Chapter 3 - The Choice
The first bullet shattered a window at 9:43 p.m.
Luca pushed me behind the marble island before the glass reached the floor.
“Stay down.”
I hated the command.
I obeyed it.
Pregnancy changed the mathematics of courage.
Once, I might have argued.
Now every instinct belonged to the child beneath my ribs.
Gunfire cracked outside.
Fontana security rushed through the corridors.
Camille crouched behind the opposite end of the island, her emerald dress pooled around her.
Luca spoke into his radio.
“East corridor. Lock it down.”
A guard shouted from the foyer.
“They breached the service gate!”
Luca's head snapped toward the hallway.
Impossible.
The service gate required internal authorization.
Someone had betrayed him.
He knew it too.
His eyes changed.
“Marco!”
His security chief appeared.
“Armored vehicle at the west entrance. Take Giana.”
“No.”
Luca turned.
“Giana.”
“Camille knows where the evidence is. She comes too.”
For the first time that night, Camille looked at me with something like gratitude.
Marco nodded.
Then the lights died.
Darkness swallowed the house.
A second later, emergency lights came on.
Red.
Smoke entered from the eastern corridor.
Not accidental smoke.
Chemical.
Designed to confuse.
I covered my mouth.
Luca pulled me against him.
“West entrance. Now.”
We moved.
Guards formed around us.
Then the ceiling above the gallery exploded.
The force threw me sideways.
I struck a stone column.
Pain tore through my left side.
For several seconds, I heard nothing.
Then sound returned all at once.
Screaming.
Gunfire.
Fire alarms.
Luca shouting my name.
I looked down.
Blood spread across my cream dress.
My first thought was not the wound.
The baby.
I pressed both hands against my stomach.
He moved.
Thank God.
“Luca.”
He was twenty feet away.
Camille lay beneath part of a fallen decorative beam.
Flames climbed the curtains behind her.
Luca looked at me.
Straight at me.
I will remember that look until I die.
He saw the blood.
He saw me holding our child.
Then Marco yelled:
“Sir! Fuel line! We have seconds!”
Luca turned toward Camille.
He lifted the beam.
Pulled her free.
And carried her toward the west doors.
“Luca!”
He looked back once.
I thought he would return.
He didn't.
Marco dragged open the armored SUV.
Luca put Camille inside.
The vehicle disappeared through smoke and fire.
My husband had left me.
The next blast brought down part of the gallery wall.
Someone grabbed me.
I fought.
“Giana!”
Mateo.
I stared at him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Saving your stubborn ass.”
He had come because I had left my prenatal vitamins at the bakery and he'd planned to drop them off.
Of all the ridiculous reasons to survive, mine arrived carrying vitamins.
He pulled me toward the service corridor.
“Luca—”
“Forget Luca!”
“I can't.”
“You can tonight.”
We reached an old catering exit.
A Fontana guard lay unconscious beside it.
Mateo took his keys.
My contractions began before we reached his truck.
Not labor.
Not yet.
But strong enough to make terror crawl through me.
Mateo drove.
“Hospital?”
“No.”
“Giana, you're bleeding.”
“Stahl will watch hospitals.”
“Then where?”
I thought of the brass key still inside my coat pocket.
My father's key.
And suddenly I knew.
“Bakery.”
Mateo stared at me.
“You've finally lost your mind.”
“Bakery.”
We reached Gallo's twenty-three minutes later.
I unlocked the back entrance.
The shop smelled like cinnamon and yeast.
Normal.
Painfully normal.
I went to my father's old office.
He had built one cabinet himself.
I remembered him refusing to replace it even after the bottom drawer warped.
The brass key fit a lock hidden behind the drawer.
Something clicked.
Mateo pulled the cabinet forward.
A narrow compartment opened inside the wall.
There was no flash drive.
There was a ledger.
A photograph.
And a letter addressed to me.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Giana,
If you are reading this, then something I hoped would die with me has survived.
My father explained that years earlier he had discovered a laundering network operating through several South Florida shipping companies.
Preston Stahl had not created it.
He had inherited it.
And one of his original partners had been a Fontana.
Not Luca.
Luca's uncle, Vittorio.
My father had gathered evidence.
Camille's father had helped him.
Then my father died in what everyone called a boating accident.
It had not been an accident.
Mateo read over my shoulder.
“Oh God.”
A car stopped outside.
We froze.
My phone rang.
Luca.
I stared at his name.
Again.
Again.
Again.
I turned it off.
Mateo looked at me.
“Where do we go?”
The baby kicked.
I looked at the ledger.
Then at my father's photograph.
For four years, I had trusted Luca because I believed his promise that his world would never consume mine.
Tonight his war had entered my mother's bakery.
His enemy had nearly killed my child.
And when the moment came to choose—
Luca had carried another woman away.
I called the only person I trusted who owed nothing to the Fontanas.
My father's former attorney, Eleanor Price.
She answered on the second ring.
“Giana?”
“I need help disappearing.”
Silence.
Then:
“Are you in immediate danger?”
“Yes.”
“Is Luca with you?”
“No.”
“Does he know you're alive?”
“I don't know.”
Eleanor's voice became very calm.
“Then from this moment forward, assume every phone, vehicle, account, and person connected to him can lead someone to you.”
I looked down at the blood staining my dress.
“What do I do?”
“Leave the phone.”
I placed it on the desk.
“Take nothing registered in your name.”
I removed my wedding ring.
My hand stopped.
Four years.
A marriage.
A child.
A thousand mornings.
I placed the ring beside the phone.
“Done.”
“Now listen carefully.”
At 4:12 a.m., a retired nurse examined me inside a private home outside Homestead.
My wound needed stitches but had missed anything vital.
My son remained safe.
At 5:30, Eleanor arrived.
At 5:51, we were driving north in a car Luca had never seen.
And at sunrise, Luca Fontana entered Gallo's Pastries.
He found my blood.
My phone.
May you like
My wedding ring.
And nothing else.
