Chapter 7 - The Sister Who Returned from the Dead
Victoria Moretti had Elena’s eyes.
That was the first thing I saw.
The second was the gun pointed at my chest.
Antonio raised his weapon.
Victoria aimed at him without looking.
“Tell your man to lower it.”
“He will after you do.”
“I have spent three years hiding from Dominic. I am not lowering anything.”
Sophia stood beside the wounded priest.
“Are you really Elena’s sister?”
Victoria’s face softened at the name.
“Half-sister.”
I studied her.
She appeared to be in her early forties, with dark hair cut at the jaw and a thin scar running from her ear to her collar.
“The Morettis had no daughters,” I said.
“They had one they admitted to.”
“Elena.”
“And one they buried on paper.”
She lowered the birth certificate slightly.
“My mother was a housekeeper in Salvatore Moretti’s home. When I was born, his wife paid to have me placed in an orphanage. Years later, Elena found me.”
“When?”
“Before she married you.”
My anger rose.
“She knew you all those years and said nothing?”
“She was protecting me.”
“From whom?”
“Your family. Hers. Everyone.”
Victoria placed the birth certificate on the altar.
“Elena did not marry you because your father arranged it. She married you because she believed you were the only man powerful enough to end the war between the families.”
“That sounds like something people say after the dead cannot deny it.”
“She loved you.”
The certainty in her voice hurt more than doubt would have.
“Then why hide this?”
“Because she knew what your mother would do if she discovered Moretti blood near the Marino inheritance.”
I looked at the certificate.
Isabella Rose Marino.
Father: Gabriel Marino.
Mother: Elena Vittoria Marino.
Nothing unusual.
Victoria turned it over.
Taped to the back was a sealed laboratory result.
My hands felt numb as I opened it.
The probability of paternity was greater than 99.9 percent.
Isabella was my daughter.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
The room blurred.
For three years, my mother had poisoned my child because of a lie.
Dominic had murdered Elena because she discovered it.
And I had allowed both of them close enough to touch my family.
Sophia placed a hand on my arm.
“She is yours.”
“She was always mine.”
The words came from somewhere deep and broken.
Victoria nodded.
“Elena never doubted that.”
“Why did the first test show Moretti markers?”
“Pierce falsified it. Dominic needed Caterina frightened enough to cooperate.”
My mother’s hatred had been manipulated.
But the poison had still entered Isabella’s body through her decisions.
That truth would not change.
Father Thomas groaned.
Sophia pressed cloth against his wound.
“We need an ambulance.”
“No hospitals,” Victoria said. “Dominic controls people inside the emergency system.”
“We have a private medical team,” I said.
Antonio arranged transport.
As they carried Thomas out, church bells began ringing.
Not from above us.
From Antonio’s phone.
An emergency signal.
He answered, listened, and turned pale.
“The estate is under attack.”
We left Saint Michael’s at once.
Halfway across Brooklyn, smoke appeared on the horizon.
Dominic had moved faster than expected.
He attacked with men from my own crews—captains who believed I had become weak, unstable, or controlled by outsiders. He offered them territory and promised to restore the old order.
By the time we reached the estate, the southern gate was burning.
Gunfire flashed from the windows.
My loyal men had barricaded the family wing.
Isabella and Emma were trapped inside.
We entered through the underground wine tunnel.
Victoria moved with us.
“You stay behind,” I told her.
“Elena died because too many people told women to stay behind.”
She checked her magazine.
I did not argue.
We emerged beneath the kitchen.
Two attackers guarded the corridor. Antonio disabled one. Victoria shot the other in the shoulder before he could raise his rifle.
She did not kill him.
That surprised me.
“You had the shot,” I said.
“So did you.”
There had been a time when I would have finished the wounded man without thought.
Instead, I kicked away his weapon and left him alive.
We moved upstairs.
The walls shook from an explosion near the east wing.
At the top of the staircase, my mother stood with a shotgun.
For one instant, everyone aimed at everyone.
Then Caterina fired past my shoulder.
A traitorous guard fell behind me.
“I know what I did,” she said. “I know you may never forgive me. But I will not let Dominic take her.”
“Where are the girls?”
“In Elena’s room.”
We fought our way through the corridor.
Dominic’s men had reached the family wing first. Three lay dead outside Elena’s bedroom.
Inside, Isabella sat on the floor beside the bed.
Her wheelchair had been knocked away.
Emma stood over her holding a fireplace poker.
“You took a long time,” Emma said.
Isabella’s lower lip trembled.
“I fell.”
I lifted her.
Her arms wrapped around my neck.
“But I felt it,” she whispered.
“What?”
“When I hit the floor. I felt my knee.”
Even in the middle of an armed assault, hope entered the room.
Then the windows shattered.
A helicopter rose beyond the terrace.
Dominic sat inside.
He had not come to conquer the estate.
He had come to take something.
The helicopter’s side gunner fired into the ceiling as two men descended by rope.
One threw a smoke grenade.
The room vanished in white haze.
I heard Emma scream.
I fired toward the terrace.
Someone struck me from behind.
When the smoke cleared, the helicopter was pulling away.
Emma was gone.
So was Victoria.
On the floor lay a phone.
Dominic’s voice came through the speaker.
“Bring Isabella to the Moretti cathedral tomorrow night. Come alone, or the child and Elena’s sister die together.”
Isabella gripped my coat.
“He took Emma because of me.”
“No.”
“He wants me.”
I looked at the sky where the helicopter had disappeared.
Dominic believed Isabella was the key to controlling both family legacies.
He believed I would trade anything for her.
He was right about one thing.
I would give anything to protect my daughter.
But I would not give her to him.
And I would no longer fight as the man Dominic had known all his life.
That man ruled through fear.
The man standing in Elena’s ruined bedroom understood something stronger.
A family did not survive because its members shared blood.
It survived because people chose, again and again, to stand between one another and the darkness.
May you like
Dominic had taken one of ours.
We were going to bring her home.
