CHAPTER 2: THE BLOOD ON THE MARBLE
"Marcus," Lorenzo whispered, never breaking eye contact with his uncle across the cavernous room. "Lock the doors."
"Boss, the senator, the judges—"
"Lock the fucking doors."
The heavy oak portals of the grand ballroom slammed shut with a thunderous boom that echoed up into the vaulted frescoed ceilings. Iron deadbolts clicked into place—a sound every guest in the room recognized as the prelude to a massacre. Panic spiked like wildfire. Women shrieked, dropping crystal glasses that shattered against the floor; men in thousand-dollar tuxedos backed away toward the walls, suddenly realizing that the DeLuca mansion was no longer a party, but a kill box.
Don Julian didn't flinch. He took a slow sip of his scotch, the ice clinking softly against the glass.
"You always were too sentimental, Lorenzo," Julian called down from the balcony, his voice amplified by the room's pristine acoustics. "An empire cannot be run by a man who spends eight months crying over a grave. You were weak. Broken."
"Where is she, Julian?" Lorenzo walked slowly toward the grand dual staircases leading up to the balcony. Every step was deliberate, unhurried, the embodiment of inevitable ruin.
"She was a distraction!" Julian spat, dropping his polite facade. "A northern girl with high-minded ethics who convinced you to turn down the syndicate's opium shipments. The family was hemorrhaging millions because your heart belonged to a corpse's memory!"
"Where. Is. She?"
"She’s where she belongs," Julian sneered, snapping his fingers.
From the shadows of the upper corridor, four men stepped out, armed with tactical submachine guns. At the same time, six of the security guards stationed around the ballroom floor drew their weapons, turning them not on the intruders, but on Lorenzo and Marcus.
The betrayal was complete. Half the DeLuca guard had been bought.
"Kill the boy," Julian ordered coldly, turning his back to descend the private exit behind the balcony. "Leave the child. We’ll raise her to be more useful than her father."
Muzzle flashes strobed through the dim light of the chandeliers.
Before the first bullet could tear through the air, Lorenzo had pulled Sophia behind a massive marble pillar, while Marcus moved with terrifying, practiced lethal speed. Marcus drew his weapon, firing three precise shots—click-clack-click—dropping two balcony guards before they could clear their safeties.
The ballroom exploded into chaos. High-society guests screamed, diving beneath velvet tables as plaster and gilded moldings rain down from above under a hail of gunfire.
Lorenzo didn't draw his gun. He snatched an iron-weighted brass candlestick from a nearby sideboard, pivoted around the pillar as a rogue guard rushed him, and drove the blunt end straight through the man’s throat.
The guard gagged, dropping his weapon. Lorenzo caught the falling assault rifle in mid-air, racked the slide, and swept the barrel upward toward the balcony in one fluid, terrifying motion.
A hail of lead tore through the upper railing. Plaster erupted. Two more of Julian's men crashed over the stone balustrade, plunging twenty feet to the marble floor below with sickening thuds.
"Marcus!" Lorenzo roared over the deafening thunder of gunfire, his face spattered with red. "Get Emma to the vault! Take Sophia with you!"
"And you?!" Marcus yelled back, ducking behind an overturned mahogany table as bullets splintered the wood inches above his head.
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Lorenzo ejected an empty magazine, slapped a fresh one into the receiver, and looked up at the private doorway where Julian had vanished.
"I’m going to go get my wife."
