Chapter 2 - THE BLOOD ON THE MARBLE
Before Lucas could pull the trigger, Viktor moved with terrifying speed.
A muffled suppressed discharge echoed through the study. Lucas gasped, his gun clattering onto the marble floor as a clean hole opened in the center of his forehead. He collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, lifeless beside the shattered wineglass.
Elena screamed, pulling Emma into her chest and covering the child’s eyes. But Emma didn't cry. She pressed her face into her mother’s apron, her small hand clutching the empty blue safety cap of her EpiPen.
Alejandro didn't even flinch as the traitor fell. He stepped over Lucas’s body, his polished shoes treading dangerously close to the blood pool forming on the floor. He knelt down in front of Elena and Emma.
For a man whose name caused senators and mob bosses to wake up in cold sweats, his movement was remarkably gentle.
“Elena,” Alejandro said, his dark eyes softening as he looked at the four-year-old girl tucked under her mother’s arm. “Look at me.”
Elena lifted her tear-streaked face, trembling violently. “Please, Mr. Moretti... we didn't see anything. We won't say anything to anyone—”
“Stop,” Alejandro commanded softly. “You and your daughter are no longer staff in this house.”
Elena’s heart sank into her stomach. “Please... don't throw us out onto the street! Emma needs her medicine, she has severe allergies, I have no money—”
“You misunderstand me, Elena,” Alejandro interrupted. He reached out and gently patted Emma’s head. “Your daughter saved my life today. She gave me her last line of defense when my own men stood by and watched me suffocate.”
He stood up, looking at Viktor.
“Viktor,” Alejandro ordered. “Clear this filth out of my study. Then call my personal physician, Dr. Chen. I want a full medical evaluation for Emma immediately. Order a lifetime supply of epinephrine injectors—the highest-grade auto-injectors available on the medical market. Store them in every room of this mansion.”
Viktor bowed his head. “Right away, Don Alejandro.”
Alejandro turned back to Elena. “From this second onward, you and Emma move into the West Wing suites. You are under my personal protection. Anyone who looks at either of you with malice answers to me.”
Emma peeked out from behind her mother’s shoulder, her big brown eyes looking up at the towering mafia boss.
“Mister?” Emma asked, her small voice ringing clearly in the quiet study.
Alejandro looked down. “Yes, little one?”
“You owe my Mama a new medicine,” Emma said solemnly. “That was my last one.”
A faint, genuine smile—a sight no one in the Moretti syndicate had seen since Alejandro’s wife passed away five years ago—touched the Don’s lips.
“I owe you far more than medicine, Emma,” Alejandro whispered. “I owe you an empire.”
However, down in the subterranean garage of the estate, the pinhole camera’s live feed had already been received by a dark figure sitting in a blacked-out SUV.
Dante Moretti—Alejandro’s younger, envious brother—stared at his smartphone screen in absolute disbelief. He watched the high-definition video of the four-year-old maid’s daughter stepping into the study and thrusting an EpiPen into Alejandro’s leg, ruining a six-month conspiracy to seize control of the Moretti shipping ports.
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Dante’s jaw clenched with psychotic fury. He slammed his fist against the steering wheel.
“Find out who that little girl is,” Dante hissed into his encrypted radio. “And eliminate her before Alejandro changes his will.”
