Chapter 7 - The Shadow of the Proxy
I immediately stepped in front of both little girls, shielding them with my body.
“Luca... why?” I begged, my mind frantically searching for an exit. The front door was deadbolted behind us; the side windows were shuttered. “Vincent treated you like a brother!”
“Vincent treated me like an employee,” Luca spat, taking a slow step toward us. “Fifteen years I bled for the Moretti family. Fifteen years I did the dirty work while Vincent sat in his Lake Forest mansion playing the refined businessman!”
He gestured with the silenced weapon toward Isabella.
“Sofia found out I was siphoning funds from the Commission’s dock operations six months before she died,” Luca explained, his tone conversational, almost casual. “She threatened to tell Vincent. I came here to negotiate with her... but she fought back. She hit her head on the hearth right there.”
He pointed at the stone fireplace behind me.
“Dominic found out what I did,” Luca continued, chuckling darkly. “So we made a deal. He used the music box to keep the kid quiet, telling her if she spoke a word, I’d come back and finish her. And tonight? Tonight was the perfect opportunity to clean up every loose end.”
“The siege at the estate...” I gasped, realization hitting me like cold water. “You let those men inside.”
“I gave them the security codes,” Luca admitted proudly. “Vincent is currently trapped in a basement in Cicero, surrounded by twenty Commission soldiers. By morning, the Commission will take over the Moretti estate... and I’ll present them with Sofia’s safety deposit key, which I’m going to take off your dead bodies.”
He raised the silenced pistol, aligning the front sight directly with my forehead.
“You’re a good housekeeper, Maya,” Luca said softly. “You just worked for the wrong family.”
BANG.
The sudden explosion of gunfire didn't come from Luca’s gun.
The heavy wooden front door behind us exploded inward in a shower of splinters and torn iron hinges.
A massive black SUV had backed straight up the wooden porch steps, its rear bumper shattering through the doorway.
Luca spun around in shock, raising his gun toward the vehicle—but the rear doors of the SUV burst open first.
Vincent Moretti charged out of the back of the vehicle like a enraged lion, his face covered in soot and blood, a heavy tactical shotgun in his hands.
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Before Luca could pull his trigger, Vincent fired.
The heavy blast hit Luca square in the chest, lifting him off his feet and throwing him backward into the stone hearth, where he crumpled into a motionless heap on the floor.
