Chapter 14 - The Price of Ruin
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The west wing gallery was a war zone of shattered statues, torn tapestries, and drifting gun smoke.
A bullet grazed my left shoulder, the searing heat tearing through my sweater and ripping a scream of agony from my throat.
The impact threw me against a heavy oak sideboard, my baseball bat clattering across the polished floor.
I scrambled backward, clutching my bleeding shoulder, my vision swimming with black spots.
Two towering mercenaries in black tactical gear emerged through the smoke, their assault rifles leveled at my chest.
Behind them, walking with manic, triumphant swagger through the wreckage, was Vanessa Bellini.
She wore black leather trousers and a fur-trimmed jacket, clutching a chrome revolver in her gloved hand.
Her face was twisted into a hideous mask of psychotic ecstasy.
"Look at you," Vanessa mocked, her shrill voice echoing off the broken walls.
"The little maid who thought she could wear emerald velvet and dance with my fiancé."
"Where is the boy, Nora?"
I spat blood onto the floor, glaring up at her with pure, unyielding defiance.
"He's far away from your filthy hands, Vanessa," I gasped, panting through the pain.
Vanessa stepped forward, the barrel of her revolver pressing brutally against my forehead.
The cold metal bit into my skin.
"Tell me where he is, or I will paint this hallway with your brains!" she shrieked, cocking the hammer.
"Go to hell," I whispered, closing my eyes and whispering a silent prayer for Ethan and Luca.
A single, deafening gunshot tore through the corridor.
It didn't come from Vanessa’s gun.
The mercenary standing to her left crumpled to the floor, a bullet hole drilled cleanly between his eyes.
Before the second mercenary could react, three more shots rang out in rapid, rhythmic succession.
He collapsed in a heap of blood and tactical gear.
Vanessa screamed, spinning around in sheer panic.
Out of the swirling smoke stepped Luca Moretti.
He was covered in soot and blood, his shirt torn, holding a smoking combat shotgun in his right hand.
Behind him stood Marco and ten heavily armored Moretti enforcers, their weapons trained on Vanessa.
Luca’s eyes were not human.
They were the eyes of an ancient, merciless god who had come to claim an overdue blood debt.
"Drop the gun, Vanessa," Luca said, his voice dropping into a deadly, horrifying whisper.
Vanessa frantically swung the revolver back toward my head, using me as a human shield.
"Don't move, Luca! I'll kill her! I swear to God I'll blow her head off!"
Luca didn't stop walking.
He took one slow, deliberate step forward, the shotgun resting casually at his hip.
"If your finger twitches on that trigger," Luca said, his tone devoid of any emotion whatsoever, "I will ensure that every single member of your bloodline across the globe is hunted down and slaughtered."
"Your father."
"Your cousins."
"Your friends."
"I will erase the name Bellini from human history."
Vanessa looked into Luca’s eyes and saw the absolute, terrifying truth of his promise.
Her courage, fueled by manic jealousy, vanished in an instant.
Her hand began to tremble uncontrollably.
"Luca... please..." she whined, tears of panic spilling over her eyelashes.
"I loved you."
"You don't know what love is," Luca responded coldly.
With lightning speed, I drove my right elbow backward into Vanessa’s ribs with all the strength left in my body.
She gasped in pain, stumbling backward.
In the same split second, Luca closed the distance, his heavy hand clamping around the barrel of her revolver and wrenching it from her fingers, snapping her wrist with a sickening crunch.
Vanessa shrieked, collapsing onto her knees on the bloody floor, clutching her broken arm.
Luca didn't spare her another glance.
He dropped the weapons and fell to his knees beside me, his hands frantically checking my bleeding shoulder.
"Nora! Nora, look at me!" Luca begged, his voice cracking with unbearable terror.
"I'm here, Luca," I cried softly, reaching up with my good hand to touch his bloodstained cheek.
"I'm okay."
"Ethan... is he—"
"Ethan is in the wine cellar," I choked out, smiling through my tears.
"He went down the laundry chute."
"He's hiding behind the boiler in the empty barrel."
Luca pulled me tightly against his chest, burying his face in my hair, weeping openly in front of his surviving soldiers.
"You saved him again," Luca sobbed, rocking me in his arms.
"You saved my boy."
Marco stepped forward, kicking the screaming Vanessa down onto her stomach and ratcheting heavy steel zip-ties around her wrists.
"What do we do with her, boss?" Marco asked, his face carved of stone.
Luca slowly turned his head to look down at the woman who had brought war to his doorstep.
"Call the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Luca ordered, his voice chilling the entire room.
"Give them the offshore bank records showing she wired three million dollars to Russian terrorists."
"Give them the ballistics from these dead mercenaries."
"And tell the warden at Florence Supermax that she belongs in solitary confinement for the rest of her natural life."
Vanessa began to scream and thrash against the floor as the guards dragged her away through the smoke.
"No! Kill me! Just kill me, Luca!" she wailed.
"Death is too merciful for you, Vanessa," Luca said without looking back.
"You are going to spend forty years in a concrete box, completely forgotten by the world."
Luca scooped me up into his arms, carrying me effortlessly down the grand staircase toward the cellar, kicking debris out of the way.
When we reached the basement boiler, Luca called out softly into the darkness.
"Ethan? Buddy? It's Daddy."
The lid of the large oak wine barrel shifted.
Ethan peeked out, saw his father holding me in his arms, and let out a joyful cry.
"Daddy! Miss Nora!"
He scrambled out of the barrel and threw his arms around both of us, laughing and weeping all at once.
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The mansion was in ruins, but the family was whole.
And the monsters were finally gone forever.
