Chapter 3 - Blood in the Mansion
Alessandro moved before anyone could stop him.
The darkness swallowed the room, but he knew every inch of the mansion. He reached beneath the mattress and pulled out the pistol secured inside a hidden compartment.
Dr. Harris grabbed his arm.
“You cannot stand.”
“My daughter is in that hallway.”
Elena stared at him.
It was the first time he had said the word aloud.
Daughter.
There was no test yet. No proof.
But Alessandro had already made the decision somewhere deeper than logic.
Lily was under his roof.
She had saved his life.
And someone had made her scream.
That was enough.
One of the guards opened the bedroom door and aimed into the black corridor. Emergency lights flickered red along the floor, casting long shadows across marble and wood.
“Sir, remain here.”
Alessandro shoved the IV pole aside.
“Find the child.”
Elena ran into the hallway before the guards could stop her.
“Lily!”
Another burst of gunfire echoed from downstairs.
Men shouted near the main staircase.
The mansion’s backup generator should have activated within seconds. It did not.
Someone had sabotaged it.
This was not an impulsive rescue attempt.
It had been planned.
Alessandro gripped the doorframe as dizziness washed over him. His legs felt hollow, but rage forced strength into them.
Dr. Harris positioned himself beneath Alessandro’s arm.
“I am a doctor, not a soldier.”
“Tonight you are both.”
They entered the hallway.
The two guards moved ahead, checking each doorway. Elena followed closely behind them, calling Lily’s name in a frantic whisper.
At the far end of the corridor, something shifted.
A small figure stepped out from behind a marble column.
“Mom?”
Elena rushed forward and dropped to her knees.
Lily ran into her arms.
“Are you hurt?”
The child shook her head. Tears streaked her face. “Mr. Cole told me to hide.”
“Where is he?”
Lily pointed toward the staircase.
A body lay near the landing.
Mr. Cole, one of Alessandro’s most trusted guards, was motionless on the floor.
Elena covered Lily’s eyes.
Alessandro’s jaw tightened.
A man had died protecting a child who had entered the mansion only three weeks earlier.
That loyalty would be remembered.
“Take Lily back to the bedroom,” Alessandro ordered.
“No,” Elena said.
“This floor is compromised.”
“The bedroom has windows and a balcony.”
Dr. Harris nodded. “She is right. We need a secure internal room.”
Alessandro considered the layout.
“The library.”
It occupied the center of the mansion and had no exterior windows. A reinforced steel door stood hidden behind the shelves, installed during the years when federal raids and rival attacks were constant possibilities.
They moved toward the west corridor.
A shadow appeared near the service stairs.
The lead guard fired.
A man fell backward into the darkness.
Lily screamed again.
Elena held her close and hurried forward.
Alessandro hated that the child was seeing his world so quickly. But he hated himself more for believing he could have kept violence separate from the people around him.
Violence was not something that entered his life.
It was the architecture of his life.
They reached the library and locked themselves inside.
The room smelled of leather, dust, and old smoke. Red emergency lights glowed beneath the shelves.
Alessandro pressed a concealed panel behind a framed map of Sicily.
A steel door slid shut over the entrance.
Dr. Harris helped him into a chair.
“You are bleeding.”
Alessandro looked down.
The IV had torn from his hand, leaving a line of blood across his wrist.
“It is nothing.”
“You are dying of poison. Nothing is not available to you tonight.”
The doctor opened his bag and began cleaning the wound.
Elena sat on the floor with Lily in her lap.
The child still held the stuffed rabbit, though one ear had torn loose.
Alessandro watched her trembling fingers.
“You were brave,” he said.
Lily looked at him. “Mr. Cole told me not to run until the bad men passed.”
“He saved you.”
“Is he dead?”
Elena closed her eyes.
Alessandro could have lied.
Children deserved gentleness, but they also deserved adults who did not teach them to distrust truth.
“Yes.”
Lily stared toward the steel door.
“Because of me?”
“No.”
“He came into the hall because I screamed.”
“He died because bad men entered this house. That was not your fault.”
“Will the bad men come in here?”
Alessandro looked at the reinforced steel.
“No.”
Lily watched him carefully.
“You promise?”
He had spent most of his life avoiding promises. Promises became debts, and debts became weaknesses.
But he answered without hesitation.
“I promise.”
A radio on the guard’s shoulder crackled.
Static.
Then a voice.
“Boss, this is Marco. We have control of the east wing. Four intruders down. More at the south entrance.”
Alessandro took the radio.
“Who are they?”
“No identification. Military equipment. One escaped through the garden with Ms. Hawthorne.”
Victoria had known exactly when the attack would come.
“Capture one alive.”
“Understood.”
The radio went silent.
Dr. Harris finished replacing the IV with supplies from his bag.
“I need to get the antidote compound from my vehicle.”
“You are not leaving this room.”
“Without treatment, your organs will continue to fail.”
“What treatment?”
“The laboratory identified the poison’s family. There is an experimental binding agent that may reduce absorption, but I left the emergency kit downstairs.”
The guard shook his head. “The lower floor is not secure.”
Alessandro studied the doctor.
“How long do I have?”
Dr. Harris did not answer immediately.
Lily was listening.
