Chapter 5
The steel door swallowed Roman's voice.
Fire crawled across the walls while smoke burned my throat. My hand remained pressed to the open safe, the emerald ring locked inside its seal.
The first page of the file read:
THE LAST MORETTI HEIR.
I turned the page.
A faded photograph showed a woman in a black dress holding a two-year-old girl. I knew that woman from dreams filled with fire, gunshots, and hands pushing me toward safety.
On the back was a name and date.
VIVIAN MORETTI, BORN DECEMBER 24.
My birthday.
My name.
Each word unlocked a piece of memory sealed for twenty-five years.
Another explosion shook the ceiling. The wall behind the safe divided, revealing a narrow passage.
I grabbed the file and pulled the emerald ring free. A burning beam crashed down as I ran into the tunnel. Stone closed behind me, cutting off the flames.
Dim lights came alive one by one. An emerald twisted around a dagger had been carved into the wall every few yards.
I had drawn that symbol all my life without knowing why.
Blood ran from a wound near my shoulder. Smoke scraped my lungs with every breath. Then footsteps sounded ahead, disciplined and numerous.
I picked up a jagged piece of metal.
Flashlights swept toward me.
More than a dozen armed men in black tactical gear filled the passage. Their weapons were more advanced than anything carried by Voss guards.
The man at the front raised one hand, and everyone stopped.
He was about thirty-four, tall and powerfully built, with wet black hair, deep brown eyes, and a thin scar across his left brow.
His gaze fixed on my ring.
"Drop your weapons," I ordered.
The man's eyes moved to my bleeding shoulder.
"Bring the doctor forward," he told someone behind him.
I raised the metal shard.
"Stay where you are. Anyone who comes closer bleeds first."
He stopped.
Then he slowly unfastened his holster and placed his gun on the ground.
The others followed.
More than a dozen weapons struck the tunnel floor.
"Miss Vivian," the man said, taking one careful step forward, "we have waited twenty-five years for you."
"Who are you?"
He removed his right glove. Beneath an old scar on his palm was a tattoo of an emerald wrapped around a dagger.
"Luca Moretti."
The name struck something deep inside me: a garden, a rose wall, and a boy telling me not to cry when the gunfire began.
The boy was gone. A soldier stood in his place.
"The Moretti family is dead," I said.
"That is what they needed the world to believe." Luca lowered to one knee. "It was the only way you could survive."
Every person behind him knelt.
"Welcome home, Miss Moretti."
For twenty-five years, I had believed I was an orphan left behind by a massacre. Now an armed guard knelt before me and called me the heir they had protected in secret.
"Who opened the passage?" I asked.
"I did," Luca replied. "When you activated the old phone last night, the emergency protocol returned. We were outside when the church system changed."
"Did you see Roman enter?"
Luca's expression cooled.
"We saw him receive a warning before he went inside."
The video had been real.
"Voss rescuers are digging through the ruins," Luca continued. "Roman survived. He believes you are trapped behind the steel door. No body could remain intact in that section."
Outside the tunnel, three armored cars waited in falling snow. A female doctor cut away the fabric near my shoulder and cleaned the wound.
"Smoke inhalation and a possible fracture," she said. "She needs a hospital."
"No public hospital," Luca replied. "Take her to the Moretti estate."
I did not enter the car.
"Why should I trust you?"
Luca removed an old recorder from his coat and pressed Play.
A woman's voice emerged through the static.
"If Vivian hears this, then I can no longer tell her the truth myself."
I recognized the voice from childhood nightmares. It had sung to me after gunshots woke me in the dark.
"Vivian, my daughter, forgive me for making you forget our family. The Moretti name cannot give you peace, but when everyone betrays you, it can give you a way out. Remember the ring. It will bring you home."
The recording ended.
"Your mother entrusted the last Moretti guard to my father," Luca said. "We kept the remaining assets, alliances, and purge records for you."
"Is Voss on that list?"
He hesitated.
It was the same hesitation Roman had shown in the vault.
"The Voss family appears on the purge list," Luca said. "A transaction from seven years ago also carries Roman Voss's signature."
The year I married him.
"What did he sign?"
Luca opened the car door.
"A confirmation that the final Moretti heir was dead."
Roman had signed my death confirmation, then slept beside me for seven years calling me Vivian Moretti.
I entered the car.
"Seal every report that I survived."
"Including Roman?"
Through the falling snow, I saw Roman at the ruined church, tearing stones away with bloodied hands while his guards tried to restrain him.
Too late.
He had made his choice before the fire divided us.
"Especially Roman."
As the car pulled away, Luca handed me a tablet. On the live feed, Roman lifted a burned piece of metal from the rubble as if it were the last fragment of me.
Then he faced his men.
"Lock down New York," Roman ordered. "Find Vivian."
I turned off the screen and placed the real emerald ring on my finger.
"Let him discover the tunnel," I said. "Let the entire underworld know the Moretti family has returned."
Luca's phone sounded.
He read the message, and his face hardened.
"The Voss estate just released your death announcement."
Roman's family seal appeared at the bottom, cold and unmistakable.
The authorization belonged to Isabella Devereux.