looked at me.
“My mother’s original statement may be there.”
Rosa nodded.
“She recorded everything she saw.”
“Why didn’t you retrieve it?”
“Gabriel kept the house guarded. I was waiting for a chance.”
Her voice faded.
Dr. Pierce rushed into the ballroom with two security officers. He pushed me aside and examined Rosa’s wound.
“She is alive,” he said. “But we need to move now.”
I stood.
Dominic approached, one arm in a sling.
“Federal agents are twelve minutes out.”
“Gabriel will reach the lake house in less than an hour.”
“Let them handle it.”
“They will not know the property.”
“You are bleeding.”
I looked down.
A bullet had grazed my side. I had not felt it.
Elena rose beside me.
“I’m going.”
“No.”
“My mother’s statement is there.”
“And Gabriel wants you.”
“That is why he will show himself.”
I turned toward her.
“You are not bait.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“You are sick, untrained, and currently wearing a housekeeper’s uniform.”
“I transmitted enough evidence to destroy one of the most powerful criminal networks in Chicago while being hunted through your walls.”
Dominic coughed to hide a laugh.
I glared at him.
Elena continued.
“You told me I would stay alive. The best way to make that happen is to end this tonight.”
She was right.
I disliked her more each time she was right.
Luca appeared beside us.
“I know the lake house.”
“You are not coming,” I said.
“Gabriel will expect you. He will not expect me to turn against him.”
“You already turned against everyone when you stayed silent.”
Pain crossed his face.
“I know.”
The easy choice was to hate him.
The harder choice was to remember the frightened younger brother who had followed me through every room of our childhood, always trying to match my steps.
He had betrayed me.
He had also lived six years beneath Gabriel’s threat.
Forgiveness was impossible.
But usefulness was not.
“You lead us inside,” I said. “After that, you answer for everything.”
Luca nodded.
We left the estate through the underground garage before federal agents arrived.
Snow covered the roads north of Chicago. Dominic drove an armored SUV while I sat in the passenger seat. Elena and Luca rode behind us.
For twenty miles, no one spoke.
Then Elena asked, “What was Isabella like?”
I watched the highway disappear beneath the headlights.
“Braver than me.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“She laughed when she was angry. She hated expensive flowers and loved terrible coffee. She could enter a room full of powerful men and make every one of them feel foolish without raising her voice.”
“You loved her.”
“Yes.”
“Do you still?”
The question should have been simple.
Love did not disappear when someone died. It changed shape. It became memory, anger, guilt, and the empty side of a bed no one else was allowed to touch.
“Yes,” I said.
Elena looked toward the window.
“But loving the dead does not require joining them,” she said.
I turned slightly.
“Did your mother tell you that?”
“No. I learned it after she died.”
Luca stared at the floor.
Dominic’s eyes remained on the road, but I knew he had heard everything.
The lake house stood on private woodland beside frozen water. My grandfather had built it as a hunting retreat. After his death, Adrian used it for meetings no one was supposed to know about.
We stopped half a mile away.
Through the trees, yellow lights glowed between the windows.
Three vehicles were parked outside.
Dominic checked his weapon.
“Thermal scope shows at least six people.”
“Seven,” Luca said. “There is always a guard in the basement.”
“How do you know?”
“Gabriel brought me here after Isabella died.”
I looked at him.
“To threaten you?”
“To show me what happened to people who betrayed him.”
Elena’s face tightened.
“What did he show you?”
Luca did not answer.
We approached through the woods.
Snow muffled our footsteps.
At the rear of the house, Luca uncovered a cellar entrance beneath a fallen tarp. The lock had recently been replaced, but Dominic cut it.
The stairs descended into darkness.
The smell reached us first.
Oil.
Metal.
And something decayed.
Dominic swept his flashlight across the basement.
Photographs covered the walls.
Dozens of faces.
Men, women, and children.
Some had red marks across them.
Protected witnesses.
Victims.
At the center of the room stood a steel desk stacked with files.
Elena moved toward it.
Then a voice came from the darkness.
“You finally came home, son.”
Gabriel stepped from behind a concrete pillar.
His wounded shoulder was bandaged. A detonator rested in his hand.
Luca raised his gun.
Gabriel smiled.
“You do not have the courage.”
Luca’s weapon shook.
Gabriel looked at me.
“Neither of you does.”
A red light began blinking on the detonator.
Elena glanced toward the ceiling.
“How long?” she asked.
Gabriel pressed the button.
“Five minutes.”
Steel shutters slammed over the basement windows.
May you like
The cellar door locked behind us.
Then flames erupted across the stairs.
