Chapter 4 - Shadows in the Mirror
"Don't move a muscle, Luca," Julian said smoothly, stepping out from the shadows of the broken greenhouse wall. He was wearing an expensive trench coat, impeccably tailored, holding a heavy revolver leveled directly at the back of my skull. "Slowly set the box down and turn around."
I did as he said, lowering the steel box carefully onto the wet stone before rising to my full height. I turned slowly, taking in the sight of the man I had trusted with the legal and financial empire of the Moretti family.
"Julian," I said, my voice dropping an octave into a register that made men pray for mercy. "I should have known. You were the only one who had unchecked access to my personal safes and the family accounts."
Julian chuckled, a dry, cold sound that echoed hollowly against the glass roof. "Access? Luca, I built those safes. I managed the payoffs, the property titles, the offshore accounts. You were the muscle, the terrifying figurehead everyone feared. But I was the mind keeping this leviathan alive. And yet, every time a major decision had to be made, you listened to Sofia. A girl from the old country who thought honor actually meant something."
"She was my wife," I said, taking a microscopic step forward, measuring the distance between us. Five yards. Too far to disarm him before he pulled the trigger. "And Matteo is an innocent child."
"Matteo is a loose end," Julian corrected, his eyes cold and unblinking behind his expensive gold-rimmed glasses. "Sofia discovered what I was doing with the syndicate's funds—she realized I had diverted over forty million dollars into private accounts in Zurich. She tried to warn you, but she was clever enough to know you’d react wildly. So I had to eliminate her. I started feeding her the digitalis extract in her daily tea."
"And when she realized it?" I demanded, the blood boiling in my veins.
"When she realized it, she tried to flee with the boy," Julian sneered. "So I cut the brake lines on her car. A tragic accident. Simple, clean. But then I noticed the little brat was showing signs of cardiac distress too. At first, I thought he’d just inherited her weak constitution. But then I realized... Sofia had been nursing him while she was being poisoned. The boy had absorbed the toxin through her milk!"
A wave of horror rushed through me so intense it almost brought me to my knees. Matteo hadn't been poisoned intentionally by a intruder—he had been slowly dying because of the poisoned milk of his own dying mother, compounded by trace amounts Julian continued to introduce into the household water supply to finish the job.
"You monster," I whispered.
"I am a businessman, Luca," Julian said, tightening his grip on the revolver. "With you broken by your son's death, you would have stepped down or lost your mind completely. The family elders would have appointed me as regent. I would have inherited the entire Moretti network without firing a single shot in a turf war. But then that damned maid arrived today. I knew the moment she walked into the house with that cake that Sofia had left a backup plan."
"She left more than a plan, Julian," I said, my eyes locking onto his. "She left a death sentence for you."
Julian laughed. "She's dead, Luca. And in about three seconds, so are you. I'll take that box, throw it in the river, and return to the estate. Within forty-eight hours, your son will be dead, and I will mourn at your side like a faithful brother."
"You forgot one detail, Julian," I said softly.
"What's that?"
"I never come alone."
From the shadows behind Julian, a silhouette stepped out silently from the broken glass frame. Before Julian could process the movement, a flash of steel gleamed in the moonlight. Elena brought a heavy iron pipe down with brutal, practiced precision directly onto Julian's wrist.
Crack.
Julian screamed in pain as his revolver clattered to the wet flagstones. He stumbled back, clutching his shattered wrist, but before he could recover, I closed the distance between us like a panther.
I grabbed him by the throat, slamming his head back against the stone fountain with enough force to crack the marble. He gasped for air, his eyes bulging with terror as my hand closed off his windpipe.
"Luca... please..." he choked out, blood leaking from his mouth.
"You touched my wife," I snarled, my face inches from his. "You poisoned my son."
"Luca, wait!" Elena called out, running up beside us. She grabbed my arm, her touch firm. "If you kill him now, you won't get the second half of the formula! The serum in that box is only a stabilizing agent! Sofia's notes said the permanent cure requires the neutralizing catalyst that Julian's chemist synthesized!"
I held Julian suspended off the ground, his face turning a deep, sickly purple. I wanted to crush his windpipe. I wanted to rip him apart piece by piece for every tear my son had cried, for every agonizing night I had spent watching Matteo fade away.
"Where is the catalyst, Julian?" I growled, loosening my grip just enough to let him gasp for a sliver of air.
"In... in my private safe... at the dockside warehouse..." Julian sobbed, trembling violently in my grasp. "Code... code is 0814... Sofia's birthday... I used it to mock you..."
I stared at him with pure, unadulterated disgust. Then, with a single swift motion, I slammed his head against the fountain one more time, knocking him unconscious. I dropped his limp body onto the muddy ground.
I turned to Elena, my chest heaving. "You followed me?"
"I knew Julian was tailing you," she said, holding up a small GPS tracker she had found planted beneath my car. "He was monitoring your movements from the moment you left the estate. I took Marco's secondary vehicle and followed him here."
"Marco?" I asked, my heart sinking. "Is Marco in on this?"
"No," Elena said firmly. "Marco is loyal to a fault. He’s currently holding down the estate, thinking you are resting in your quarters. But we don't have time to celebrate. Look at the time."
I checked my watch. It was 2:00 AM. Matteo's pulse had been weakening when I left.
"We get the catalyst from the warehouse, take the box, and get back to Matteo," I said, picking up the steel container from the ground. "If Julian wakes up..."
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"He won't," Elena said, pointing her silenced pistol at Julian's kneecaps and firing twice with emotionless precision. Julian groaned in unconscious agony, pinned to the ground. "He isn't going anywhere."
We ran back to the car, the night air freezing our lungs, with the fate of my son resting on a race against the clock.
