Chapter 10 - The Scar Above Luca’s EyeThe house exploded into motion.
Guards ran. Doors slammed. Radios crackled. Dante’s voice cut through the chaos with terrifying precision.
“Lock the gates. Sweep the east wing. No vehicle leaves. Henry, cameras. Now.”
Claire stood in the kitchen, staring at the four empty chairs.
Rosie’s hair ribbon lay on the floor.
For one second, her mind refused the obvious.
No.
No, not Rosie.
Then she moved.
Dante caught her before she reached the hall. “Claire.”
She fought him. “Let go of me.”
“We will find them.”
“My daughter is gone.”
His grip tightened only enough to keep her from running blind. “And my sons. Look at me.”
She did not want to. She wanted to tear the mansion apart with her teeth.
“Look at me.”
She did.
The cold man was gone. In his place was a father burning alive, and somehow that steadied her because his terror matched hers.
“You know them,” he said. “Think. Would they go willingly?”
“No.”
“Would Rosie?”
Claire’s chest heaved. “Not without screaming.”
“Then they were tricked.”
Mrs. Alvarez sobbed. “I only stepped into the pantry. Thirty seconds. I swear on my mother’s grave.”
Claire turned to her, forcing breath into her lungs. “Did anyone call them?”
“No. I heard… I heard a woman’s voice.”
Dante went still.
“What did she say?” Claire asked.
Mrs. Alvarez trembled. “She said, ‘Boys, your father needs you in the old tower.’”
Henry ran in, pale. “West corridor camera is looped. East kitchen door opened from inside six minutes ago.”
Dante cursed in Italian.
Claire’s mind raced. “They wouldn’t follow a stranger.”
“No,” Dante said. “But they might follow family.”
Serafina.
The name seemed to poison the air.
They found the first clue near the west tower staircase.
A pancake.
Half-eaten.
Matteo.
Claire almost laughed from relief and horror. “He’s leaving food.”
Dante looked at her.
“Rosie does that when she wants me to find her,” Claire said. “Crumbs. Wrappers. Anything.”
Luca would resist. Nico would observe. Matteo would improvise. Rosie would copy.
Together, maybe they had a chance.
They followed the trail: pancake crumb, hair ribbon, tiny plastic block, another crumb. It led down a service corridor Claire had not seen before, then to a locked iron door beneath a curved staircase.
The west tower room.
Dante stared at it as if it were a coffin.
Henry handed him a key from the hidden panel. Elena’s key.
Dante’s hand shook before he took it.
Claire noticed. “You don’t have to be fine right now.”
“I don’t know how to be anything else.”
“That’s the problem.”
He looked at her once, then unlocked the door.
A cold smell breathed out: dust, stone, old paper, something metallic underneath.
The staircase led down.
Dante insisted on going first. Claire did not argue because he had a gun and she had rage, and only one of those worked at a distance.
At the bottom was a room frozen in another era.
Wooden filing cabinets lined the walls. A desk sat under a hanging lamp. Maps were pinned to corkboards. Old ledgers lay stacked in crates. And at the center of the room, sitting in four chairs tied back-to-back with silk scarves, were Luca, Nico, Matteo, and Rosie.
Alive.
Claire nearly collapsed.
“Mommy!” Rosie cried.
“Don’t move,” Luca shouted. “Tripwire.”
Dante stopped so abruptly Claire slammed into his back.
He looked down.
A nearly invisible wire stretched across the floor.
At the far end of the room, a woman applauded slowly.
She stepped from the shadows wearing a cream coat, red lipstick, and diamonds bright enough to look obscene underground.
Serafina Rinaldi was beautiful in the way broken glass was beautiful before it cut you.
“Still dramatic, Luca,” she said.
Luca’s face twisted with hatred. “You’re not allowed here.”
“My blood built this house.”
“Mom hated you.”
Serafina’s smile thinned.
Dante lifted the gun. “Move away from them.”
She laughed softly. “Always the same, brother. A weapon before a conversation.”
“You took my children.”
“I gathered the heirs.”
Claire’s voice came cold. “You took my daughter too.”
Serafina’s eyes slid to her. “Ah. The waitress.”
“Former waitress.”
“How inspiring.”
Claire wanted to lunge, but the tripwire held her still.
Dante’s finger tightened on the gun. “Release them.”
Serafina tilted her head. “Or what? You’ll shoot your sister in front of your sons? How very Father of you.”
Dante flinched.
It was small.
Serafina saw it and smiled.
Claire saw it too. This woman knew exactly where every old wound lived.
Henry appeared behind them with two guards, but Dante raised a hand to stop them.
Nico whispered, “There are two wires.”
Claire looked at him.
His eyes flicked right.
There, barely visible near the cabinet.
Second wire.
Smart boy.
Matteo said loudly, “Aunt Serafina smells like a funeral.”
Serafina’s smile vanished.
Rosie added, “And bad flowers.”
Claire closed her eyes for half a second. Wrong time, baby.
But Serafina stepped closer to the children, distracted, insulted.
Luca moved his fingers behind his chair.
Claire saw.
He was working the knot.
The scar above his eyebrow looked stark under the hanging light. Elena’s scar. Serafina’s glass. A child marked by a woman who now called him heir.
Dante spoke, voice low. “You hurt him once. I should have ended you then.”
Serafina’s face changed. “You chose her over blood.”
“I chose my son.”
“You chose Elena’s weakness.”
“She was stronger than all of us.”
The words stunned the room.
Luca’s hands paused.
Dante lowered the gun slightly, but his voice became more dangerous. “She saw what I refused to see. She knew someone used my accounts. She knew you fed DeLuca our routes.”
Serafina’s eyes flickered.
There.
The truth.
Henry whispered, “My God.”
Serafina recovered fast. “Elena filled your head with ghosts.”
“No,” Dante said. “She filled my house with proof.”
Claire held up the letter.
Serafina’s gaze sharpened.
And in that split second, Luca freed one hand.
He grabbed the chair leg and slammed it backward into the cabinet behind him. A drawer burst open. Papers flew. Rosie ducked. Matteo screamed his war scream from the safe room. Nico kicked a metal box across the floor.
Chaos erupted.
Dante shot the lock off a chain holding the children’s chairs. Henry tackled a guard Claire had not realized was moving toward Serafina — one of theirs, a traitor. Claire stepped over the first tripwire, grabbed Rosie, and dragged her chair backward.
Serafina lunged for the letter.
Claire did what six years at DeMarco’s had trained her to do.
She hit Serafina in the face with a heavy serving tray from a side table.
The sound was magnificent.
Serafina fell against the desk, blood at her lip, eyes blazing.
“You stupid poor little—”
Claire leaned close. “Single mom. Get it right.”
Dante cut the last scarf loose.
The children ran to Claire and him in a desperate collision of limbs, sobs, and shaking hands.
Serafina tried to rise.
Luca stepped in front of her.
Tiny. Trembling.
Brave beyond forgiveness.
“You don’t get Pancake City,” he said.
Serafina stared at him.
For the first time, she looked truly wounded.
Then Dante’s guards seized her.
As they dragged her toward the stairs, she laughed, a broken, vicious sound.
“You think this ends with me? Elena hid more than letters, Dante. She hid something alive.”
Dante froze.
Claire turned.
Serafina smiled through blood.
“Ask the nanny why DeLuca came back now.”
May you like
Then she looked straight at Claire.
And said, “Ask her who her daughter’s father really was.”
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