Chapter 9 - Blood on the Moon WallThe first gunshot punched through the nursery wall where Sophie’s head had been seconds earlier.
Dominic moved before she understood the sound.
He threw himself across her, driving her to the floor beneath the crib as glass burst inward like ice. The laptop crashed from the table. Isabella’s frozen face flickered on the screen, silent now, mouth open around a warning no one could hear.
“Down!” Enzo shouted.
The room erupted.
Men fired from outside. Dominic’s men fired back. The painted moon wall exploded in white dust and silver splinters. Stuffed animals jumped from shelves. A music box began playing by itself, soft and absurd beneath the violence.
Sophie’s cheek pressed against the floor.
Dominic’s body covered hers, heavy and unyielding. She could feel his heart hammering through his shirt.
“You hit?” he demanded.
“I don’t know.”
“Check.”
“I can’t move.”
He shifted just enough for her to look down at herself. No blood. Not hers.
Then she saw red on Dominic’s sleeve.
“You’re hit.”
“Not important.”
“That is exactly what people say before becoming dead.”
Another shot cracked through the window.
Dominic pulled her closer.
For one insane second, Sophie thought of Bellavita, of the brass wall sconce, of plates waiting to be cleared. Her life yesterday had been small and ordinary and survivable.
Now someone was shooting through a nursery because her dead son might not be dead.
Enzo dragged the overturned rocking chair toward them as cover.
“Boss, we need out.”
“The drive,” Dominic said.
Gabriel, crouched behind the cabinet, held up the laptop bag. “I have it.”
Sophie twisted toward the shattered window.
Outside, through rain and broken branches, she saw movement near the tree line.
Not police.
Not random criminals.
Professionals.
Dominic saw her looking.
“My mother-in-law says hello,” he said.
“How can you joke right now?”
“I’m not joking.”
Enzo fired twice.
A scream came from outside.
Dominic rose halfway, one hand clamped around Sophie’s wrist.
“When I say run, you run.”
“No.”
His head snapped toward her.
“No?”
“The photos. The boxes.”
“Sophie—”
“My son is in this room.”
Dominic stared at her like she was mad.
Maybe she was.
She lunged toward the cabinet anyway.
Dominic cursed and followed.
Together they shoved boxes into a duffel Enzo kicked toward them. USB drives, bracelets, folders, photographs. Sophie grabbed the framed picture of Leo and stuffed it inside her uniform shirt because if she died, she wanted him against her heart.
The shooting shifted toward the hallway.
“Inside breach!” Enzo shouted.
Dominic shoved the duffel at Gabriel.
“Move.”
They ran.
The hallway outside Isabella’s suite filled with smoke from some kind of canister. Sophie coughed, eyes burning. Dominic kept one hand locked around her wrist, pulling her through a servant corridor she never would have seen.
“Your house has escape passages?” she gasped.
“Doesn’t yours?”
“I rent a studio with a broken heater.”
“Remind me to fix that.”
“Dominic!”
A man appeared at the end of the corridor.
Dominic did not slow.
He struck him with brutal efficiency, took the weapon from his hand, and pushed Sophie past before the man hit the floor.
She did not look back.
They descended a narrow staircase into darkness. The air smelled of stone and lake water. Somewhere above, alarms screamed.
Gabriel stumbled behind them, clutching the laptop bag. Enzo followed last, walking backward with his gun raised.
At the bottom, Dominic opened a steel door with his palm.
A tunnel stretched ahead.
Of course.
Sophie almost laughed, hysteria rising.
“Where does this go?”
“Boathouse.”
“Of course it does.”
They ran through the tunnel.
Dominic’s blood dripped onto the stone floor.
Sophie saw each drop.
“You need pressure on that wound.”
“It grazed me.”
“Your definition of grazed is criminal.”
“Later.”
The tunnel ended at another steel door. Dominic opened it into gray morning and freezing wind off the lake.
The boathouse stood ahead, sleek and dark. Men were already there. Moretti men. Sophie hoped.
One stepped forward. “Boss.”
“Hospital. Double guard on Matteo. No one near him except Ellison and Kim. Move my son if necessary.”
“Done.”
Dominic turned to Gabriel. “Send the video to three places.”
“Already uploading.”
“No. Three places I don’t own.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows lifted.
Dominic looked at Sophie.
She understood.
Clean.
Survivable truth.
“News?” Gabriel asked.
“Not yet. Federal contact first.”
“Dominic—”
“Do it.”
Sophie pressed her hand to Dominic’s bleeding sleeve.
He looked down.
“You’re very determined to keep touching me.”
“You’re very determined to bleed on expensive stone.”
He almost smiled.
Then his phone rang.
The sound cut through everything.
Unknown number.
Dominic answered on speaker.
A woman’s voice filled the boathouse, elegant and old, with a faint Italian accent sharpened by money.
“Dominic, my dear. You broke Isabella’s room.”
Dominic’s face became a mask.
“Serafina.”
Sophie’s blood froze.
Serafina Belladonna laughed softly.
“And you found the waitress. How poetic.”
Sophie stepped closer to the phone.
“Where is my son?”
A pause.
Then Serafina’s voice changed, warmed falsely.
“Sophie Lane. The grieving mother who sang off-key every night. I always wondered what became of you.”
Sophie’s vision went red at the edges.
“Where is Leo?”
“Safe. For now.”
Dominic took the phone off speaker and pressed it to his ear.
“If you touch that boy—”
“Do not threaten me with violence, Dominic. I knew you before Chicago decided you were frightening.”
“You killed my wife.”
“My daughter became sentimental. Sentiment is fatal in business.”
Dominic’s hand tightened around the phone until Sophie thought it might crack.
Serafina continued, calm as tea.
“You may keep the sick infant. He was always defective merchandise. But the Lane boy is valuable.”
Sophie made a sound.
Dominic’s eyes met hers.
In that glance, a pact formed.
No ceremony. No trust. Not yet.
But a pact.
Dominic spoke softly into the phone.
“What do you want?”
“The drive. All copies. All photographs. All records. Bring them to Belladonna House by noon.”
“And Leo?”
“You may see him.”
Sophie lunged for the phone.
Dominic held her back with one arm.
Serafina laughed again.
“Careful, waitress. Four years ago you were poor enough to fool. Do not make the mistake of thinking grief has made you powerful.”
Sophie stopped struggling.
Her voice came out quiet.
“No. Grief made me patient.”
The line went silent.
Then Serafina said, “Noon.”
The call ended.
Wind howled through the boathouse.
Dominic lowered the phone.
Sophie looked at him.
“We’re going.”
“Yes,” he said.
“But not with the real drive.”
His eyes narrowed.
For the first time that morning, admiration touched his face.
“No,” he said. “Not with the real drive.”
Gabriel cleared his throat.
“The federal contact needs time.”
Dominic checked his bleeding arm, then the lake beyond them.
“Then we buy time.”
Sophie pulled the photo of Leo from her shirt.
The edges were bent now.
She smoothed them with trembling fingers.
Her son smiled up at her from a stolen childhood.
Noon.
Six hours.
Four years of death undone by one photograph and one monster’s phone call.
Sophie looked at Dominic Moretti and said the sentence she never imagined saying to any man like him.
“Help me get my son back.”
May you like
Dominic’s answer came without hesitation.
“I will burn the city first.”
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