Chapter 4 - The Nameless Heir
In the pitch black, the muzzle flash was blinding.
A deafening roar shattered the silence.
The guard nearest me screamed and collapsed into the metal instrument tray.
Instruments clattered across the floor.
A hand grabbed my wrist in the dark.
Rough skin.
Calloused fingers.
Luca.
“Move,” he whispered against my ear.
He pulled me down to the cold floor.
Gunfire ripped through the room above us.
Plaster and drywall rained down like snow.
“Daniel! Suppressive fire!” Luca ordered.
The steady, rhythmic boom of Daniel’s automatic shotgun echoed through the corridor.
Luca dragged me behind the heavy steel surgical cabinets.
His breathing was shallow.
I could feel the warm blood soaking through his bandage and onto my arm.
“Are you hit again?” I gasped.
“Just the stitches,” he grunted.
“We can’t stay here! They have the exits covered!”
“There is an old service elevator behind the narcotics vault,” Luca said.
He shoved a fresh magazine into his Glock in the dark.
The click of the slide was precise and deadly.
“Daniel! Move to the service lift!”
“On you, boss!”
We crawled along the perimeter wall.
The back of the medical wing opened into a narrow maintenance corridor.
Luca kicked open the service elevator doors.
The manual gate rattled open.
We tumbled inside.
Daniel slammed the iron grate shut and pulled the mechanical lever.
The elevator shuddered and began descending into the sub-basement.
Gunfire sparked against the iron cage from above, but we were already out of range.
The elevator dropped two levels and ground to a halt.
We stepped out into the damp, cold subterranean tunnels beneath the estate.
The air smelled like old limestone and damp dirt.
Emergency red backup lights flickered along the ceiling.
Luca slumped against the brick wall.
His face was ghostly pale.
The blood was seeping through his black shirt now.
I immediately knelt beside him.
I pressed my hands against his wound.
“You're losing too much blood.”
“I’m fine,” he lied.
He looked at Daniel.
“Who cut the main power grid?”
“I have a remote kill-switch tied to my watch, boss,” Daniel said calmly.
“Good man.”
Luca turned his head toward me.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the green folder he had grabbed from the tray before the lights went out.
He handed it to me.
“Read the rest of it.”
“Luca, you need a pressure dressing—”
“Read it, Emma!”
I took the bloodstained document with shaking hands.
Under the faint red emergency light, I turned past the DNA certificate.
Beneath it was a handwritten hospital transfer log.
Dated October 18, 1988.
It listed the mother of the second child.
The woman Vincent called a ‘gutter girl.’
The name was written in elegant, looping cursive.
Clara Sullivan.
My breath caught in my throat.
The world seemed to tilt beneath my boots.
The paper trembled in my hands.
“Emma?” Luca’s voice was suddenly sharp.
“What is it?”
I couldn't speak.
My jaw felt paralyzed.
“Emma!”
I looked down at the paper again.
Clara Sullivan.
My mother.
The woman who died when I was six years old.
The woman my father never spoke about without weeping.
“Emma, what did you see?” Luca demanded, leaning forward despite the agony in his side.
I looked from the paper to Luca’s face.
I saw the high cheekbones.
The sharp line of his jaw.
The slight cleft in his chin.
The exact same cleft my father had in every old photograph on our mantelpiece.
“My mother’s name was Clara,” I whispered.
The tunnel went deathly quiet.
Daniel stopped reloading his shotgun.
Luca stared at me.
His eyes were wide, unblinking.
“What are you saying?”
“You aren't a nameless charity child,” I said, tears suddenly burning my eyes.
“You’re my brother.”
Luca froze.
Every muscle in his body turned to stone.
“That is impossible,” he rasped.
“Look at the signature, Luca!”
I thrust the parchment into his hands.
“The attending nurse who signed off on the baby’s transfer was Clara Sullivan!”
“My mother worked the night shift at St. Catherine’s in 1988!”
Luca read the name over and over again.
His chest rose and fell in ragged gasps.
“If I am Clara’s son... then who was my father?”
I shook my head.
“My father’s name was Thomas Sullivan.”
“He was an antique watchmaker.”
I touched the gold watch in Luca’s breast pocket.
“My father built custom movements for the Bellini family in the eighties.”
“Until Vincent Bellini accused him of theft and ruined his business.”
A cold, horrifying puzzle began assembling in my mind.
Vincent hadn't just bought a baby.
He had stolen one.
He had taken the child of the man he hated most to replace the dead Moretti heir.
A tool of control.
A manufactured boss that the Bellini family could blackmail and overthrow whenever they chose.
Above us, heavy footsteps echoed through the ceiling joists.
Dozens of boots.
Shouted commands in Italian.
Vincent’s men were sweeping the ground floor.
Daniel checked the breach door at the end of the tunnel.
“Boss, we have company coming down the eastern tunnel.”
Luca slowly stood up.
He leaned against the brickwork, but his posture was different now.
The hesitation was gone.
The shock had transformed into an icy, bottomless rage.
He looked at me.
He looked at my eyes.
For the first time, I saw the undeniable resemblance between us.
The same stubborn fire.
The same steady pulse.
“They took me from my family,” Luca whispered.
His voice was deadlier than a loaded gun.
“They made me a monster for their empire.”
“And now they want to kill my sister.”
He pulled his backup weapon from his boot.
He handed it to Daniel.
“Daniel, open the blast gates to the armory.”
“Boss, you aren't in condition to fight a dozen soldiers,” Daniel warned.
Luca looked down the dark hallway where flashlight beams were beginning to pierce the shadows.
“I am not going to fight them.”
May you like
He pulled a master detonator remote from his inner coat pocket.
“I am going to bury them in my father’s tomb.”
