Chapter 5 - The Glass Shards at Midnight & The Voice on the Burner Phone That Wasn't DeadThe click of the disconnected burner phone sounded like a gunshot in the silent hallway.
Nobody breathed. The very air seemed to freeze solid around us.
Luca stood in the center of the corridor, his hand locked around the cheap plastic phone with such terrifying force that the outer casing began to splinter and crack under his grip. His face was a mask of sheer, unadulterated shock. The color had fled entirely from his skin, leaving him an ashen, ghostly pale, his dark eyes wide and fixed on the blank, glowing screen.
“Tell Luca I’m still alive...”
Those five whispered words echoed through the cavernous third floor of the Moretti mansion like a phantom curse.
Teresa collapsed against the doorframe, her knees giving out completely as a strangled, wailing sob tore from her throat. “Blessed Mother of God... Catherine? My Catherine is alive?”
I rushed forward and caught Teresa by her waist before she hit the floor, struggling against her dead weight, guiding her gently down to sit on a low velvet bench along the hallway wall. The matriarch was hyperventilating, her hands clutching at her rosary beads, tears flowing uncontrollably down her wrinkled cheeks.
“Luca...” Teresa wept, looking up at her frozen son. “Did you hear her? That was Catherine’s voice! I would know my daughter-in-law’s voice in the depths of hell! She’s alive!”
Luca didn't speak. He couldn't.
For four years—one thousand four hundred and sixty days—this man had carried the crushing, suffocating guilt of a widower who believed his final words to his wife were spoken in bitter anger. He had poured millions of dollars into charity foundations in her name. He had knelt beside an empty granite headstone in the family cemetery every Sunday morning, asking the cold earth for forgiveness. He had raised their four-year-old son, Julian, pointing to framed photographs on the wall, whispering stories of an angel who was watching over them from heaven.
And she was sitting in a locked cabin in the freezing woods of northern Wisconsin, guarded by mercenaries, begging for her son’s life.
A terrifying transformation swept over Luca Moretti.
The shock in his eyes hardened. The grief vanished, burned away in an instant by a white-hot, volcanic rage that radiated off his body like heat from an open furnace. The veins in his neck pulsed furiously against his skin.
“Matteo!” Luca’s voice cracked through the corridor like a whip, loud enough to rattle the crystal sconces on the wall.
Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs two at a time. Matteo appeared at the end of the hall, his tactical shotgun still resting in the crook of his arm, his dark eyes taking in the scene. “Boss? What happened?”
Luca shoved the cracked burner phone into Matteo’s chest. “Trace this number. Right now. Use the encrypted military satellite uplink we keep in the basement command room. I want the exact GPS coordinates, the cell tower triangulations, and the registered owner of the nearest land parcel within ten minutes.”
Matteo stared at the burner phone, confused. “Boss, whose phone is this?”
“Arthur Vance’s,” Luca growled, his voice dropping into a register so dark and lethal it sent shivers racing down my spine. “And the woman who just called it is my wife.”
Matteo’s hardened jaw dropped open. In the eleven months I had worked at the estate, I had never seen the stoic, battle-scarred enforcer show a single ounce of emotion. Now, his eyes widened with absolute disbelief. “Mrs... Mrs. Catherine? Boss, that’s impossible. We buried her four years ago—”
“We buried a stranger,” Luca interrupted, grabbing Matteo by the lapels of his tactical vest, his face inches from his enforcer's. “We were fed lies by the Vance family while they kept Catherine locked in a cage like an animal to keep her from exposing their theft! Now move your ass to the basement and find me those coordinates, or I will tear this city apart with my bare hands!”
“On it, boss!” Matteo turned and sprinted down the hallway, shouting orders into his tactical radio as he disappeared down the stairwell.
Luca turned toward me.
The sheer intensity of his gaze was overwhelming. He looked at me not as a billionaire mob boss looking at an hourly maid, but as a desperate general looking at his most trusted lieutenant in the middle of a collapsing war zone.
“Hannah.”
“Yes, Mr. Moretti?”
