Chapter 3 - Midnight In The Lion’s Den
The smell of wet concrete, stagnant river water, and engine oil filled my lungs.
I pulled my thin cardigan tight against the freezing wind as I followed Luca into the cavernous warehouse.
The sound of our footsteps echoed off the rusted steel rafters sixty feet above.
In the center of the warehouse, sitting on an overturned wooden crate, was a man in his late thirties.
He wore an Italian camel-hair coat and had slicked-back blond hair.
A thin, mocking smirk was carved across his angular face.
This was Hector Corvallis.
Flanking him were five heavily built enforcers, their hands tucked menacingly into their leather jackets.
Hector didn't even stand up when Luca approached.
He just clapped his hands slowly together in the dim light.
“Luca Moretti,” Hector purred, his voice slick and mocking.
“I expected you to show up with a war council.”
“Instead, you bring your old driver, Daniel, and... a little maid?”
Hector laughed, a dry, grating sound.
“Did you run out of soldiers, Luca?”
Luca didn't stop until he was four feet from the crate.
He didn't draw his gun.
He just stood there, towering over Hector like an executioner waiting for the clock to strike midnight.
“Where is the diamond, Hector?”
Hector tilted his head, leaning his elbows on his knees.
“Always so direct. No polite greetings? No inquiries about how dear Vanessa is doing?”
Hector smiled wider, showing straight, bleached teeth.
“She was so terrified when she came to see me yesterday. Shaking like a leaf in my office.”
“She told me you were going to marry her next month.”
Hector shook his head with mock sadness.
“Such a shame. She really thought framing your driver would buy her enough time to run to Miami.”
Luca’s voice was as cold as liquid nitrogen.
“I won't ask a second time.”
Hector stopped smiling.
The smirk evaporated from his face, replaced by a dark, hungry malice.
He reached into his breast pocket.
Daniel immediately raised his suppressed pistol.
Hector’s guards reached for their waistbands.
“Stand down,” Luca said softly to Daniel.
Hector pulled out a small black velvet pouch and tossed it onto the concrete between them.
It landed with a dull thud right at Luca’s polished leather shoes.
“There’s your precious stone,” Hector said.
Luca didn't look down.
“Emma.”
My legs felt like lead, but I forced myself to step forward.
I knelt down on the damp concrete floor.
My fingers untied the silver drawstring of the pouch.
I tipped the contents into my open palm.
A massive cushion-cut diamond rolled out, catching the weak overhead halogen bulb.
It looked magnificent.
It was bright.
It was blindingly white.
The facets were sharp, perfect, like shards of frozen glass.
I pulled the ten-power loupe from my pocket and pressed it to my right eye.
I held the stone steady between my thumb and index finger.
Hector watched me with a condescending sneer.
“Go on, girl. Tell the big boss it’s his diamond so we can discuss the real business.”
I focused the lens onto the table facet of the stone.
Then I lowered the angle to look through the pavilion.
Something was drastically wrong.
Under ten-power magnification, the edges of the facets were far too sharp.
Natural diamonds have minuscule polishing marks—drag lines left by the diamond dust on the jeweler’s cast-iron wheel.
This stone had zero polishing drag lines.
Its surface was impossibly, unnaturally smooth.
I reached into my satchel, pulled out the electronic diamond tester, and pressed the metal probe firmly against the stone's girdle.
The tester emits a tiny pulse of heat to measure thermal conductivity.
A real diamond makes the green lights race to the top, followed by a steady, high-pitched beep.
The probe touched the stone.
The machine beeped.
Green lights flashed.
Hector grinned. “See? Pure carbon. Worth every penny of four hundred grand.”
I didn't move.
My heart was beating like a machine gun in my chest.
I pulled out a small, specialized UV torch that my uncle had given me on my twenty-first birthday.
It emitted short-wave ultraviolet light.
Natural diamonds with high nitrogen concentrations fluoresce blue under UV.
Synthetic cubic zirconia does nothing.
Synthetic moissanite flashes a faint orange.
But high-pressure, high-temperature lab-grown diamonds—or coated stimulants—react with a chalky, sickly green phosphorescence that lingers for two seconds after the light is turned off.
I clicked the UV light on for three seconds.
Then I clicked it off.
In the pitch-black shadow between my palms, the stone glowed with an eerie, radioactive green ghost-light.
It lingered.
One second.
Two seconds.
Then faded into black.
I looked up from the floor directly into Luca’s dark eyes.
“It's a fake, Mr. Moretti.”
The warehouse went dead silent.
Hector’s smile instantly froze.
“What did you say?” Hector spat, his voice dropping into a snarl.
I stood up, holding the glowing stone between two fingers.
“This is a synthetic HPHT stone. Lab-created. Worth maybe eight hundred dollars.”
“The thermal tester was fooled because the girdle has been coated with a microscopic layer of polycrystalline diamond.”
“My uncle warned me about this exact scam three years ago.”
Luca slowly turned his head back toward Hector.
“You gave my fiancée a counterfeit to pawn off on me.”
“And you kept the real diamond for yourself.”
Hector sprang up from the wooden crate, his face twisted with sudden, uncontrollable rage.
“You insolent little bitch!” Hector roared, reaching inside his coat for his gun.
“Daniel,” Luca said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
Pfft. Pfft.
Two muffled gunshots echoed under the metal ceiling.
Hector’s right hand exploded in blood, his gun clattering across the concrete floor.
He fell to his knees, screaming and clutching his shattered wrist.
His five guards instantly pulled their weapons, but before they could level them, the steel roll-up doors behind us blasted open with a deafening crash.
Four black SUVs roared into the warehouse, their blinding high beams pinning Hector’s men against the wall.
Twenty heavily armed Moretti soldiers poured out of the vehicles, assault rifles raised.
Hector’s guards threw their weapons to the ground in terror, dropping to their knees with their hands behind their heads.
Luca stepped over the puddle of blood and planted his leather boot squarely onto Hector Corvallis’s chest, pushing him flat onto his back.
Luca drew his own heavy pistol and pressed the cold steel barrel directly between Hector’s eyes.
“Where is my mother’s letter, Hector?”
Hector coughed, blood bubbling at the corner of his lips, but he managed a sick, broken laugh.
“You think... you think I have it here?”
Hector spat a mouthful of blood onto Luca’s shoe.
“The letter isn't with me, Luca.”
“It’s in the vault at the Bellini family estate.”
“Your darling fiancée didn't betray you because she was scared of me.”
Hector’s blood-stained teeth showed in a grotesque grin.
“Her father... Marco Bellini... was the man who held the pillow over your mother’s face thirty years ago!”
Luca’s finger tightened on the trigger.
His knuckles turned stark white.
“Say that again,” Luca whispered.
Hector coughed violently, his eyes bulging against the cold steel on his forehead.
“Check the safe in Marco Bellini’s study, Luca.”
“The real diamond... your mother’s letter... and the original autopsy report that your father paid two million dollars to bury.”
“Vanessa didn't run to Miami.”
May you like
Hector gasped, his vision fading.
“She’s at her father’s estate right now... packing the files to burn them before you get there!”
