Chapter 8 - THE NIGHT VANESSA CAME BACK
The injunction hearing was set for Friday morning.
Thursday night, the mansion should have been quiet.
Instead, at 11:14 p.m., the motion sensors in the west conservatory tripped.
Daniel was in the security office before the second alarm sounded. Luca, who had been reviewing documents in his study, was already on his feet when the intercom crackled.
“Boss, west conservatory breach.”
Hannah, two floors above, had just finished checking on Lily.
She heard the low pulse of the security alert and stepped into the hallway at the same time Luca emerged from the staircase below.
Their eyes met across the landing.
“Stay with Lily,” he said.
She should have obeyed.
She intended to.
Then Rosa screamed from the nursery.
Hannah ran.
By the time she reached the room, Rosa was standing by the bed, white-faced.
“Lily’s gone.”
The blanket had been thrown back.
The window was open.
The child-sized robe she’d gone to sleep in was gone too.
Hannah’s blood turned to ice.
Downstairs, Luca heard Daniel swearing into his radio and the house seemed to explode into motion.
“Lock the gates!”
“North lawn!”
“Check the drive!”
“Thermal feed now!”
Luca sprinted upstairs two steps at a time and found Hannah in the nursery doorway.
“Gone,” she said. “Rosa says gone.”
For one second, raw terror stripped every civilized layer from his face.
Then Hannah saw him master it by force.
“How long?” he demanded.
Rosa shook. “I stepped into the bathroom for less than a minute—”
Daniel’s voice crackled over the house radio. “Small heat signature in the east gardens. Moving toward the side gate.”
Luca was already running.
Hannah followed despite the pain in her leg.
The east gardens were lit in alternating wash of floodlight and shadow. Security men spread through the hedges. Somewhere ahead, a child cried.
Then a woman’s voice shouted, “Move!”
Vanessa.
Luca reached the stone path just in time to see her dragging Lily by one arm toward the side gate, a hooded driver trying frantically to override the electronic lock.
Lily was sobbing, barefoot, robe half slipping off one shoulder.
Vanessa turned when she saw Luca and did something that made every man around him freeze.
She lifted a syringe.
“If anyone comes closer, I swear to God I’ll use it!”
Luca stopped.
The world narrowed to his daughter’s tear-streaked face.
“Vanessa,” he said very quietly. “Let her go.”
“She belongs with me!” Vanessa screamed. “You were supposed to marry me! This was supposed to be my family!”
Lily cried out, “Daddy!”
Hannah arrived at the edge of the path, breathless.
The driver saw her first and shouted, “Behind you!”
For a fraction of a second, Vanessa turned her head.
That was all Luca needed.
He lunged forward.
At the same instant, Hannah grabbed the stone urn beside the path and shoved it with all the strength she had left. The heavy planter crashed sideways into the driver’s knees, taking him down.
Vanessa shrieked. The syringe flew from her hand. Lily tore free.
Luca caught his daughter mid-run and spun, shielding her against his chest while Daniel and two guards slammed Vanessa to the ground.
She thrashed wildly, screaming incoherently.
“It was supposed to be me!”
“She ruined it!”
“That maid ruined everything!”
“She stole you!”
Luca didn’t look at Vanessa.
He looked at Lily.
His daughter’s little body shook so violently he thought her bones might break. He carried her away from the struggle and into the house, Hannah close behind, limping harder now but ignoring it.
In the safety of the nursery, Luca sat in the rocking chair with Lily in his lap while the doctor checked the child for injury. She had bruising on one wrist and superficial scratches from the open window climb, but no puncture from the syringe.
“What was in it?” Hannah asked the doctor quietly.
He sniffed the discarded cap. “Sedative, probably.”
Luca closed his eyes.
When Lily had calmed enough to speak, she whispered, “She said we were leaving because you didn’t know what was best.”
He held her tighter.
“Nobody is taking you anywhere.”
Across the room, Hannah leaned one hand against the dresser because her leg was trembling again. Luca noticed at once.
“You’re bleeding.”
She glanced down.
The old wound had reopened through the strain of running.
Of course it had.
He almost laughed at the terrible absurdity of it.
“Sit down,” he ordered.
“I’m fine.”
“Hannah.”
She sank onto the edge of the chaise with a wince.
Luca handed Lily carefully to Rosa and crossed the room.
“You were supposed to stay with her,” he said.
“I did.”
He looked at the blood spreading through her bandage and then at her face, flushed with pain and fury and adrenaline.
“You dropped a stone planter on a grown man.”
“I was aiming lower.”
Against all reason, that nearly dragged a smile out of him.
Instead he said, “You keep saving my family.”
Her eyes met his.
And the answer came out so quietly it almost disappeared.
“Someone has to.”
He knelt in front of her then—not as a boss, not as a man of power, but as a father whose child was alive because of the woman in front of him.
“No,” he said. “Not someone. You.”
Outside, Vanessa Bellini was handcuffed to a stretcher after biting one of the guards and screaming that Hannah Collins had stolen her life.
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Inside, the little girl she meant to destroy fell asleep holding both Luca’s hand and Hannah’s sleeve.
And neither of them tried to move.
