Vincent atmete schwer, ein Blutstreifen rann von seinem Haaransatz über seine linke Wange.
Seine Augen jedoch waren weit aufgerissen und blitzten mit einer erschreckenden Intensität, die sie noch nie zuvor erlebt hatte.
„Bleibt unten!“, brüllte er über das Gewehrfeuer hinweg.
Er erwiderte das Feuer mit drei präzisen Doppelschüssen nach oben in Richtung Zwischengeschoss.
Ein Körper krachte über das Geländer und stürzte mit einem widerlichen Aufprall sechs Meter tief auf den Marmorboden.
Dominic glitt über den Boden, eine MPX-Maschinenpistole fest umklammert, seine Schulter war dunkelrot gefärbt.
„Sie extrahieren durch das nördliche Glasatrium!“
Ein Hubschrauber landet auf dem Dach – ich höre die Rotoren!
“Löwe!”
Emma cried, looking toward the skylight above where the rhythmic, deafening thrum of rotor blades began to vibrate through the entire museum.
“They took Leo!”
Vincent didn’t answer with words.
He sprang to his feet, discarding all tactical caution, and sprinted toward the grand staircase with feral fury.
Emma and Dominic followed in his wake, climbing the blood-slicked stairs two at a time.
When they reached the upper gallery, the scene was devastation.
Two security guards lay dead, their radios squawking static.
The heavy steel door leading to the rooftop maintenance gantry hung wide open, twisted by thermite explosives.
Cold Chicago night air poured into the gallery, carrying the smell of aviation fuel and burnt sulfur.
Bursting out onto the rooftop under the torrential rain, Emma saw the black, unmarked helicopter rising slowly into the misty night sky, its navigation lights dark.
At the open side door stood Helena Moretti, her coat whipping wildly in the downdraft.
In her arms was Leo, crying silently, staring down at the roof.
Vincent aimed his firearm, his arms shaking with rage.
But there was no clean shot; the boy was held directly in the center of Helena’s torso as a human shield.
“Shoot, Vincent!”
Helena’s voice crackled through a megaphone mounted on the chopper’s skid.
“Prove to your peasant waitress that you care more about your pride than an innocent child!
If you want your little heir back, Chicago will bleed first!”
With a roar of engines, the aircraft banked hard over Lake Michigan, melting into the dark, rain-soaked clouds and vanishing from sight.
Vincent slowly lowered his weapon.
His hands were shaking so violently that the heavy steel gun slipped from his fingers, clattering against the wet gravel of the roof.
Chapter 34 – The Sins of the Fathers
Back inside the fortified sub-level of the Moretti Tower, the tension was so suffocating that the armed guards stationed outside the war room barely dared to breathe.
Medical staff had patched Dominic’s shoulder and cleaned the glass lacerations on Vincent’s brow, but no one dared speak to the billionaire.
Vincent stood before an array of digital monitors, each displaying historical archives, banking registries, and classified real estate manifests dating back to the late 1980s.
Emma stood across from him, shivering despite the dry tactical sweater Dominic had given her.
“You owe me an explanation, Vincent.
Right now.
You said your mother knew who I was.
What does that mean?”
Vincent didn’t look at her immediately.
He stared at a black-and-white photograph on the center screen.
It showed three people standing outside a modest diner in South Chicago thirty years ago: a young Vincent Moretti, his father Julian Moretti, and an older woman with gentle eyes and a warm, working-class smile—Emma’s grandmother, the very woman Victoria Sterling had tried to strike in the ballroom on the night this nightmare began.
“My mother, Helena, was born into the De Rossi syndicate—old European aristocracy whose wealth was built on blood, smuggling, and corruption,” Vincent said, his voice flat and detached.
“When my father married her, he thought he was uniting empires.
Instead, he realized he had invited a monster into his home.
When Helena tried to liquidate thousands of working-class families across Chicago by poisoning the municipal water contract for a land-grab scheme, my father rebelled.”
Emma took a step back, her eyes widening.
“My grandmother… she worked for the city council back then.”
“Your grandmother was the chief auditor,” Vincent revealed, turning to face Emma.
“She discovered Helena’s forged environmental reports.
Helena sent assassins to burn your family’s home to the ground.
My father intercepted the hit team.
He saved your grandmother’s life, hidden her identity, and used her testimony to dismantle Helena’s syndicate.
But to keep you and your grandmother safe, and to stop Helena’s family in Italy from retaliating, my father staged Helena’s death in Switzerland.
He locked her away in a maximum-security black-site sanatorium.”
“And Arthur Sterling?”
Emma whispered, horror knotting her stomach.
“Arthur was Helena’s lover,” Vincent said coldly.
“He was her pawn on the inside.
