Chapter 13 - Secrets Carved in Marble
The ballroom lights suddenly flickered, casting jittery shadows across the high vaulted ceiling.
Dominic didn't wait for the lights to go out.
His reflexes were faster than thought; his heavy arm wrapped around my waist, lifting me out of the chair just as a deafening crack shattered the marble table.
The spot where I had been sitting exploded into a shower of white dust and fractured stone.
A high-caliber sniper rifle had punched through the skylight above.
"Down!" Dominic roared, dragging me behind a thick granite pillar as chaos detonated across the room.
Automatic gunfire erupted from the upper mezzanine, riddling the walls and shredding the crimson velvet drapes.
Capos and bodyguards dove behind banquet tables, drawing weapons and firing blind into the upper shadows.
Old Alberto Leone was shoved toward the kitchen doors by his security detail, coughing and shouting curses.
Marcus Leone was nowhere to be found.
"Vincenzo!" Dominic barked into his lapel communicator, pinning me against the pillar with his broad frame.
"The north mezzanine is crawling with shooters!" Vincenzo’s voice crackled through the static.
"They cut the main power grid to the lower levels!"
"Our extraction team is taking heavy fire outside the lobby!"
Dominic drew his Sig Sauer, his eyes blazing with cold, lethal calculation.
"Take this," he said, pulling a compact Glock from his ankle holster and slapping it into my palm.
The weight of the weapon was familiar, grounding my racing pulse into razor-sharp focus.
"I'm not leaving you behind, Dominic," I said, checking the chamber in one swift motion.
"You never do," he replied, a grim smirk touching his lips despite the hail of bullets chewing through the plaster above us.
Two masked gunmen in tactical gear leaped over the balustrade from the mezzanine, landing ten yards from our position.
They raised their suppressed submachine guns, sweeping the corridor toward the pillar.
Dominic stepped out from cover, firing two precise shots that dropped the first man instantly.
The second shooter pivoted, his barrel locking onto Dominic’s chest.
I swung around the other side of the pillar, leveling the Glock and squeezing the trigger twice.
The bullets caught the gunman in the neck and collarbone, sending him crashing backward across the broken glass.
"Move to the service corridor!" Dominic ordered, grabbing my arm and pulling me through a discreet bronze door behind the bar.
The heavy metal door slammed shut behind us, cutting off the deafening roar of the ballroom.
We were in an old service tunnel beneath the hotel, illuminated only by dim red emergency lights.
The air down here was damp, smelling of old pipes, grease, and ozone.
"Marcus orchestrated this," I breathed, my heels clicking rapidly against the concrete floor.
"He wanted to wipe out his father, us, and the other capos in one blow."
"He wants the crown without waiting for the old man to die of pneumonia," Dominic confirmed, his eyes scanning every dark junction ahead.
We reached an intersection where three maintenance tunnels branched into the subterranean foundation of Midtown Manhattan.
Dominic stopped, crouching down beside an old iron electrical box.
He reached behind the rusty panel, his fingers feeling along the cold stone until he pressed an invisible latch.
A low grinding noise echoed through the tunnel as a slab of decorative marble swung inward, revealing a hidden archive room.
"What is this place?" I asked, stepping into the dust-covered vault.
Shelves of leather-bound ledgers, wooden crates, and old black-and-white photographs lined the walls.
"My grandfather built this during Prohibition," Dominic explained, closing the marble door until only a crack remained.
"A fallback bunker beneath the Delmonico when the Five Families shared blood instead of bullets."
I walked along the shelves, my fingers tracing the aged spines of the books until my hand brushed against a faded manila folder.
Stamped on the front in bold red ink was my father's name: *Arthur Vance - Classified Operations.*
My breath caught in my throat.
"Dominic... why is my father's name in your grandfather's secret archive?"
Dominic froze by the doorway, his silhouette stiffening under the pale red light.
He turned slowly, looking at the folder in my hands with an expression I had never seen on his face before—guilt.
"Clara... put the file down," he said quietly, his voice lacking its usual commanding edge.
"No," I whispered, opening the brittle paper.
Inside was a yellowed contract dated twenty-five years ago, signed by my father and Dominic’s late father, Lorenzo Rossi.
My eyes skimmed the lines, horror creeping into my veins like liquid ice.
My father hadn't just been an accountant who stumbled into the mob's crosshairs.
He had been the architect who designed the entire offshore laundering network that built the Rossi dynasty from scratch.
And attached to the contract was a handwritten note in Lorenzo Rossi’s handwriting:
*If Arthur Vance ever tries to pull his family out of the arrangement, eliminate the girl first. She is the anchor.*
The paper trembled in my hand.
"You knew," I whispered, looking up at Dominic with wide, burning eyes.
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"You knew my family wasn't collateral damage."
"You knew the Rossi family marked me for death before I was even old enough to walk."
