Chapter 14 - The Viper’s Nest
Women screamed, scrambling toward the fire exits, clutching their fur coats and knocking over champagne towers that crashed onto the polished parquet floor in deafening explosions of crystal. Men in four-thousand-dollar suits dove behind velvet banquet tables, pulling their wives down with them.
In an instant, the high-society gala dissolved into a hunting ground.
Daniel was moving before the first glass hit the floor. He stepped in front of me and Luca, his hand instantly disappearing inside his tuxedo jacket, unholstering a silenced Glock. Around the perimeter of the room, eight Moretti enforcers, disguised as waitstaff and security guards, drew their weapons, forming a tight defensive semicircle around us.
"Stay down, Boss!" Daniel barked, his eyes locked on the grand staircase.
Luca didn't move. He didn't flinch, and he didn't draw his gun. He stood in the center of the clearing ballroom, shielding me with his broad shoulder, his gaze locked entirely on his sister.
"Marco Santoro," Luca said, his voice carrying effortlessly over the panicked screams of the fleeing elite. "You step into my city, into my house, without an invitation? You know the penalty for crossing the ocean into Moretti territory."
Marco, a scarred, silver-haired man in his late fifties with cold, dead eyes, offered a patronizing bow from the top of the stairs. "This is not your territory anymore, Luca. The Moretti name was founded on a blood pact with Palermo. Your father broke it. We simply came to collect the collateral he promised us."
"My father is dead," Luca spat. "And you raised my sister in a cage."
Clara descended the stairs slowly, her red heels clicking like metronomes counting down our remaining seconds of life. She reached the bottom step, completely indifferent to the eight gun barrels pointed at her forehead.
"They didn't raise me in a cage, Luca," Clara said, stopping ten paces away. "They forged me into a blade. And tonight, I’m cutting the head off the snake."
She raised her left hand, snapping her fingers.
Suddenly, the ballroom’s main power cut completely.
The massive room plunged into pitch-black darkness.
"Down!" Luca roared, tackling me to the floor as deafening gunfire erupted from the mezzanine levels above.
Automatic rounds chewed through the plaster walls, tearing down velvet drapes and shattering the remaining chandeliers into cascading showers of lethal glass. The muzzle flashes lit up the dark room like strobe lights, illuminating screams, falling bodies, and the smoke of rapid gunfire.
"Emma, crawl!" Luca yelled, pulling me beneath the heavy mahogany frame of an overturned service table. "Daniel, flank left! Suppressive fire on the balcony!"
Daniel and our men opened fire into the darkness, the sharp *crack-crack-crack* of their weapons returning the assault. Bullets thudded into the thick wood above our heads, sending wooden splinters raining onto my back.
I wasn't screaming. Fear had frozen into pure, cold adrenaline. I clutched Luca’s arm, feeling the furious, violent thrum of his pulse. He drew his custom silver Kimber from his waistband, leaning out from under the table to deliver two precise shots that dropped a shooter leaning over the upper railing.
"She’s heading for the service tunnel behind the kitchen!" Daniel shouted through the cacophony, replacing an empty magazine with mechanical speed. "Boss, we have to fall back! Chicago police are three blocks out!"
Luca looked at the kitchen doors, where Clara’s red gown had just flashed through the emergency exit.
"She wants me to follow," Luca muttered, his eyes blazing in the dark. "She wants me alone."
"Then don't go!" I grabbed his lapels, pulling his face toward mine. "Luca, look around! This isn't a battle for power, this is an execution! If you chase her into the dark, you walk straight into their ambush!"
Luca hesitated, his chest heaving, his fingers tightening around the grip of his gun. For a moment, the bloodlust that had made him the most feared man in Chicago nearly took over. He wanted to kill Marco Santoro. He wanted to drag his sister out of the dark and shake the truth into her.
Then he looked into my eyes. He saw the dust in my hair, the scratch on my collarbone from a flying shard of glass, and the desperate plea in my gaze.
"Regroup at the South Loop garage," Luca commanded Daniel through gritted teeth. "We fall back to the safe house. Not the estate."
"Boss?" Daniel questioned, stunned. "The manor is fully fortified."
"If Clara has our father's ledgers," Luca said, his voice grim as he hoisted me to my feet under the cover of smoke, "she has the blueprints to the manor's panic rooms. The safe house is the only place she doesn't know exists."
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We fought our way out through the VIP service elevator, leaving behind the ruined ballroom of the Palmer House, while the distant wail of police sirens began to swallow the night.
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