The wall opens and Luca is immediately in front of me again.
“Behind me at all times.”
The hidden corridor is narrow and dark. It winds downward into the ground, the air stale with disuse and carrying the damp mineral smell of stone walls that haven't seen sunlight in decades. Emergency lighting casts a weak amber glow along the floor, barely enough to see by, and our shadows stretch long and distorted against walls lined with pipes and electrical conduits that hum with the quiet pulse of a building keeping its secrets alive.
Luca moves through the passage with his gun raised, his body filling the narrow space so completely that I can barely see past his shoulders. My hand presses flat against his back, his muscles coiled tight beneath my palm, his breathing controlled.
In a few more paces, the corridor opens into a room I've never seen before. I only saw my father enter it once years ago. I never entered.
We step out of the corridor and Luca pauses.
My father's hidden study is smaller than the one upstairs, windowless and lined with dark wood paneling that absorbs the low light from a desk lamp casting a circle of warm gold across a mahogany desk identical to the one above. Filing cabinets line the far wall, their drawers closed. The air tastes like cigar smoke and old paper and the particular staleness of a room where terrible decisions are made in private and never spoken of in daylight.
Three guards stand between us and the desk, shoulder to shoulder, a wall of muscle and firepower that makes the corridor behind us feel like the safer option.
I glance around Luca’s massive form to see they have their weapons drawn. All three barrels are trained on the doorwaywhere Luca and I stand silhouetted against the corridor light like targets on a range.
And behind the desk, Enzo sits in his leather chair with the settled calm of a man who planned for every contingency, including this one. His hands rest on the desk surface, fingers laced, the picture of composure.
My mother kneels on the floor beside him, a fourth guard pressing the barrel of a handgun against her temple. Her eyes are wide and glassy with terror, her thin body trembling so violently I can see it from across the room. A bruise darkens her left cheekbone that wasn't there an hour ago. Someone hit her, and the rage that surges through my veins nearly sends me charging past Luca before my brain catches up to my body.
"I didn't think you were coming." Enzo's voice carries the mild disappointment of a man whose dinner guests arrived late. "I was beginning to think your husband's reputation was exaggerated, daughter."
Luca doesn't answer with words. He pushes me into the corridor and then he’s a blur of motion.
The first guard raises his weapon and Luca is already inside his reach, slamming the barrel aside with his forearm and driving his elbow into the man's throat with a force that drops him choking to his knees.
The second guard swings his gun toward Luca's chest and Luca catches the barrel in his left hand, twists it free, and uses the momentum to crack the stock across the guard's jaw.
Bone connects with metal in a sound that makes my stomach lurch. The guard crumples sideways into the filing cabinets with enough force to dent the steel.
The third guard is smarter. He hangs back, waits for Luca to commit to the second takedown, and raises his weapon at the back of Luca's unprotected head.
“Ilona, watch out!” My mother warns.
My body moves before my mind gives permission. The gun in my hand rises, my finger finds the trigger, and I squeeze.
The recoil jolts up my arms and rattles my teeth. The bullet catches the third guard in the shoulder and spins him sideways, his gun clattering to the stone floor as he staggers into the wall and slides down it, clutching the wound with fingers that are already slick with blood.
Bile rises in my throat, hot and sour. I just shot a man. The reality of it crashes through me in a wave of nausea so violent my vision swims. But the alternative was watching him put a bullet in the back of Luca's skull, and no one is taking my baby's father from her before she's even born.
No one.
Luca swivels and catches my gaze with his in recognition of saving his life.
A door slams open to our left from another entry point into the underground room and Kon fills the frame. His massive body blocks the light from whatever corridor he came through, his gun sweeping the room with the methodical calmness. His dark eyes assess the three downed guards, the fourth still pressing his weapon to my mother's temple, and Enzo behind his desk with his hands still folded in that infuriating display of composure.
"The guard," Luca barks without turning around. "On the woman."
Kon moves with a speed that defies his size. Three strides and his hand closes around the fourth guard's wrist, twisting the gun away from my mother's head with a controlled violence that bends the man's arm at an angle arms are not designed to bend.
Why he didn’t shoot my mother I will never know, but I am eternally grateful he couldn’t.
The guard screams. Kon silences him with a single strike that sends him sprawling across the floor, unconscious before he finishes falling.
My mother collapses forward onto her hands, gasping, her whole body shaking with sobs. I want to run to her but Luca is already advancing on the desk and something in the set of his shoulders tells me this isn't over yet.
Luca reaches the desk and presses the barrel of his gun against Enzo's temple. His finger settles on the trigger with a steadiness that tells me the trembling from earlier is gone, replaced by a cold, lethal focus that transforms him into something more weapon than man. Every line of his body screams execution.
