Chapter 1 - THE NIGHT EVERYTHING BURNED
“Boss, the Jersey warehouse is under attack. You need to come now.”
Victor Romano stood in Lucas Moretti’s study with rain shining on the shoulders of his coat. He looked frightened. That was what made Lucas move.
A man like Victor did not frighten easily.
Lucas set down the photograph he had been holding. In it, Isabella sat at the piano with five-year-old Daniel on her lap, both of them laughing at something outside the frame. The picture had been taken that morning. For one brief second, Lucas considered calling her before he left.
Then Victor said, “They’re cutting through the east gate.”
Lucas grabbed his coat. “Get the men moving. Nobody fires unless I give the order.”
Victor nodded and fell into step beside him.
The drive to Jersey took twenty-three minutes. The rain came down hard enough to blur the city lights. Lucas watched the road and listened to Victor describe the supposed attack: two vans, six armed men, a security guard wounded. The details were precise, but something about them felt rehearsed.
“Who called it in?” Lucas asked.
“Marco.”
“Marco is on vacation.”
Victor’s jaw tightened. “Then one of the night guards. I don’t remember which.”
Lucas turned his head. “You don’t remember?”
Before Victor could answer, the convoy reached the warehouse. Its loading bay stood open. No guards were visible. The building was dark except for a single light over the office door.
Lucas raised a fist. His men stopped.
“Stay behind me,” he ordered.
He entered first.
The warehouse smelled of wet concrete and gasoline. A radio played softly in the office, repeating a weather report. There were no wounded guards, no attackers, no broken gate.
Only a table in the middle of the floor.
On it lay a photograph of Isabella and Daniel.
Lucas felt the world narrow.
“Victor?”
The first shot came from above.
His shoulder struck the concrete. Bullets shattered the windows. His men scattered for cover, shouting into the darkness. Lucas dragged himself behind a forklift and reached for his gun.
A second explosion shook the building.
He saw Victor through the smoke, standing near the loading bay. Not ducking. Not firing. Simply watching.
Their eyes met.
For one impossible second, Lucas understood.
“You,” he said.
Victor’s expression did not change. “You were supposed to be somewhere else tonight.”
Lucas fired. Victor vanished behind a pillar. The warehouse erupted into fire, and the roof groaned overhead.
Lucas tried to stand, but smoke filled his lungs. His chest tightened. He had suffered from asthma since childhood, a weakness he had learned to hide. He reached for the inhaler in his jacket and found only an empty pocket.
A hand seized his collar.
“Move, boss!”
It was Marco, one of the few men who had never belonged to Victor. Marco dragged him through a side exit as flames swallowed the office. Outside, Lucas collapsed in the rain, coughing until he could no longer draw a full breath.
When he woke in a private clinic, a doctor told him the warehouse attack had been planned from inside the organization. Two men were dead. Three were missing. Victor had disappeared.
Lucas’s first question was about his family.
The answer came from a police detective who stood at the foot of the bed.
There had been a fire at the Moretti residence while Lucas was at the warehouse. The housekeeper had escaped. The nursery wing had not. Isabella and Daniel were presumed dead.
Lucas did not scream. He did not cry. He stared at the ceiling until the detective left, then asked Marco for a phone.
“Find Victor,” he whispered. “And find out who opened the gates at my house.”
The next three years became a war fought in quiet rooms, dark streets, and bank accounts. Lucas dismantled the men who had helped Victor, one by one. He built a cleaner public business around the old empire, hoping to make the family name something Daniel would not have to fear.
But he never found Victor.
And he never found a body.
Three years later, Lucas stood in the marble hallway of his mansion, one hand pressed to his chest. His breathing had turned shallow. His inhaler lay several feet away, beyond the reach of his trembling fingers.
He had just realized the device had been tampered with when his knees gave out.
A little girl in pink pajamas appeared at the end of the hall.
“Mister, are you sick like me, too?”
Lucas tried to answer. No sound came.
The child knelt beside him and pressed her own inhaler to his lips.
“Please don’t die, mister.”
Three desperate attempts later, air rushed into his lungs.
When his eyes opened, the little girl was crying.
“I’m Lily,” she whispered. “I thought you were dead.”
Lucas looked past her.
At the far end of the hallway, a shadow slipped behind a half-open door.
May you like
Someone had been waiting for him to die.
And someone had just ruined the plan.
