Chapter 9 - The Heir Nobody ExpectedThe first shot shattered the lighthouse window.
I hit the floor with Nora in my arms as glass sprayed across the room. Elena dropped behind the table. Salvatore fired toward the stairwell, where the first of Sokov's men appeared.
“Move!” I shouted.
Enzo and two guards returned fire.
The room filled with smoke and the acrid smell of gunpowder. Nora clung to my coat, sobbing into the fabric.
I carried her toward the spiral staircase.
Elena followed, one hand pressed against her forehead. Blood trickled between her fingers where a shard of glass had cut her skin.
We descended into the old storage chamber beneath the lighthouse.
A narrow maintenance passage led from the chamber to the rocky shore. My security team had mapped the structure before our arrival, but no one had known whether the passage remained intact.
Enzo reached the door first.
“It's blocked.”
“By what?”
“Collapsed stone.”
I looked toward the staircase.
Footsteps thundered above us.
Salvatore appeared at the landing, his pistol still in his hand.
For a moment, I thought he'd come to finish us.
Instead, he fired upward as two men emerged from the shadows.
One fell.
The other returned fire.
Salvatore staggered, clutching his side.
“Go!” he shouted.
I stared at him.
“Why?”
He looked at Nora.
“Because she's innocent.”
The words sounded absurd coming from a man who had spent years lying, stealing, and concealing the truth about my family.
But he had placed himself between the child and Sokov's men.
That meant something.
Not forgiveness.
Not redemption.
Something smaller and more complicated.
I handed Nora to Elena.
“Get her to the eastern landing. Enzo will take you to the boat.”
“What about you?”
“I'll bring your uncle.”
Salvatore laughed weakly.
“You always did have a talent for making bad decisions.”
I grabbed his arm.
“Can you walk?”
“Can you stop talking?”
We climbed toward the upper room as Enzo's men held the passage.
The gunfire had shifted to the western side of the lighthouse. Sokov's men were trying to reach the office from the exterior staircase.
Salvatore leaned heavily against me.
“Why did you really take Lucia?” I asked.
He gave me a bitter smile.
“Your father believed power belonged to the person holding the gun. Your mother believed it belonged to the person holding the deed. Both were wrong.”
“Then who does it belong to?”
“The person who knows the truth.”
We reached the lantern room.
Salvatore stopped beside the table.
“Your mother hid a second ledger.”
“I found the first.”
“The first records the money. The second records the names of everyone who received it.”
“Where is it?”
He looked at the cracked window.
“Under the place where your father buried his regrets.”
I stared at him.
“That's not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
A burst of gunfire struck the wall behind us.
Salvatore shoved me toward the stairs.
“Go!”
I hesitated.
He raised his pistol.
“Lorenzo, for once in your life, do what your mother wanted.”
I ran.
Outside, the wind cut across the rocks. Elena and Nora were already aboard the boat, with Enzo at the controls.
I climbed aboard.
A second later, Salvatore emerged from the lighthouse.
He was limping badly.
He fired twice toward the pursuing men, then threw himself down the rocky slope toward the shore.
I extended a hand.
He caught it.
We hauled him aboard just as a bullet struck the water beside the hull.
The boat surged away from the island.
For several minutes, no one spoke.
Nora sat wrapped in a blanket, her cheek pressed against Elena's shoulder.
Then she looked at me.
“Is he a bad man?”
I glanced toward Salvatore.
His eyes were closed. Blood darkened the side of his coat.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then why did you save him?”
I watched the waves break against the island.
“Because sometimes bad people do the right thing for the wrong reasons. And sometimes you have to stay alive long enough to find out which is which.”
Nora considered that.
Then she reached into her coat pocket and removed a small plastic bracelet.
“I found this in the lighthouse.”
She handed it to me.
A silver star hung from the bracelet.
I recognized it immediately.
My mother had worn that star for as long as I could remember.
But the pendant wasn't the strangest part.
On the back, six tiny letters had been engraved.
M-A-R-I-A.
Elena stared at it.
“My mother was named Maria.”
“Was?” I asked.
“She died when I was a child. I never knew my father. I was raised by my grandmother.”
I turned the bracelet over.
Beneath the name was a hospital number.
The same number printed on Lucia's birth record.
Nora watched my expression change.
“Is it Grandma's?”
I looked at her.
“Maybe.”
“Then why does it say Maria?”
No one answered.
My phone rang.
The caller ID showed an unknown number.
I answered.
A woman's voice came through the line.
“Lorenzo.”
I went perfectly still.
My mother's voice.
Older than I remembered, tired and trembling, but unmistakable.
“Mother?”
A faint breath.
“My son.”
I closed my eyes.
“Where are you?”
“Listen carefully. Salvatore isn't the person you should fear most.”
“Then who is?”
“The man standing beside you.”
I opened my eyes.
Enzo was steering the boat.
Salvatore lay unconscious beside him.
I raised my gaze toward my driver.
He was looking straight at me.
His hand moved beneath his jacket.
And when he drew it back into view, he was holding a photograph of my mother.
The same photograph I'd found in the cellar.
May you like
On its back were four words.
ENZO KNOWS EVERYTHING.
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