Chapter 5 - BETRAYAL IN BLOOD
The Twisted Plot to Kill the Boss and His Bride"Let her in," Luca ordered coldly.
Five minutes later, Vanessa burst into the office. She looked exhausted, her usual pristine composure entirely shattered. But the moment she saw Nora sitting behind the massive desk, her shock turned into pure rage.
"Nora? What the hell are you doing here?" Vanessa shrieked. She turned to Luca, putting on her most seductive, pleading smile. "Luca... thank god. There was a horrible mistake. My parents forced me to run away. This fat, pathetic fraud stole my dress and took my place! I’m your real bride."
Nora didn't move. She simply took a sip of her coffee.
Luca didn't even look at Vanessa. His eyes remained fixed on Nora. "Get this garbage out of my sight," he told his guards.
"Wait!" Vanessa screamed as two massive enforcers grabbed her arms. "You don't understand! Miles didn't leave me! We were taken! Someone paid Miles to lure me away so Nora could take my place and ruin everything!"
Nora’s hand froze on her coffee cup. She looked up. "What did you just say?"
"The hit at the wedding!" Vanessa sobbed, struggling against the guards. "It wasn't meant for Luca! It was meant for whoever was wearing the veil! The person who paid Miles wanted the Bennett family completely destroyed so they could take over the entire Port Mercer harbor!"
Luca’s expression went completely dark. He signaled the guards to drop her. "Who paid Miles, Vanessa?"
"I don't know!" she wept, collapsing onto the floor. "All I know is Miles had a burner phone. The contact name was stored as 'The Architect'. They said the old man’s death seven years ago was just the beginning."
Luca stiffened. The old man. His father, Don Vicente DeSantis, had been assassinated seven years ago in an unsolved ambush.
Suddenly, the lights in the entire fortress flickered and went black. Emergency red back-up lights kicked on, bathing the room in a bloody crimson hue.
The sound of shattering glass echoed from the lower floors, followed by the muffled thud of suppressed gunfire.
"They're inside," Luca hissed, drawing a sleek black semi-automatic pistol from his shoulder holster. He grabbed Nora by the waist, pulling her behind the reinforced steel desk. Vanessa screamed and crawled under a couch.
"Nora, look at the security feeds. Is the network completely dead?" Luca demanded, checking his weapon.
Nora slammed her fingers onto her laptop, which was running on battery power. "The main servers are down, but the localized hardwired feeds are still up. Luca... they didn't come from the front gates. They came from the underground service tunnels. Someone gave them the structural blueprints to your safehouse."
She looked at the screen, analyzing the tactical movement of the heavily armed mercenaries moving through the halls. "There are twelve of them. They are moving in a standard delta formation. Luca... this isn't a rival family hit. This is a highly trained military black-ops team."
"The mole," Luca growled. "They wanted us both in one place."
"Wait," Nora said, her eyes narrowing as she zoomed in on the lead mercenary’s wrist. He wore a distinct, vintage silver watch with a broken glass face—a watch she recognized instantly. "Luca... that man. He isn't a mercenary. That’s Silas Vance. My father’s chief of security for fifteen years."
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A horrible, twisted puzzle suddenly pieces together in Nora’s brilliant mind. Her father hadn't been surprised by Vanessa’s escape. The entire setup—the wedding, the swap, the ambush—was engineered by someone else entirely.
And the mastermind wasn't her father. Conrad was just a pawn.
