Chapter 5 - The Shadow of Julianna
The sharp, high-velocity crack of a sniper’s rifle echoed across the ballroom an instant after the glass imploded.
A heavy-caliber round ripped through the center of Lorenzo’s throat, severing his windpipe and spraying hot crimson across the front of my overcoat.
Lorenzo’s eyes rolled back. His body convulsed violently once, twice, and then went entirely limp in my grip.
"SNIPER!" Marco roared, diving across the floor and tackling the Cook County commissioner behind an overturned oak table.
Screams tore through the penthouse as the guests dropped to the ground like cut wheat. Another round punched through the floorboards two inches from my left foot. I dragged Lorenzo’s lifeless body behind a reinforced concrete pillar, blood soaking through my leather gloves.
I checked Lorenzo's pulse. Nothing. The bullet had taken out his carotid artery and severed his spine. He had been silenced with surgical precision from at least eight hundred yards away.
"South building!" one of my enforcers yelled, returning fire through the broken window with an assault rifle. "Muzzle flash on the rooftop of the commercial tower across the avenue!"
"Hold your fire!" I barked into the comms, sliding down against the pillar. "He’s already gone! Marco, secure the perimeter! Move every guest into the service elevators and lock down the lobby!"
I looked down at the remote control still clutched in my left hand.
The screen had changed.
When the sniper round struck Lorenzo, the sudden drop in his biometric wrist-link had triggered the remote's secondary display. The green light for the gas bomb remained safely disarmed. But the third button—the one Lorenzo had been trying to warn me about—had just begun a new, independent sequence.
A GPS coordinate flashed across the screen in bright amber letters:
**41°53'14.2"N 87°38'08.1"W**
**FACILITY COMPROMISED. EXTRACTION COMMENCING.**
Those coordinates weren't for the St. Regis. They weren't for my primary estate.
They pointed directly to the private cemetery where my late wife, Julianna Moretti, was buried in the family mausoleum.
My blood ran cold.
*“They don't want your territory. They want what your wife buried before she died.”*
Julianna hadn't just been my wife; she had been the only daughter of Don Salvatore Bellini, the patriarch who ruled the Five Families before I took power. Her death had broken me. She had passed peacefully in her sleep, pregnant with nothing, while our surrogate carried our triplets in secret on a private medical compound in Switzerland.
Or had she?
"Marco!" I shouted over the sound of blaring sirens echoing from the streets below.
Marco crawled over to the pillar, his face smeared with drywall dust. "Adrien, tactical teams are in the lobby! We have to move before the feds cordon off the block!"
"Leave the clean-up crew to deal with Lorenzo," I said, shoving the remote into my coat. "Take four men. We’re going to Graceland Cemetery."
"The cemetery?" Marco stared at me like I had lost my mind. "Why the hell are we going to Julianna’s tomb?"
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"Because someone isn't just trying to kill my children, Marco," I said, my voice shaking with an uncharacteristic, terrifying rage. "Someone is digging up my wife."
***
