CHAPTER 4: THE PRICE OF BLOOD
Before Julian could pull the trigger, the dark space beneath his chair exploded.
A shadow broke from the corner of the cellar—not a phantom, but the sheer, sudden movement of Lorenzo's secondary weapon. Lorenzo hadn't dropped his guard; he had deliberately drawn Julian's focus away from his left hand, which held a thin, concealed throwing blade pulled from his cuff.
The steel flashed through the dim bulb light.
Thwack.
The blade buried itself deep into Julian’s wrist. Julian shrieked in agony, his hand spasming as the snub-nosed revolver clattered to the damp stone floor.
Before the gun could even stop rolling, Lorenzo bridged the distance. His right hand clamped around Julian’s throat like a hydraulic vise, slamming the older man backwards against the stone wall with enough force to shatter the mortar.
Julian choked, his eyes bulging as he clawed helplessly at Lorenzo’s iron grip.
"Eight months," Lorenzo rasped, his face inches from his uncle’s. "Eight months I lay in an empty bed. Eight months I watched my daughter cry for a mother she thought was a dream."
"L-Lorenzo... family..." Julian wheezed, blood flecking his lips.
"You are not family," Lorenzo hissed. "You are a infection."
With a sickening, sharp twist of his forearm, the struggle ended.
Julian’s body went limp, collapsing into a heap at the base of the stone wall like a discarded suit of clothes.
Silence rushed back into the cellar, thick and heavy.
Lorenzo stood over the body for a single beat, his chest heaving, before he turned slowly toward the wooden chair. His hands, covered in dust and blood, trembled violently as he drew a small pocketknife and sliced through the ropes binding Isabella’s wrists and ankles.
The moment the hemp fell away, Isabella collapsed forward.
Lorenzo caught her before she hit the cold floor, pulling her small, bruised frame tight against his chest. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling the faint, unmistakable scent of home beneath the dirt and dampness.
"I thought you were gone," Lorenzo sobbed, the stoic Don finally breaking as tears cut clean tracks through the dust on his face. "I buried a casket, Isabella... I buried an empty casket..."
"I knew you'd come," she whispered, her weak arms wrapping around his neck, holding onto him with the last of her strength. "I heard Emma... through the floorboards every night... I knew you were searching..."
Footsteps thundered down the spiral stairs.
Marcus burst through the door, his weapon raised, but stopped dead in his tracks at the scene before him. Behind him, holding little Emma tightly in her arms, stood Sophia, her eyes wide with shock.
Emma wriggled out of Sophia's arms, her tiny shoes pattering against the stone floor.
"Mama?" the little girl called out, her voice ringing clear and pure through the dark cellar.
Isabella looked up, tears streaming down her bruised cheeks as she opened her arms. Lorenzo helped her sit up, keeping his arm firmly around her waist, anchoring his world back together piece by piece.
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The DeLuca family war was far from over—the syndicate in the north would answer for every second of Isabella’s captivity, and the blood on the ballroom floor was only the beginning. But as Lorenzo held his wife and daughter in the cold light of the wine cellar, the frozen marble of his heart finally shattered into warmth.
The ghost was home.
