Chapter 4 - The Blood on His Ring
The bullet entered Lorenzo’s left side below the ribs and exited through his back.
No major artery.
No spinal injury.
No shattered bone.
The private surgeon called that fortunate.
Clara called it unacceptable.
For three hours she sat outside the surgical suite with dried blood beneath her fingernails.
Maya sat beside her.
Marco paced.
Nobody spoke about why Clara refused to leave.
At three-thirty in the morning, the surgeon emerged.
“He’ll recover.”
Clara’s shoulders dropped.
Marco exhaled.
Maya looked at her sister.
“You were scared.”
“No.”
“You look like you haven’t breathed since midnight.”
“I was concerned.”
“Scared.”
“Concerned.”
Maya leaned back.
“Sure.”
Clara ignored her.
The surgeon allowed only one visitor.
Marco immediately said, “Go.”
Clara stared.
“You’re family.”
“You’re the fiancée.”
“Fake fiancée.”
Maya made a face.
“That distinction is becoming weak.”
Clara looked at Marco.
“Why me?”
He answered quietly.
“Because when he woke for thirty seconds after surgery, he asked if you were safe.”
That silenced her.
Lorenzo lay beneath white hospital blankets looking strangely human.
Without his suit, without armed men, without New York holding its breath around him, he was simply a wounded thirty-two-year-old man with dark hair falling across his forehead.
Clara sat.
His eyes opened several minutes later.
“You stayed.”
Her chest tightened unexpectedly.
“You ruined my dress.”
His gaze moved to the bloodstains.
“I’ll buy you another.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“I often do with you.”
His voice was rough.
Clara handed him water.
He took a small drink.
“Matteo?”
“Gone.”
Lorenzo’s face hardened.
“The warehouse?”
“Burned.”
“Evidence?”
“Marco saved photographs from his phone. Not enough.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
Clara watched him.
“Did you know Matteo was involved with Nico?”
“No.”
“Do you believe it now?”
A pause.
“I believe he lied.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“He was eleven when my mother died.”
Clara waited.
Lorenzo continued.
“My father brought him into our house after his parents were killed. We grew up like brothers.”
“So did Nico.”
His eyes opened.
There was pain in them that had nothing to do with the bullet.
“Yes.”
Clara softened.
Only slightly.
“My father wrote that numbers mattered more than names.”
Lorenzo looked toward her.
“Meaning?”
“Maybe we stop deciding who to trust based on family.”
“That would eliminate most of my social circle.”
“Probably healthy.”
His mouth twitched.
Then Clara remembered something.
“Your father.”
“What?”
“The shell company owning the warehouse.”
Lorenzo became serious.
“It was created in 1999. Salvatore used it for shipping operations.”
“Could Matteo access it?”
“Yes.”
“Could Enzo?”
“Yes.”
“Could Nico?”
“Yes.”
Clara leaned back.
“Then the warehouse doesn’t prove your father was involved.”
“No.”
“But my father specifically told me to ask what Salvatore did the night Nico died.”
Lorenzo’s expression shut down.
There it was.
The wall.
Clara recognized it because she had one too.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.”
“Bad lie.”
“Clara.”
“Your father did something that night.”
Lorenzo looked toward the window.
“He disappeared for six hours.”
“Where?”
“No one knew.”
“When did he come home?”
“After police found Nico’s car.”
“What did he say?”
“That he had been searching for him.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
“I was nineteen.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Lorenzo was silent.
Finally:
“No.”
Clara folded her hands.
“Why?”
“He had blood on his shirt.”
She went still.
“Whose?”
“He said he cut his hand.”
“Was his hand cut?”
“No.”
A terrible quiet settled.
“Lorenzo.”
“I never asked again.”
“Why?”
His eyes turned toward hers.
“Because the next morning he put a gun in my hand and told me I was now responsible for protecting the family.”
Clara understood something then.
Lorenzo’s power had always seemed enormous.
But enormous things could still be cages.
He had inherited a kingdom at nineteen without technically inheriting the crown.
A dead brother.
A frightening father.
A war based on a story he might never have believed.