Alessandro repeated the question.
“Without intervention, perhaps twelve hours before severe cardiac damage. Maybe less.”
Elena tightened her arms around Lily.
Alessandro leaned back in the chair.
Twelve hours.
He had negotiated territory disputes that lasted longer than that. He had waited days for kidnappers, months for court decisions, years for revenge.
Now his life had been reduced to a morning he might never see.
“Where is your vehicle?”
“Underground garage.”
“There is a private stairwell behind the wine cellar.”
“I do not know the route.”
“I do.”
“You cannot walk there.”
“I don’t need to.”
Alessandro called Marco over the radio and described the location of the medical case.
While they waited, Elena stood and approached him.
“Why would Victoria do this?”
Alessandro looked toward the red emergency light.
“Money.”
“You already planned to marry her.”
“Marriage was not enough.”
He remembered the contracts Victoria had recently encouraged him to sign. Wedding trusts. Joint holdings. Emergency authority in the event he became medically incapacitated.
He had refused the broadest provisions, but he had signed enough to give her temporary access to several legitimate businesses.
Perhaps the poison was not meant to kill him immediately.
Perhaps she needed him weak.
Confused.
Dependent.
“What happens if you die?” Elena asked.
“My organization fractures.”
“And your money?”
“Some goes to foundations. Some to relatives. Some remains inside holding companies.”
“What would Victoria receive?”
Alessandro’s mouth hardened.
“If we married, control of the De Luca legitimate estate.”
Elena understood.
“She could not wait six weeks.”
“No.”
Lily looked between them.
“Are you really a bad man?”
The question was so direct that Elena whispered her name in warning.
Alessandro raised one hand.
“It is all right.”
He looked at the child.
“Why do you ask?”
“Those men had guns. Your men have guns. Mom said people with guns are dangerous.”
“Your mother is right.”
“Then are you dangerous?”
“Yes.”
Elena stared at him.
Lily did not look away. “Do you hurt people?”
Alessandro could feel everyone in the room waiting.
He could have softened the truth. He could have spoken about protection and business, about difficult choices and enemies.
Instead he said, “I have.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes because they tried to hurt me. Sometimes because I was angry. Sometimes because I thought power made me right.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
The word surprised even him.
Lily considered his answer.
“Can you stop being bad?”
Alessandro looked down at his shaking hands.
Men across Chicago believed those hands controlled everything. Judges feared them. Business owners paid them. Rivals watched them.
Yet he could not stop his own body from freezing.
He could not undo the fear in Elena’s eyes.
He could not bring Mr. Cole back.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
Lily hugged the rabbit against her chest.
“You could try.”
The radio crackled again.
“We found the doctor’s case,” Marco said. “Coming to the library.”
Gunfire erupted behind his voice.
Then the connection died.
Dr. Harris swore under his breath.
The security monitor inside the library flickered on as partial power returned.
Six camera feeds appeared.
The main hall was filled with smoke and broken glass.
Two guards dragged an injured intruder across the marble floor.
The underground garage showed a black vehicle burning near the entrance.
The west corridor was empty.
The garden camera revealed Victoria running beneath the rain toward a waiting SUV.
A man held the door open for her.
Alessandro recognized him.
Richard Hawthorne.
Victoria’s older brother.
A private security contractor who had spent years supplying weapons and surveillance systems to governments, corporations, and criminal organizations.
Richard looked directly toward the camera before entering the SUV.
Then he raised a remote control.
The library monitor displayed a warning.
FIRE SYSTEM FAILURE.
Dr. Harris looked toward the vent.
Smoke began seeping through the metal grate.
“They are trying to force us out.”
The guard moved toward the ventilation controls.
“They shut down the internal fans.”
Elena covered Lily’s mouth with a damp cloth from Dr. Harris’s bag.
Alessandro stood, gripping the chair.
“There is another exit.”
The guard turned. “Where?”
“Behind the fireplace.”
Alessandro crossed the room slowly and pressed a hidden mechanism in the carved stone. A narrow passage opened.
It had been built during Prohibition, long before the De Luca family purchased the mansion.
The tunnel led to an old service building beyond the garden wall.
Alessandro looked at Elena.
“Take Lily and go.”
“What about you?”
“I will follow.”
“You can barely stand.”
“The passage is narrow. Move.”
Dr. Harris helped Elena guide Lily through the opening.
The guard followed.
Alessandro took one step and stopped.
On the security monitor, the captured intruder was being questioned in the main hall.
The man’s face was bloody. One of Alessandro’s soldiers held him against a column.
A microphone picked up fragments of the exchange.
“Who hired you?”
The intruder laughed.
“You still don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“The woman wasn’t trying to inherit his money.”
Alessandro leaned closer to the screen.
The intruder looked toward the camera as if he knew Alessandro was watching.
“She was keeping him weak until she found the girl.”
Alessandro’s blood turned colder than the poison had ever made it.
“What girl?” the guard demanded.
The intruder smiled.
“The boss’s daughter.”
Behind Alessandro, Elena froze inside the passage.
Lily stared back at him.
Then the monitor went black.
A second explosion shook the mansion.
May you like
And Alessandro finally understood the truth.
Victoria had known about Lily before he did.
