Chapter 7 - BLOOD ON THE BLUE SCARFLorenzo fired before Bianca could fire twice.
The passage erupted in sound.
Hunter fell backward with Leo clutched to her chest. She hit the floor hard, twisting her body so the baby landed on top of her instead of beneath her.
Pain tore across her upper arm.
For one breathless second, she thought Leo had been hit.
Then he screamed.
A full, furious, living scream.
Hunter nearly sobbed with relief.
Blood soaked her sleeve, but not the blue scarf. Not Leo’s blanket.
Lorenzo was already over them.
“Hunter!”
“I’m fine,” she gasped. “Check him.”
He did. His hands moved over Leo with desperate care. No blood. No wound. Only terror.
Behind him, Bianca lay against the passage wall, clutching her shoulder. Lorenzo’s bullet had struck high, disabling her arm but not killing her.
Hunter knew why.
He wanted answers.
Bianca laughed through her pain.
“You always were sentimental.”
Lorenzo turned on her with a look that should have made the walls retreat.
“You put a gun on my son.”
“I put a gun on the woman stealing him.”
Hunter struggled upright.
“He was never yours.”
Bianca’s eyes went to her with pure hatred.
“No one asked you, maid.”
Hunter looked down at her bleeding arm, then at Leo.
Something inside her shifted.
She had spent years making herself small. Small for Tommy. Small for landlords. Small for employers who called her sweetheart while deducting money from her pay. Small for hospital billing offices. Small for grief.
No more.
“I’m not your maid,” she said.
Lorenzo looked at her.
She did not look back.
“I’m the woman who kept your grandson alive while you tried to starve him.”
Bianca’s face twisted.
“You know nothing.”
“I know enough.”
“You know what she tells you,” Bianca spat, nodding toward Lorenzo. “You think he’s noble because he cries over a crib? Ask him how many sons he took from other mothers.”
The words hit the room hard.
Lorenzo did not deny them.
Hunter did not expect him to.
This was no fairy tale. Lorenzo Rossi had blood on his hands. Maybe oceans of it.
But Leo did not.
And right now, that was the only truth that mattered.
Marco and two guards stormed into the passage. They restrained Bianca while she cursed them in Italian and English, dignity cracking beneath fury.
A medic reached for Hunter’s arm.
“Later,” she said.
“You’re bleeding.”
“He needs to eat.”
Lorenzo stared at her as if she had lost her mind.
“You have been shot.”
“Grazed.”
“You do not know that.”
“I know he’s hungry.”
Leo rooted blindly against her.
The medic looked at Lorenzo.
Lorenzo looked at Hunter.
Then he stepped aside.
“Make it fast,” he said hoarsely.
Hunter sat on the floor of Sophia’s secret passage, back against the wall, blood running down her arm while she nursed the baby his grandmother had tried to erase.
No one spoke.
Even Bianca went silent.
Leo drank through his tears, his tiny fists pressed against Hunter’s chest.
The scene was absurd, terrible, sacred.
Lorenzo stood guard over them with a gun in his hand and murder in his eyes.
When Leo settled, the medic bandaged Hunter’s arm. The bullet had sliced through skin and muscle, ugly but survivable. Hunter barely felt it.
Adrenaline had turned her body into something distant.
By dawn, Bianca Bellini was locked in the wine cellar with four guards outside the door.
Not because Lorenzo lacked better prisons.
Because the wine cellar was soundproof.
Hunter did not ask what would happen to her.
Part of her did not want to know.
But later, while Leo slept in a portable bassinet beside Lorenzo’s desk, Hunter found him staring at Sophia’s flash drive plugged into a secure laptop.
On the screen were files.
Bank transfers.
Medical records.
Emails.
Photographs.
Names.
So many names.
Lorenzo did not look up when she entered.
“You should be in bed.”
“So should you.”
“We keep having this conversation.”
“Because you keep being wrong.”
His mouth twitched again, faintly.
Then the expression vanished.
“What’s on it?”
“Enough to explain why my wife died.”
Hunter sat across from him.
“And Mara?”
His eyes darkened.
“Bianca had her killed after Mara discovered the Bellini foundation was laundering money for Northbridge.”
“What is Northbridge?”
“A private medical investment group. Experimental treatments. Organ transport. Offshore accounts. Political donors. A place where rich people hide ugly things behind clean white walls.”
Hunter remembered Dr. Halloran mentioning medical records. “And Sophia found proof?”
“Yes. She copied everything. She was going to bring it to me the night of the gala.”
“The night the car exploded.”
Lorenzo nodded.
“Bianca framed the Morettis?”
“She used them. Paid men connected to them so I would retaliate against the wrong enemy.”
Hunter felt cold.
“You wiped out a rival family because of a lie.”
He looked at her.
There was no defense in his eyes.
Only truth.
“Yes.”
Hunter absorbed that.
A better man might have said he was sorry.
Lorenzo was not a better man.
But he was an honest one in that moment, and sometimes honesty was more frightening than apology.
“Why poison Leo?” she asked.
“Because Sophia’s will transferred her Bellini shares into a trust for him. If he died before his first birthday, control reverted to Bianca.”
Hunter stared at the sleeping baby.
“So he was an obstacle.”
“To his grandmother, yes.”
“And the blood type story?”
“To make me doubt him. To make me stop fighting for him. To make his death feel like fate instead of murder.”
Hunter’s throat tightened.
Lorenzo closed the laptop.
“There is another file.”
“What kind?”
“A video.”
He did not press play.
Hunter understood.
Sophia.
“Do you want me to leave?”
He was quiet for a long time.
“No.”
So she stayed.
Lorenzo clicked the file.
Sophia Rossi appeared on the screen, alive in soft lamplight. Very pregnant. Tired. Beautiful. Afraid.
Lorenzo made a sound like his chest had cracked.
Sophia looked directly into the camera.
“Lorenzo,” she said. “If you are watching this, then I am gone, and I am so sorry.”
Hunter looked down, but her tears fell anyway.
Sophia continued.
“My mother is not grieving Mara. She is hiding her. Mara did not drown the way they said. She survived long enough to call me. I heard her voice. I heard men in the background. She said one word before the line cut.”
Sophia swallowed.
“Northbridge.”
Lorenzo leaned closer.
“I know you will want revenge,” Sophia said. “I know you. But listen to me. This cannot be solved with blood alone. There are children involved. Babies. Mothers. Records of births that were changed. Children taken from hospitals and sold through private adoptions. My mother is part of it.”
Hunter’s whole body went still.
Birth records.
Changed.
Babies.
Sophia placed a hand on her belly.
“If Leo lives, protect him. If another mother comes into his life because I cannot be there, do not punish her for surviving what I did not.”
Hunter covered her mouth.
On the screen, Sophia’s eyes filled.
“And Lorenzo, my love… hold him. Please. Do not let grief make you a stranger to your own son.”
The video ended.
The room was silent.
Lorenzo sat motionless.
Then Leo stirred in the bassinet.
A small sound.
Not crying.
Calling.
Lorenzo stood slowly.
Hunter watched as he reached down and lifted his son without hesitation.
Leo opened his eyes.
May you like
Lorenzo held him against his chest.
And for the first time, the baby did not cry.
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