Chapter 4 - Blood on the Iron GatesThe digital clock on the bedside table glowed 3:14 AM.
The house was dead silent, wrapped in the heavy, suffocating stillness of an Upper Manhattan estate at midnight. Beside me, Luca lay asleep—or at least resting with his eyes closed—his arm draped heavily across my waist, anchoring me to his side with possessive instinct even in his slumber.
I lay awake, staring up at the vaulted ceiling, listening to the muffled howl of the winter wind rattling the reinforced glass of the master suite windows.
Something felt wrong.
It wasn't a noise. It was a shift in the atmosphere—that primal, sixth sense that every woman living in the Moretti household eventually developed. The invisible current of danger that always preceded a storm.
Slowly, carefully, I slid out from under Luca’s arm, holding my breath so I wouldn't wake him. I slipped out of bed, pulling a thick cashmere robe over my shoulders, and tiptoed across the Persian rug toward the hallway.
The moment I stepped out into the grand hallway, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.
The security monitors embedded in the corridor wall—the ones that showed every angle of the perimeter gates and the private drive—were entirely black.
Power outage? No. The emergency lights were still glowing green along the baseboards.
The feeds had been deliberately jammed.
Before I could turn back toward the master suite to wake Luca, a sharp, metallic clink echoed from the grand staircase below.
Followed by the muffled crunch of glass.
Someone was inside the house.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I pressed my back hard against the hallway wall, sliding silently behind a heavy velvet tapestry near the linen closet. My hands shook violently over my rounding belly as I stared down the dark expanse of the corridor.
Three figures emerged from the grand staircase.
They moved with terrifying, tactical precision. Dressed head-to-toe in matte-black tactical gear, their faces obscured by reinforced Kevlar masks, each man carried a suppressed submachine gun. They weren't common burglars. They were professional hit squad operatives—trained killers sent by a rival syndicate to decapitate the Moretti family in one swift, bloody stroke.
And they were heading straight toward the master suite.
“Check the west wing first,” a low, distorted voice rasped through a tactical comms unit. “If Moretti is sleeping, finish him in bed. Secure the girl alive. The boss wants her alive.”
My breath hitched in my throat. They didn't just want Luca dead—they wanted me and my baby as leverage.
I needed to reach the panic room behind the library on the ground floor. But to get there, I had to cross the open landing of the grand staircase right where the intruders were currently ascending.
As the first operative reached the top of the stairs, turning his head in my direction, a sudden, deafening roar shattered the silence of the mansion.
BANG! BANG!
Gunfire ripped through the air from the master suite doorway behind me.
Luca stood framed in the dim light of the bedroom, bare-chested and barefoot, holding a customized SIG Sauer P226 pistol in his right hand. His face was a mask of cold, terrifying fury—the true face of the king of New York.
The lead operative staggered backward, hit squarely in the chest armor, tumbling down the flight of stairs in a heap of black tactical gear.
“ISABELLA! GET DOWN!” Luca roared, firing another two rapid shots into the hallway.
The remaining two operatives scrambled for cover behind the marble pillars, returning automatic gunfire that chewed through the plaster walls and shattered the antique vases lining the hallway.
“Luca!” I screamed, ducking low behind a marble console table as bullets whined overhead, chipping marble shrapnel into my hair.
Luca didn't hesitate. He advanced down the corridor with cold, calculated lethality, ignoring the incoming fire, his eyes fixed entirely on the threat. With two precise, blindingly fast shots, he neutralized the second operative, before lunging into hand-to-hand combat with the third, slamming the man’s head against the reinforced wall until the intruder slumped unconscious to the floor.
Within thirty seconds, the hallway fell dead silent once more, save for the acrid smell of gunpowder and the ragged breathing of my husband.
Luca dropped the empty magazine of his pistol, letting it clatter against the floor, and spun around frantically, his eyes scanning the smoke-filled corridor.
“Bella?!” he shouted, panic breaking through his controlled exterior for the first time. “Bella, talk to me! Are you hit?!”
I stood up slowly from behind the console table, my hands trembling uncontrollably as I looked at the blood staining the pristine marble floor.
“I’m... I’m okay,” I whispered, tears streaming down my face. “I’m okay, Luca.”
Luca rushed across the space, dropping his weapon and pulling me violently into his arms, crushing me against his chest as if he could weld me back into his own body to keep me safe from the world.
“I told you I was walking away,” Luca growled, his voice trembling as he buried his face in my hair. “I told you I was done with this life. But they just signed their own death warrants. Every single person who ordered this tonight... they won't live to see the sunrise.”
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I looked over Luca’s shoulder at the bodies lying on the marble floor, and for the first time, I realized the terrifying truth:
You could leave the underworld, but the underworld would never let you leave alive unless you burned it to the ground first.
