Chapter 75 - The Unmasking
"Stay away from her," I choked out, leveling the Glock directly at the center of Lorenzo Moretti’s chest. The barrel shook, but I planted my feet firmly on the stone floor. "I will pull this trigger. I swear to God, I will put a bullet through your head."
Lorenzo didn't flinch. He didn't even raise a hand to shield himself. He merely looked at the weapon with mild amusement, as though I were a toddler waving a stick.
"You won't shoot, Clara," Lorenzo said softly, taking a slow, deliberate step toward us. The tap of his cane on the stone echoed like a countdown. "Because if you kill me, the transponder code in my cane stops broadcasting. And the moment that signal dies, the explosive charges placed beneath the runway in Florence will detonate."
"Florence?" I breathed, terror clawing at my throat.
"Did you really believe your sister Elena was dead?" Lorenzo chuckled, shaking his head. "Elena is currently being held at the airfield in Florence. She was captured three hours ago when she attempted to retrieve the Bloodline Contract on my orders. She thought she was saving you. She thought she was outsmarting Vincent. Poor girl. She always lacked your mother’s intellect."
My world tilted on its axis.
Elena wasn't working against us. Elena had been trying to retrieve the only legal document that could protect Maya from Lorenzo’s faction, and she had walked straight into his trap.
"Why?" I demanded, tears of rage burning my eyes. "Maya is five years old! What could you possibly want from a child?"
"Maya is the only legitimate descendant who carries both the Moretti line and the Vane crypt-seal," Lorenzo explained, his voice smooth and hypnotic. "Under the 1928 Accords, the Syndicate's offshore wealth cannot be transferred to a new Don without the blood consent of both founding families. Vincent cannot claim it. Valerie cannot touch it. Only this little girl can sign the succession decree."
He stopped three paces away from me, his eyes locked onto Maya’s trembling face.
"Hand her to me, Clara. Let her take her rightful place as the figurehead of the empire. I will give you complete freedom. A villa in the Caribbean, ten million euros, whatever life you desire. You walk away clean."
"No," I hissed, tightening my grip on my daughter. "I would rather die."
"A dramatic sentiment," Lorenzo sighed, lifting his cane. "Unfortunately, dying is very easy in these mountains."
Behind me, the sound of heavy, dragging footsteps broke the silence of the tunnel.
I turned my head slightly, keeping my gun trained on Lorenzo.
Vincent stumbled out of the darkness, his left arm hanging limp at his side, blood soaking through his black shirt from a deep puncture wound in his shoulder. His face was pale, his breathing ragged, but his right hand still clutched his combat knife, coated in dark blood.
Valerie was nowhere to be seen.
"Father," Vincent rasped, his voice dripping with venom as he leaned against the tunnel wall for support.
Lorenzo turned his head, his cold eyes sweeping over his wounded son without a shred of paternal warmth. "You look tired, Vincent. You were always too sentimental. That is why you could never truly rule."
"I ruled well enough to dismantle three of your shadow syndicates," Vincent countered, taking a slow, agonizing step forward, positioning himself beside me. He glanced down at Maya, his expression softening for a fraction of a second before hardening into pure iron as he faced the patriarch. "You aren't touching her, old man."
"I don't need to touch her, Vincent," Lorenzo smiled, reaching into his heavy wool overcoat.
He didn't pull out a gun.
He pulled out a thick, leather-bound journal with a heavy brass lock—the unmistakable family diary my mother had kept locked in her desk during my entire childhood.
Lorenzo turned the key, letting the heavy parchment pages fall open under the faint emergency light.
"You spent five years searching for this girl because you believed she was yours, Vincent," Lorenzo said, his voice dropping into a devastatingly calm cadence. "You believed her conception was the fruit of your reckless little affair in Milan."
Lorenzo held up the open page.
Pasted onto the parchment was a hospital birth record from a private clinic in Geneva, dated seven months before Vincent and I had ever met in that Brera café.
May you like
"What is that?" Vincent whispered, his knuckles whitening on the hilt of his knife, his gaze darting from the parchment to my face.
"Ask her," Lorenzo said, his cold, victorious smile widening into a terrifying smirk. "Ask your beloved Clara who Maya’s real father is."
