Chapter 7 - The Traitor In Black Gloves
Screams erupted in the dining room.
Guests dove under the heavy mahogany table. Vanessa curled into a ball on the floor, covering her head and sobbing hysterically.
Luca didn’t flinch.
He drew a matte black pistol from beneath his tuxedo jacket, aimed at the heavy oak doors, and fired twice into the locking mechanism.
The wood splintered. He kicked the doors open and sprinted into the grand foyer.
I ran right behind him.
I didn’t care about the danger. Leo was up there. And if Marco was the scarred man, he had the child who witnessed him take the car three years ago.
We raced up the sweeping marble staircase.
The hallway was empty, but the door to the west wing was kicked open.
Luca moved with terrifying precision, his gun raised. I stayed low, gripping the banister.
“Marco!” Luca’s roar shook the crystal chandeliers. “If you touch a hair on his head, I will burn you alive!”
Silence.
Then, a voice echoed from the master suite at the end of the hall.
“I don’t want the boy, Boss.”
It was Marco.
Luca stepped into the doorway of the master suite. I peered around his shoulder.
Marco stood by the open window, the cold night wind whipping the curtains around him. In his left hand, he held a gun.
His right hand was bare.
The leather glove was gone. The skin was a horrific map of thick, jagged burn scars, exactly like Leo’s drawing.
He wasn’t holding Leo. Thank God. Leo was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is my nephew?” Luca demanded, keeping his gun aimed at Marco’s chest.
“He ran into the closet when I shot the lock,” Marco said calmly. “He’s safe. I told you, I don’t want the kid. I just want the watch.”
“You killed my sister.” Luca’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“I followed orders,” Marco countered, his voice surprisingly steady. “Your sister was going to hand those bank coordinates over to the Feds. She was going to sell out the entire family to save her own skin.”
Answer one: Marco orchestrated the hit on Luca’s sister to protect the mafia family.
Open two: Who gave Marco the order? Luca had been in charge for five years.
“Nobody ordered a hit on my own blood!” Luca yelled.
“Yes, they did,” Marco said.
He reached into his jacket pocket. Luca braced to fire, but Marco slowly pulled out an old, faded Polaroid photograph.
He tossed it onto the Persian rug between them.
“Your father ordered it, Luca,” Marco said. “Before he died. He knew she was a rat. He told me to stop her at all costs. I ran her car off the road. The car caught fire. That’s how I got the scars.”
Luca stared at the photo on the floor.
“I didn’t get the watch that night because the kid was in the backseat crying,” Marco sneered. “I panicked and ran. By the time I came back for it, the cops had it. I’ve been waiting three years for you to pull it out of that safe.”
Marco looked at me.
“I needed a scapegoat. The stupid fiancé was easy to manipulate. And you... your father was a loose end I tied up ten years ago. It was poetry to frame his daughter.”
He smiled, stepping backward toward the balcony edge.
“I’ll be taking my retirement now, Boss.”
Marco fell backward over the railing, vanishing into the darkness.
Luca lunged for the balcony, but he was too late. The roar of a motorcycle engine erupted from the driveway below and sped away into the night.
Luca stood breathing heavily in the cold air.
I slowly walked over and picked up the faded Polaroid photograph from the rug.
It showed an old man—Luca’s father—handing a thick envelope to Marco.
But that wasn’t what made the blood drain from my face.
Because in the background of the photograph, standing by a dark sedan, was my father.
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And sitting in the passenger seat of that car, holding a very young baby, was my mother.
TITLE: The Microdot In The Setting
