Chapter 6 - THE DINNER OF KNIVES
Beatrice did not panic. That was what saved us. Through the transmitter, I heard her inhale slowly and answer Lorenzo with a tremor that sounded perfectly real. “I don’t know anyone named Luca.” Lorenzo laughed. “You’re a terrible liar.”
I moved toward the door, but Elena blocked me. “Not yet,” she whispered. “If you walk in now, he knows everything.” I wanted to shove past her. Twelve years earlier, hesitation had cost me a brother. Every second Beatrice spent alone with Lorenzo felt like another test I had no right to ask her to survive.
Then Lorenzo changed tactics. He told her he knew about St. Gabriel’s. He knew about Patrick. He even knew she had worked briefly at a clinic in Milwaukee. Each fact was meant to make resistance seem useless.
Beatrice answered softly, “If you know that much, why are you asking me?” Silence followed. I smiled despite myself. Lorenzo hated being challenged by people he considered beneath him. “You should be careful,” he said. “Matteo has never protected anyone who became inconvenient.”
That part was meant for her, but it found me too. My history gave the lie weight. I had cut men off, exiled employees, ruined competitors, and once refused to intervene when a bookkeeper’s son was arrested because helping would have exposed one of our accounts. I called those decisions necessary. Lorenzo knew exactly how to turn necessity into character.
Beatrice said, “Maybe he’s changing.” Lorenzo’s chair scraped back. “Men like us don’t change.” The transmitter crackled as he approached her. For one terrible second I thought he had discovered it. Then he said, “Tonight we’re having dinner. A family dinner. You’ll serve.”
When Beatrice emerged forty minutes later, she passed beneath the hallway camera without looking up. Elena received one short text on the burner phone: HE INVITED VOSS. The dinner began at eight in the formal dining room, beneath a chandelier my mother had chosen before any of us understood what the house would become. Lorenzo sat at my right. Judge Harold Voss sat at my left, silver-haired and grandfatherly, the kind of man television stations trusted to explain ethics scandals. Daniel Cross occupied the far end of the table.
I welcomed them with a bottle of my father’s oldest wine. Beatrice served the first course. No one noticed her hands were perfectly steady. Voss spoke about civic responsibility. Cross complained about port regulations. Lorenzo told a story about a city inspector who had recently learned “flexibility.” The hypocrisy was so complete it almost became art.
I played the host. I laughed. I asked questions. I pretended I had not heard Voss’s voice on recordings Patrick saved, discussing shipments that destroyed neighborhoods while he chaired a committee on public safety. Halfway through the meal, I raised my glass. “To my father.”
Lorenzo’s eyes flicked toward me. “Salvatore taught us that family survives by remembering who it is,” I continued. “Even when the city forgets.” Voss smiled. “Your father was a complicated man.” “So I’m learning.” The room tightened by one invisible degree.
Beatrice approached with the main course, a roast arranged beneath silver covers. It mirrored the night I first saw her steal leftovers, and the symmetry was not lost on either of us. She placed Voss’s plate, then Lorenzo’s, then mine.
As she leaned near my chair, she whispered one word. “Midnight.” Then the lights went out. For a fraction of a second, nobody moved. The backup generator should have activated immediately. It did not. Cross cursed. Lorenzo stood. A crash sounded in the hall.
I drew my weapon beneath the table and heard footsteps running from the kitchen. Marcus’s voice shouted over the house radio: “Breach, east service entrance!” It was not our move. Someone else had come for the evidence—or for us.
Gunfire cracked from the rear corridor. Guests dropped behind chairs. Voss crawled toward the wall with surprising speed. Lorenzo grabbed his arm, but not to protect him. “The car,” he snapped. That told me everything. In danger, Lorenzo’s first instinct was to save Voss.
Beatrice vanished into the dark. I went after her. The kitchen was chaos—shattered glass, smoke from a fallen pan, one guard bleeding from the shoulder while staff crouched behind counters. I found Beatrice near the pantry door, helping an elderly cook to the floor.
“Go!” I shouted. “I’m not leaving her.” I lifted the cook and handed her to a guard. We reached the servants’ corridor just as two armed men entered from the loading hall. Marcus fired from behind a pillar, forcing them back.
Luca appeared at the far end of the corridor. I had ordered him to remain off-site. Of course he ignored me. For one suspended instant, Lorenzo stepped from the dining-room passage and saw him. Everything stopped.
Twelve years of lies collapsed into one line of sight. Lorenzo’s face did not show surprise. It showed recognition. “Luca,” he said. My brother raised his pistol. “Cousin.” Voss, standing behind Lorenzo, went white. The attackers withdrew as quickly as they came, apparently more interested in triggering evacuation than holding the house. Outside, tires screamed on the snow-packed drive.
May you like
Then I saw what the chaos had covered. Judge Voss was gone. So was Elena’s laptop. And Beatrice, who had been beside me seconds earlier, was no longer in the corridor. On the floor near the service door lay the small black button that had hidden her transmitter.
Luca picked it up. His face became stone. Lorenzo backed toward the main hall. “You wanted to know who I was loyal to,” he said. I aimed my gun at him. He smiled. “Now you get to find out.” Then every security shutter in the mansion slammed down at once.
