Chapter 5 - THE MAFIA’S GAMBIT
"Don't listen to him, Helena!" Julian shouted, his finger tightening visibly on the trigger of his weapon. "He’s a sociopath! He’ll tell you whatever lie keeps you alive long enough to sign those transfer papers!"
Lena felt paralyzed, trapped in the crosshairs of two identical men who shared the same blood, the same face, and an unfathomable web of lies. Her eyes darted from Julian's scarred, frantic expression to Adrian’s cold, unyielding stance.
Adrian didn't look at his brother. His eyes remained locked on Lena. "If I wanted you dead, Lena, you would have choked on cyanide your first night in this house. If I wanted your money, I wouldn't have spent the last seven years anonymously funding your college tuition, paying off your foster parents' debts, and ensuring you were safe from the men who butchered your mother."
Lena gasped. "My college tuition... the anonymous scholarship from the Carter Foundation?"
"There was no Carter Foundation," Adrian said, his voice dropping into an intense, quiet rhythm that cut through the tension in the room. "There was only me. Julian didn't come here to save you. He came here to cash you in."
"Shut up!" Julian roared, lunging forward.
BANG.
The gunshot inside the enclosed bedroom was deafening, a concussive roar that shattered the heavy silence. Plaster exploded from the ceiling above Julian's head. Adrian hadn't fired at his brother; he had fired a warning shot that tore through the chandelier above, showering the floor with crystal shards.
"Drop the weapon, Julian," Adrian ordered, his voice cold as a winter grave. "You have five seconds before Mikhail and Viktor put two rounds through your spine."
The two bodyguards stepped through the shattered doorway, their automatic rifles leveled with chilling professional detachedness at Julian's chest.
Julian’s jaw worked furiously. The veins in his neck bulged. He looked at Adrian, then at the bodyguards, and finally back to Lena. With a venomous curse, he slowly lowered the pistol and let it drop to the carpet.
"Kick it away," Adrian said.
Julian kicked the gun toward the bed. Immediately, Mikhail moved in, pinning Julian against the mahogany dresser and expertly disarming him of two backup knives and the flash drive.
Adrian holstered his SIG Sauer and walked across the room, his expensive leather shoes crunching over the broken crystal. He stopped in front of Lena. She flinched, pulling the wooden box tighter against her ribs, but Adrian didn't try to take it from her. Instead, he reached down and gently helped her up from the floor, his touch firm and surprisingly steady.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, searching her pale face.
"Who... who is telling the truth?" she whispered, her voice shaking violently. "He said you were going to force me to sign over four hundred million dollars. He said you murdered our father."
Adrian closed his eyes for a brief second, a flicker of profound exhaustion breaking through his armor. When he opened them, he turned toward Julian, who was sneering under Mikhail's heavy grip.
"Show her the flash drive, Mikhail," Adrian commanded.
The bodyguard plugged the drive into a rugged tactical tablet he pulled from his tactical vest. He tapped the screen twice and handed it to Lena.
Lena’s trembling fingers scrolled through the open files. There were no transfer documents naming Adrian Blackwood. Instead, there was a series of encrypted communications between Julian Blackwood and Don Carmine Valenti—the head of the rival Valenti crime family, the most ruthless syndicate in New York.
The girl is in position, the messages read. Bring her to the docks on Friday. Once she signs the trust over to the Valenti dummy corporation, eliminate Adrian. You get your forty percent, we take Chicago.
Lena dropped the tablet. It clattered against the carpet. She looked at Julian, her stomach lurching with sickening betrayal. "You... you were selling me to the Valentis."
Julian’s sneer faded, replaced by a dark, vicious grimace. "Why should Adrian get everything? Father’s empire, the family seat, the power? He cast me into the gutter! He treated me like a rabid dog while he played the honorable mafia lord in his ivory tower! You owe me, Helena! Our father’s blood runs through your veins, which means that money belongs to this family—not some orphan girl playing maid!"
"Get him out of my sight," Adrian said quietly. "Take him to the safe house in Joliet. Secure him in the sub-level."
"You should have killed me fourteen years ago, Adrian!" Julian snarled as Mikhail and Viktor dragged him out of the room. "Valenti knows she's here! The entire High Council knows! You can't protect her forever!"
His furious curses echoed down the grand corridor until the heavy oak doors at the end of the hall slammed shut, plunging the master suite back into an eerie, ringing silence.
Adrian stood alone with Lena in the ruined room. The wind from Lake Michigan howled outside the tall windows, rattling the glass panes.
"You knew who I was the entire time," Lena whispered, her knuckles white around the handle of the wooden box. "From the very first day I walked through that front door."
"I brought you here myself," Adrian confessed, stepping toward the window. He looked out over the gray, churning water, his reflection ghostly against the glass. "For ten years, you were safe. But last month, Don Valenti discovered your identity through a corrupt clerk at the Cook County records office. His hit squads began sweeping the foster home registries. If I had left you in your apartment in the city, you would have been taken within forty-eight hours."
"So you hired me as a maid?" Anger suddenly broke through her fear, fiery and indignant. "You turned me into a servant in my own father’s house? You let me clean your floors, scrub your bathrooms, while you watched me from the shadows?"
"I had to know what kind of woman you had become," Adrian said, turning back to face her. His eyes were intensely focused on hers, stripped of all arrogance. "And more importantly, I had to keep you close. Blackwood Manor is a fortress. It has thirty-foot perimeter walls, round-the-clock armed guards, and private security protocols that Valenti cannot breach without starting an all-out street war."
"And the locked box?" Lena demanded, holding it up between them. "The three words carved into the wood? She knows everything. What does that mean?"
May you like
Adrian walked over to the bed and picked up the audio cassette tape from inside the open box. He held it between his fingers, looking at it with a mixture of reverence and deep-seated agony.
"That wasn't carved for you, Lena," Adrian said softly. "My father carved that thirty years ago. He carved it about your mother."
