Chapter 7 - A Maid in Silk
The silence that followed Moretti’s words was absolute, heavy, and suffocating.
My mother hadn’t died peacefully in an emergency room bed from a worn-out heart. She had been murdered. Hunted down, trapped, and slaughtered by the monster standing three feet away from me.
Tears of white-hot, blinding fury sprang to my eyes. My nails dug into the palms of my hands so hard the skin broke beneath the silk of my sleeves.
“You murdered her,” I choked out, my voice trembling with an agony that tore straight through my chest.
“She stole from me,” Moretti hissed, his eyes fixed on mine. “She stole the three Falcone boys from the cellar twenty years ago. She robbed me of the leverage that would have crowned me king of this city. Her life was forfeit the day she picked that lock.”
Moretti smiled—a sick, triumphant grin. “And now, you’re going to pay her debt. Tonight, Roman, you sign over the eastern shipping docks, or your little maid doesn't make it to the parking garage alive.”
Roman didn't flinch.
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't raise his voice.
He simply reached up, took my trembling hand in his, and brought my knuckles to his lips, kissing the cold skin with terrifying, absolute reverence.
When he lowered my hand, he looked at Victor Moretti with eyes so completely devoid of humanity that even the veteran mob boss instinctively took a step back.
“Victor,” Roman said softly. “You made two mistakes tonight.”
Moretti sneered. “Oh? And what are those, boy?”
“First,” Roman said, his voice slicing through the silent ballroom like a razor, “you confessed to a murder in front of the deputy director of the Boston FBI field office, who is currently sitting at table four with Gabriel’s audio feed recording every syllable through Maeve’s diamond choker.”
Moretti’s face drained of color. He whipped his head toward the black diamond necklace resting on my throat, realizing in a split second that the central stone housed a micro-transmitter.
“Second,” Roman continued, his tone dropping into a deadly, rhythmic cadence, “you assumed that I came here to negotiate.”
At that exact second, the massive crystal chandeliers above our heads flickered twice and plunged the entire ballroom into pitch-black darkness.
Panic erupted.
Women screamed, glasses shattered against the floor, and chairs overturned as three hundred people rushed blindly toward the exits.
In the darkness, the sharp, rhythmic crack of suppressed gunshots echoed from the mezzanine.
“Maeve, down!” Declan’s voice roared in my ear.
A heavy, muscular arm wrapped around my waist, lifting me off my feet and pulling me behind the thick marble pillar supporting the VIP balcony.
Red emergency lights flickered on three seconds later, casting the grand ballroom in a bloody, apocalyptic glow.
Moretti’s bodyguards were already on the floor, neutralized with terrifying surgical precision. But Moretti himself was gone, fleeing through the service entrance behind the mezzanine with two of his most trusted capos.
“He’s heading for the docks!” Gabriel shouted over the chaos, slamming a fresh magazine into his sidearm. “He has a private cutter waiting at Pier 4!”
Declan shook his head, spitting blood from a freshly opened lip. “The exits are swarming with his secondary crews! They set an ambush in the lower concourse!”
I looked out at the chaos, my heart pounding against my ribs, but the paralyzing fear that had controlled my life for the past five years had evaporated. In its place was a cold, burning iron resolve.
My mother hadn't died running away. She had fought until her last breath to give me and Lily a chance at life.
“The wine cellar,” I said suddenly, grabbing Roman’s lapel.
Roman looked down at me, his eyes wide in surprise. “What?”
“The Atlantic Club was built over the old harbor brewery,” I said, remembering the blueprints my mother had kept in an old tin box beneath our floorboards from her days working commercial cleaning crews. “The freight elevator connects the ballroom kitchen directly to the sub-basement tunnel leading to Pier 4. Moretti isn’t taking the concourse. He’s cutting through the cellar to get to the boat!”
Gabriel stared at me in shock. “How the hell do you know that?”
“My mother cleaned this building for ten years,” I said, lifting the hem of my obsidian dress and kicking off the velvet stilettos, standing barefoot and ready on the cold marble floor. “She taught me how to find the back door in every cage.”
Roman’s eyes blazed with a savage, unholy pride.
He reached into his tuxedo jacket, pulled a sleek, silver-plated compact pistol from his holster, and pressed it firmly into my hand.
May you like
“Safety is off,” Roman murmured, his fingers wrapping tightly around mine over the checkered grip. “Stay behind me. Let’s go finish what your mother started.”
***
