Chapter 7 - THE BLOOD INSIDE THE VAULTDr. Romano had treated the Torino family for twenty-four years.
He had removed bullets from Vincent’s body, signed death certificates for his soldiers, and delivered children belonging to powerful allies.
No one had questioned him when he insisted on remaining with Sophie and Mia.
Now he aimed a gun at both girls.
“Come with me quietly,” he ordered.
Mia stepped in front of Sophie.
“You can’t kill us.”
“No. But pain can be persuasive.”
Sophie picked up a metal tray and hurled it at his face.
Romano flinched.
Mia rushed forward and drove her shoulder into his stomach. The gun fired into the ceiling.
One of the wounded guards attacked Romano from the floor, wrapping both arms around his legs.
Sophie hit the emergency alarm.
Steel shutters dropped across the room, trapping everyone inside.
Romano recovered and raised his gun again.
Before he could shoot, Ruth Collins emerged from a ventilation hatch.
She struck him in the head with a wrench.
Romano collapsed.
Mia stared at Ruth.
“You tried to kill me.”
“I tried to deliver you,” Ruth replied. “There’s a difference.”
“Not to me.”
Ruth picked up Romano’s gun.
“I spent eleven years waiting for a chance to escape Isabella. This is it.”
She contacted Vincent through the panic room’s secure phone.
“We still have the girls.”
In the catacombs, Vincent heard her voice through Isabella’s radio.
Relief lasted less than a second.
Isabella shot Anthony Moretti in the head.
The traitorous capo collapsed without warning.
“You promised him control of Chicago,” Vincent said.
“I promise many things.”
Gabriel stared at the body.
“You said no more unnecessary deaths.”
Isabella turned on him.
“You are alive because I decide your death is unnecessary.”
For the first time, Gabriel seemed to understand that he had never been her partner.
He had been another tool.
Vincent used the distraction to attack.
He drove his elbow into Gabriel’s chest, seized Isabella’s gun, and fired at the overhead lights.
Darkness swallowed the catacombs.
Dominic cut Elena’s restraints with a piece of broken metal. Together they crawled behind a stone tomb as bullets struck the walls.
Vincent fought two Crown operatives in the darkness. He broke one man’s arm and slammed the second against the vault.
Marco and a surviving assault team entered through an old drainage tunnel.
Within minutes, the battle ended.
Isabella escaped through a hidden passage, but Gabriel remained.
Vincent aimed a gun at his brother.
Gabriel slowly raised his hands.
“I was wrong.”
“You endangered Sophie.”
“I thought Isabella wanted to expose you.”
“She used your hatred.”
“You gave me reasons to hate you.”
Vincent approached him.
“But not enough to sacrifice your daughter.”
Gabriel lowered his eyes.
Elena stepped between the brothers.
“Sophie decides whether you deserve forgiveness.”
Gabriel nodded.
Dominic examined the vault mechanism.
“If Isabella reaches the girls again, she’ll return.”
Vincent inserted the copied signet into the first lock. It failed.
The vault required the original.
He placed his father’s ring into the slot.
The first lock opened.
Mia and Sophie were brought to the church under heavy protection. Elena objected, but Vincent argued that the vault had to be opened before Isabella reorganized her forces.
Mia connected the two map fragments.
The second lock opened.
Sophie stood before the biometric scanner.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
Vincent held her hand.
“So am I.”
She looked surprised.
“You get scared?”
“Only when I have something to lose.”
Sophie placed her finger against the scanner.
The iron door groaned open.
Inside was not a room filled with money.
It was a laboratory.
Medical files lined the shelves. Refrigerated cases contained blood samples marked with the names of politicians, judges, criminals, and children.
A projector activated automatically.
Salvatore Torino appeared on the wall.
Vincent’s deceased father looked weak and ashamed.
“If my descendants are watching this, the Crown has returned.”
He explained that decades earlier, the organization had created a secret genetic registry. It collected DNA from influential families and used hidden parentage, hereditary diseases, and falsified identities as tools of control.
Salvatore had helped build the system.
Later, horrified by what it became, he stole the master archive and hid it inside the vault.
“The child who opens this door controls the archive,” Salvatore said. “She may destroy it or expose it. But understand this: the truth inside will collapse governments and families.”
Sophie did not understand everything, but she recognized fear on the adults’ faces.
Mia found a file bearing Gabriel’s name.
Elena opened it.
The document listed Gabriel’s biological father.
It was not Salvatore Torino.
Gabriel stared at the page.
“No.”
Isabella appeared on a second screen through a remote connection.
“That is why you were never the heir,” she said. “And why Vincent always was.”
Gabriel stumbled backward.
Vincent opened his own file.
His blood type, medical history, and childhood records appeared.
At the bottom was another revelation.
Vincent had a son.
The child had been born twenty-eight years earlier and secretly removed from Chicago by the Crown.
Status: alive.
Current identity: Marco Bellini.
Everyone turned toward Vincent’s most trusted bodyguard.
Marco stared at the screen, stunned.
Vincent could barely breathe.
Isabella laughed through the speakers.
“You spent your life protecting your own son without knowing him.”
A warning flashed across the archive.
REMOTE PURGE ACTIVATED.
A timer began counting down from ten minutes.
If the system completed its purge, every file would be erased.
Dominic examined the controls.
“Only one person can stop it.”
“Who?” Vincent demanded.
Dominic pointed to the final authorization screen.
It displayed a photograph of Isabella as a child.
Beneath it were the words:
PRIMARY CROWN HEIR: ISABELLA TORINO.
Then Sophie noticed movement inside one of the refrigerated chambers.
She approached the fogged glass.
May you like
A human hand pressed against it from the other side.
Someone was alive inside the vault.
