Chapter 6
Blood in the Garage
Ryan’s appearance in the garden should have been impossible. He had been confined, guarded, checked. Yet there he was, half-hidden behind clipped hedges and winter-bare rose arches, one hand braced against the stone balustrade, his face pale and set.
By the time Luca and two men burst through the conservatory doors, Ryan was gone.
Salvatore changed the plan within minutes. Emily would leave the estate before dusk, not at dawn, not tomorrow, not after anyone had more time to prepare. A lakeside safe house belonged to the Morettis an hour away, staffed only by men Salvatore had used for twenty years. Mirella would go. Bianca would go. Luca would drive behind them. Salvatore himself would follow once he finished one piece of business no one could do in his place.
Emily hated every second lost.
She was helped into a dark SUV through the underground garage, a shawl over her shoulders again, not for modesty this time but for warmth. The baby had been restless all afternoon. Every tightening in her abdomen made her heart race. Bianca sat beside her. Mirella in the front. Three cars formed the convoy.
It almost worked.
The first warning came as the main garage gate started rising and then jammed halfway up with a metallic shriek. The second came when the overhead lights died. Emergency strips snapped on, washing the concrete in thin red light.
Luca shouted into his radio.
A van rammed the side entrance so hard the door bent inward. Three armed men poured through it, not masked boys or hired drunks, but professionals moving fast. Moretti bodyguards fired back at once. The garage exploded into noise—gunfire, ricochets, tires screaming as the lead driver tried to reverse.
Bianca shoved Emily low in the back seat and covered her head.
Ryan appeared through the red haze near the second vehicle, coat open, face savage, as if all pretense had finally burned away. He wasn’t armed with a gun. He did not need one for what he wanted. He yanked open the rear door of Emily’s SUV and grabbed for her wrist.
“Come with me now,” he hissed. “Or you both die here.”
Emily drove her heel into his shin with everything she had.
Ryan cursed and came harder, one hand catching her forearm, the other reaching across her belly as if even now he thought force could still pass for power. Then Salvatore was there.
No one saw from which direction he came. One second Ryan had Emily’s arm; the next Salvatore hit him like an avalanche. The older man slammed Ryan into the side of the car so hard the metal dented. Ryan swung wild. Salvatore broke the motion with an elbow to the throat, then drove him backward across the concrete.
A shot cracked from the van side. One of Salvatore’s men staggered and fell.
The attackers lost ground quickly after that. Luca dropped one. The others ran. Ryan twisted free only long enough to snatch a fallen gun, but he did not fire. He looked toward the darkness beyond the jammed gate, toward someone unseen, then bolted that way instead.
Salvatore might have pursued if the dying bodyguard had not seized his sleeve.
The man was young, blood pumping through his fingers. He fought for breath, dragged Salvatore down close, and forced out two words before his eyes clouded.
“Ventresca… knew.”
Salvatore’s face did not change. But Emily, from the open SUV door, saw the blow land all the same.
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Carlo Ventresca was no longer a suspicion. He was blood on the concrete.
And Ryan had just run toward him.