“You were afraid of him,” she said.
Lorenzo’s face changed.
“No.”
“You were.”
“I respected him.”
“Fear isn’t respect.”
Daniel Vance’s words hung between them.
Lorenzo stared at Clara.
She hadn’t meant to use her father’s recording against him.
But perhaps it wasn’t against him.
Perhaps it was for him.
Eventually he looked away.
“When I was thirteen,” he said, “my father broke a man’s hand at dinner because the man contradicted him in front of guests.”
Clara said nothing.
“I remember thinking the screaming was terrible.”
He swallowed.
“Then I remember thinking what was worse was that nobody left the table.”
Clara’s anger toward him shifted into something more complicated.
“You stayed.”
“I was thirteen.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
His eyes returned to her.
“You stayed in that world.”
“By the time I understood I could leave, there were too many people whose lives depended on whether I did.”
“Employees?”
“Some.”
“Criminals?”
“Some.”
“Family?”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
He smiled without humor.
“Now I’m lying in a hospital because my cousin may have tried to murder me.”
“Excellent career choice.”
“Thank you.”
Clara hesitated before asking the next question.
“If your father ordered Nico’s death, what will you do?”
Lorenzo answered immediately.
“He’s dead.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No. I mean what happens to everything he built?”
He understood.
“If the empire was built on Nico’s murder?”
“Yes.”
Lorenzo looked at the ceiling.
“I don’t know.”
Clara nodded.
“Then maybe you should figure that out before you ask anyone to marry into it.”
His gaze snapped toward her.
She realized what she had said.
Heat touched her face.
Lorenzo noticed.
“Interesting.”
“Don’t.”
“You said marry into it.”
“Temporarily.”
“Of course.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Clara stood.
“You’re heavily medicated.”
“And still correct.”
She walked toward the door.
“Sleep.”
“Clara.”
She stopped.
“Thank you.”
No joke.
No command.
Just gratitude.
She looked back.
“You covered me in that warehouse.”
“Yes.”
“You were shot because of it.”
“Possibly.”
“That was stupid.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“No.”
She glared.
He closed his eyes.
“That one wasn’t negotiable.”
The next morning brought evidence.
Marco discovered the bullets fired at the warehouse came from weapons purchased through a security firm linked to one of Matteo’s closest lieutenants.
Not Santoro.
Matteo.
By noon, Matteo’s phone was off.
His apartment was empty.
His corporate office had been cleared.
Three Moretti accounts were missing thirty-two million dollars.
Lorenzo listened from his hospital bed.
“He’s running.”
Marco shook his head.
“No.”
He placed a document on the blanket.
“He’s buying.”
Lorenzo read.
Thirty-two million had been transferred into campaign funds, private security companies, and shell corporations tied to city officials.
Matteo wasn’t escaping New York.
He was building support.
“He’s making a claim,” Lorenzo said.
Clara frowned.
“To what?”
“The family.”
Marco nodded.
“Word is already spreading that Lorenzo has become compromised.”
Clara looked offended.
“By what?”
Marco looked at her.
“Oh.”
She folded her arms.
“Excuse me?”
“Matteo is telling people Lorenzo started a war over a waitress.”
Lorenzo’s face went cold.
Marco continued.
“He’s telling senior captains that Santoro isn’t the real threat. You are.”
Clara blinked.
“That’s flattering.”
“It gets worse.”
“Of course it does.”
“He claims Daniel Vance was a federal informant and Clara is continuing his work.”
Maya, who had just entered, stopped.
“Federal?”
Clara shook her head.
“My father never—”
“We don’t know,” Lorenzo said.
Clara glared.
“He wasn’t an informant.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he would have told me.”
Lorenzo held her gaze.
“Would he?”
That hurt because it was fair.
Daniel had hidden a key inside a locket for seven years.
Clara sat.
“What does Matteo gain by making people believe I’m working with the government?”
Marco answered.
“Fear. Anyone whose name might be in the Atlas now has a reason to want you gone.”
“Half the city.”
“Potentially.”
The prediction from Clara’s first night had come true faster than anyone expected.
