Chapter 8 - THE MOTHER WHO CAME BACK WITH A GUN
“Mom?”
The word broke.
The woman lowered the gun.
Her dark glasses were gone.
The scarf gone.
She looked older.
Thinner.
But she was my mother.
Marina.
Miriam.
Whatever name she had chosen.
She looked at me like she had spent three years trying not to.
“Emily.”
I slapped her.
The sound shocked everyone.
Sarah covered her mouth.
Marcus stared.
Luca, bleeding on the floor, muttered:
“I assume that was emotional context I’m missing.”
I started crying.
Then I hugged my mother.
Then shoved her away again.
“You let me bury you!”
“I know.”
“You let me think you were dead!”
“I know.”
“You hired me into a mafia mansion!”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know!”
“I’m sorry.”
Behind us, Luca groaned.
I spun.
The blood came from his old wound reopening when he tackled the intruder.
The intruder lay unconscious near the wall.
Not Bellini.
One of his former orderlies.
Mom had shot the gun into the ceiling to stop him.
I rushed to Luca.
“Let me see.”
He almost smiled.
“Back to work?”
“Shut up.”
I pressed gauze against the wound.
Mom watched.
Something passed over her face.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“No more secrets.”
She looked between us.
“You care about him.”
I glared.
“He’s bleeding.”
“That wasn’t my observation.”
Luca wisely said nothing.
Once he was stabilized, Mom explained.
She had returned because Bellini planned to sell the tracking system and decades of private medical data to a criminal network.
Not just Rossi information.
Witnesses.
Police officers.
Judges.
Families.
Thousands of illegally collected files.
“He kept everything?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“St. Vincent’s old surgical archive.”
Luca frowned.
“That wing was demolished.”
“Officially.”
Mom produced architectural plans.
A basement level remained beneath the hospital.
Accessible through a private tunnel from an adjacent research building.
Bellini had been using it for years.
“Is Bellini alive?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Then she looked at Luca.
“But he knows you’re recovering.”
His face hardened.
“He arranged the shooting?”
Mom nodded.
“Your cousin Anthony paid the gunman.”
Luca went silent.
Anthony Rossi.
His closest surviving relative.
The man currently managing half the family businesses while Luca recovered.
“Why?”
“Because Bellini promised him control if you died.”
I watched Luca absorb that.
Another person close to him.
Another betrayal.
Then Mom said something worse.
“Anthony knows you survived the first attack.”
“He knows I’m here.”
“Yes.”
“And Emily?”
Mom’s eyes moved toward me.
“He knows she is your weakness.”
I snapped:
“I am not his weakness.”
Luca looked at me.
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“You’re the first thing in years that makes me want something beyond surviving.”
May you like
My heart stopped.
Then an explosion shook the mansion.
