Chapter 7 - Blood on the Velvet
Luca didn’t flinch.
Before the ceramic blade could travel four inches, Luca’s left hand shot out like a striking viper, catching the assassin by the throat with bone-crushing force. He twisted his body, slammed the man face-first into the heavy oak banquet table, and drove his elbow down into the attacker’s shoulder blade with a sickening *crack*.
The ceramic knife clattered harmlessly across the shattered champagne flutes.
“Marco!” Luca roared over the deafening panic echoing through the ballroom. “Lock the exits! No one leaves this hotel!”
Guards swarmed the dais, securing the perimeter with drawn weapons as Don Falcone’s personal security hurried the elderly Arbiter out through a private VIP corridor. Society guests were scrambling toward the secondary fire doors, overturning tables and trampling floral centerpieces in a blind rush to escape the imminent crossfire.
Luca hauled the gasping assassin off the table by his collar, lifting him nearly a foot off the ground. The man was choking, his face turning a deep, suffocating purple under Luca’s grip.
“Who sent you?” Luca snarled, his voice vibrating with absolute fury. “Speak, before I feed you to my dogs piece by piece.”
The assassin coughed up blood, a twisted, broken grin spreading across his split lips. “Too late, Moretti… Nikolai already has the prize…”
A cold, icy dread settled in the pit of my stomach.
*Nikolai.* The Volkov syndicate boss Vanessa had been whispering to in the library.
Before Luca could squeeze another word out of the man, my diamond-encrusted evening clutch began to vibrate violently in my hand.
I looked down with trembling fingers. It was my personal phone—a cheap, cracked device that Luca had retrieved from my old locker at the mansion. The screen showed an unknown, restricted caller ID.
“Luca…” I whispered, my voice shaking so hard the word was barely audible above the sirens starting to wail outside the Drake Hotel. “My phone.”
Luca snapped the assassin’s arm with a single, brutal twist, dropping the unconscious man onto the floor for his lieutenants to secure. He stepped over to me in two long strides, his tuxedo splattered with specks of champagne and blood, and took the phone from my hand.
He hit speakerphone.
“Speak,” Luca commanded into the receiver.
A low, heavily accented Russian voice chuckled from the other end of the line. The sound was smooth, greasy, and dripping with malicious amusement.
“Good evening, Don Moretti. I trust the champagne was not to your liking?”
“Nikolai Volkov,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a deadly, subterranean register. “You have five seconds to explain why I shouldn't burn every Russian warehouse from here to Milwaukee to the ground.”
“You could try, my friend,” Nikolai laughed softly. “Or you could listen to the charming sound of your little maid’s sister crying in the back of my van.”
My heart stopped beating. The world seemed to drop out from beneath my feet.
“Emily!” I shrieked, grabbing Luca’s lapel with my good hand, entirely forgetting the rules of etiquette, the guards, and the carnage around us. “No, no, no! Emily is at Northwestern Memorial! She’s in the ICU!”
“Ah, the lovely Sophie,” Nikolai purred through the speaker. “Do not worry, little dove. Your sister is alive. For now. Your private security team at the hospital was very brave, but when three men in hazmat suits pull the fire alarms and deploy neurotoxin smoke through the ventilation, even the great Luca Moretti’s men have to cough. We walked your sister right out the ambulance bay ten minutes ago.”
A muffled, terrified sob came through the receiver.
*“Sophie! Sophie, help me! They have guns—they said they’re going to throw me in the lake—”*
“Emily!” I screamed, tears blinding me as my chest heaved with hysterical sobs. “Emily, hold on! Please don't hurt her! Take me! I’m the one who told Luca about the bust! I’m the one who found the phone! Don't hurt my sister!”
“Quiet, Sophie,” Nikolai snapped coldly. “Now listen to me, Don Moretti. You have something that belongs to me. Vanessa Bellini. And Vincent’s shipping clearances. You bring Vanessa to Pier 42 at the Calumet River within forty-five minutes. Alone. No guards. No snipers. If I see a single Moretti crest within a mile of that dock, I will tie this girl to an engine block and drop her into forty feet of freezing water.”
The line went dead.
A dial tone buzzed in the echoing, bloodstained ballroom.
I fell to my knees among the broken crystal, completely shattered. The pain in my bandaged arm flared white-hot as my hand hit the floor, but I couldn't feel it. All I could see was Emily’s pale, sweet face, hooked up to dialysis machines, terrified in the dark with monsters who killed for sport.
“It’s my fault…” I wept, pressing my forehead against the cold marble. “If I had just looked the other way… if I had just let them take your mother, Emily would be safe. I destroyed my own sister…”
Suddenly, two powerful hands gripped my shoulders, hauling me effortlessly back to my feet.
Luca pulled me flush against his broad chest, his arms wrapping around me like bands of forged iron. He didn't care that my tears were staining his silk lapel. He didn't care that twenty of his surviving capos were watching him hold a weeping maid in the center of the Drake Hotel.
“Look at me, Sophie,” he ordered, his voice steady, thunderous, and absolute.
I looked up into his dark eyes through a curtain of tears. There was no fear in him. There was no hesitation. There was only a cold, ancient fury that felt large enough to consume the entire city.
“You did not destroy your sister,” Luca said, his hand rising to cup the back of my neck, holding me firmly against him. “I gave you my word that you and your blood were under my protection. A Moretti does not break an oath. We are going to Pier 42. And by dawn, Nikolai Volkov will learn why this city has belonged to my family for a hundred years.”
He looked over my shoulder at Marco.
“Get the heavy armor. Mobilize all four tactical squads. We aren't making a trade tonight, Marco.”
Luca’s lips curved into a cold, terrifying smile.
May you like
“We’re going to war.”
***