“I need you to listen to me very carefully,” he said, stepping closer, his voice dropping into a low, urgent murmur. “In less than an hour, this house is going to become the epicenter of a full-scale syndicate war. When the word gets out that the Vance family staged Catherine’s death, their financial backers—the Marcone family and the corrupt factions within the state police—are going to realize their leverage is gone. They will try to burn this estate to the ground to destroy the paper trail.”
My throat tightened, but I kept my chin up. “What do you need me to do?”
Luca looked down at his mother, then back at me. “My son, Julian. He’s currently at my sister’s fortified estate in Lake Forest, sleeping. But Vanessa’s private driver was scheduled to pick him up at midnight under the guise of an early morning wedding rehearsal.”
A cold dread flooded my veins. “A kidnapping.”
“A hostage,” Luca corrected coldly. “Vanessa and Arthur’s ultimate insurance policy. If anything went wrong tonight, they planned to use Julian to force me to surrender the family empire and sign over the trust funds.”
Luca reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a heavy titanium keycard and a sleek, black key fob bearing the crest of an armored Mercedes SUV.
“Hannah, you are the only person in this house who isn't compromised, who isn't on any syndicate payroll, and who has proven she would bleed to protect my mother.” Luca pressed the keys into my palm, closing my fingers over the cold metal. “I need you to take my mother, get into the reinforced SUV in the underground carriage house, and drive north to Lake Forest. You get to Julian before Vanessa’s driver arrives. You show this card to my sister Sophia. You tell her the code word is ‘Calabria’. She will lock down the compound with fifty armed guards.”
“And what about you, Mr. Moretti?” I asked, terror gripping my chest for his safety. “You can't go to Wisconsin alone.”
A dark, terrifying smile touched the corners of Luca’s lips. It was the smile of a demon preparing to open the gates of hell.
“I’m not going alone, Hannah. I’m taking thirty men with heavy artillery. And I’m taking Vanessa and Arthur Vance in the back of my truck so they can watch me dismantle every single person who touched my wife.”
Before I could reply, a loud, violent crashing sound erupted from the lower floor of the mansion.
Glass shattered into thousands of pieces, followed instantly by the deafening, frantic bark of automatic gunfire echoing up through the grand ventilation shafts.
The front perimeter had been breached.
“They’re here,” Luca snarled, drawing his Kimber .45 and racking the slide with a crisp, lethal metallic click.
He didn't wait. He grabbed his mother by the shoulders, kissing her forehead with fierce tenderness. “Go with Hannah, Ma. Do not stop for anything. If anyone tries to stop your car, run them over.”
“Luca, my boy... bring my Catherine home,” Teresa wept, holding his bloodstained face between her trembling palms. “Bring her home to us.”
“I will bring her home, Ma,” Luca whispered with absolute, unshakable certainty. “Or none of us will come back at all.”
He turned and sprinted toward the main staircase, raising his weapon as another burst of automatic fire ripped through the lower foyer. Shouts, screams, and the thundering roar of combat erupted below us.
I didn't have time to be afraid.
I turned to Teresa, wrapping my arm securely around her waist. “Mrs. Moretti, we have to move right now. Can you make it down the back servant lift?”
The elderly woman wiped the tears from her wrinkled cheeks, her eyes flashing with the ancient, unyielding steel of a true mafia matriarch.
“Lead the way, Hannah,” Teresa said, her voice completely steady now. “A Collins and a Moretti have work to do.”
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We slipped into the shadows of the servant corridor, heading down toward the underground garage, while the grand mansion above us descended into fire, blood, and the final reckoning of a four-year-old lie.
Dưới đây là toàn bộ nội dung cho Batch 2: Chapter 6 đến Chapter 10 theo đúng yêu cầu: kể từ ngôi thứ nhất của cô hầu gái Hannah Collins, câu chuyện kịch tính, dồn dập, chuẩn phong cách drama Mỹ dễ gây bão tương tác và chia sẻ, các đoạn văn được trình bày gọn gàng, liền mạch để bạn dễ dàng sao chép và lưu trữ:
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