By the end of the week, half the city was trying to kill them both.
That afternoon, somebody fired at the townhouse gates.
That evening, one of Lorenzo’s nightclubs was set on fire.
The next morning, a Moretti trucking contract vanished after a city official abruptly switched allegiance.
Matteo was dismantling Lorenzo’s authority one piece at a time.
Then Victor Santoro requested a private meeting.
Lorenzo’s men objected.
Clara objected louder.
“You were shot forty-eight hours ago.”
Lorenzo buttoned a fresh shirt carefully over his bandages.
“Santoro may know about Matteo.”
“You have stitches.”
“I’m aware.”
“You walk like an eighty-year-old.”
“I do not.”
Maya looked up.
“You kind of do.”
Lorenzo glared at both sisters.
“This alliance has become abusive.”
Clara stepped closer.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Then you’re not going.”
He stared.
She stared back.
Marco quietly walked out of the room.
Maya followed.
Cowards.
Lorenzo lowered his voice.
“You are not in command of me.”
“Good. Then consider this emotional blackmail.”
“What emotion?”
“Annoyance.”
His mouth twitched.
They went together.
Santoro chose a closed Italian restaurant in Little Italy.
No visible weapons.
No guards inside.
Victor Santoro rose when Clara entered.
He was elegant, silver-haired, and almost paternal.
That made Clara trust him less.
“So,” Victor said, “Daniel Vance’s daughter.”
“You knew my father.”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill him?”
Lorenzo turned toward her.
Victor laughed.
“No warm-up?”
“I work two jobs. Efficiency matters.”
Victor gestured to a chair.
“Sit.”
Clara remained standing.
Victor smiled.
“You really are exactly as described.”
“By whom?”
“Everyone.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“Why are we here?”
Victor’s smile disappeared.
“Because Matteo Moretti is going to kill both of us.”
Clara’s pulse shifted.
Victor poured wine.
Neither of them drank it.
“Thirteen years ago,” he began, “Nico Moretti came to me.”
Lorenzo’s face hardened.
“For what?”
“To end the war your fathers were preparing.”
“What war?”
Victor looked genuinely surprised.
“You never knew.”
Lorenzo said nothing.
Victor leaned back.
“Salvatore Moretti and my father, Gabriel Santoro, had spent years stealing from their own organizations through city development contracts. Nico discovered it.”
Clara immediately thought of the Atlas.
“Daniel found the money,” she said.
Victor nodded.
“Nico found Daniel.”
Lorenzo’s breathing changed.
“My brother worked with her father?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To expose both families before their fathers could start killing each other to hide the theft.”
Lorenzo stared.
Victor continued.
“Matteo discovered what Nico was doing.”
Clara whispered, “He told Salvatore.”
“No.”
Victor’s eyes moved to Lorenzo.
“He told Enzo.”
Lorenzo’s uncle.
The man who created Daniel’s debt.
“Enzo wanted control,” Victor said. “Nico stood in the way. Your father was furious with Nico for betraying the family. Enzo convinced Salvatore that Nico planned to turn everything over to federal prosecutors.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened.
“What happened on October eighteenth?”
Victor looked at him for several seconds.
“Your father ordered Nico brought home.”
A pause.
“Enzo sent Matteo.”
Lorenzo went still.
Clara felt cold.
Victor continued.
“Nico never made it home.”
Lorenzo’s voice was almost inaudible.
“Matteo killed him?”
“I don’t know who triggered the bomb.”
“Then what do you know?”
Victor reached inside his jacket.
Lorenzo’s hand moved instinctively.
Victor stopped.
“Relax.”
He removed an old photograph.
Placed it on the table.
The image showed a dock at night.
Nico stood beside Daniel Vance.
Across from them stood Salvatore Moretti.
And Matteo.
A timestamp sat in the bottom corner.
October 18, 2012.
11:41 p.m.
Less than one hour before Nico’s car exploded.
Lorenzo stared at the photograph.
May you like
Then Victor said the sentence that shattered what remained of Lorenzo’s certainty.
“Your father lied to you.”
