CHAPTER 2 — THE NIGHT EVERYTHING BURNED
CHAPTER 2 — THE NIGHT EVERYTHING BURNED
Lucas never made it to the Jersey warehouse.
Halfway across the bridge, his convoy received another call.
"Boss!" one of the security men shouted into the radio. "The warehouse is clear. It was a false alarm!"
Lucas frowned.
"A false alarm?"
Before anyone could answer, his private phone rang.
Only four people had that number.
He answered immediately.
There was no voice.
Only screaming.
A woman's scream.
Then Daniel crying.
"Daddy!"
The line exploded into static.
Lucas's blood froze.
"Turn the cars around!" he roared.
The convoy spun across three lanes of traffic as black SUVs raced back toward the Moretti estate.
Every second felt like an hour.
Lucas kept calling Isabella.
No answer.
Again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Nothing.
His hands shook for the first time since he was seventeen years old.
Victor sat beside him, pretending to make frantic phone calls.
"We're almost there, boss."
Lucas barely heard him.
Something inside his chest already knew.
When the gates of the mansion came into view, smoke poured into the night sky like a black storm.
"No..."
The convoy hadn't even stopped before Lucas jumped from the moving SUV.
He sprinted across the front lawn.
Guards were everywhere.
Firefighters were dragging hoses through shattered windows.
The mansion that had once echoed with Daniel's laughter was engulfed in flames.
"BELLA!"
He tried to run inside.
Two firefighters tackled him before he reached the front door.
"You can't go in!"
"My wife is in there!"
"The roof is collapsing!"
"My son!"
Lucas fought like a wild animal.
Three men struggled to hold him back.
Then the front staircase collapsed in a shower of burning timber.
The entire east wing disappeared behind fire.
Lucas stopped fighting.
His knees hit the wet stone driveway.
For the first time since becoming head of the Moretti family...
He screamed.
Hours later, long after dawn painted the sky gray, firefighters recovered two bodies from the remains of the sunroom.
The room Isabella loved most.
She had wrapped herself around Daniel.
Even in death, she had tried to shield their son.
Lucas stared silently as white sheets covered the stretchers.
He couldn't move.
Couldn't breathe.
Couldn't even cry anymore.
Victor placed a hand on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, brother."
Lucas didn't answer.
His gray-blue eyes stayed fixed on the tiny outline beneath the smaller sheet.
Daniel.
Only five years old.
Still wearing dinosaur pajamas.
The police ruled the fire an electrical accident.
Faulty wiring.
Old circuits.
An unfortunate tragedy.
The newspapers repeated the story without question.
New York mourned.
The underworld whispered.
Lucas believed none of it.
Because Isabella had called him.
She had screamed.
Someone had been inside that house.
Someone had wanted him away.
Someone had made sure he wasn't home.
For weeks he slept in his office surrounded by photographs.
Electrical reports.
Security logs.
Phone records.
Every night he replayed the final voicemail.
At first it sounded like static.
Then one exhausted audio engineer isolated something buried beneath the noise.
A man's voice.
Only four words.
"Finish it. He's gone."
Lucas listened to the recording a hundred times.
The voice was distorted.
Impossible to identify.
But one thing became clear.
The attack had never been about burning a mansion.
It had been about erasing the Moretti bloodline.
The funerals drew thousands.
Politicians.
Judges.
Business owners.
Even rival crime families arrived dressed in black.
Everyone expected Lucas Moretti to collapse.
Instead, he stood beside two white coffins without shedding another tear.
When the service ended, the oldest capos gathered in the family chapel.
One elderly captain finally spoke.
"What are your orders, Don Moretti?"
Lucas looked at the portraits of generations before him.
Men who had answered every betrayal with rivers of blood.
His father's way.
His grandfather's way.
He almost chose the same path.
Almost.
Then he remembered Daniel building Lego castles.
Remembered Isabella laughing over burnt pancakes.
Remembered the promise he had made on the couch.
A clean life.
Instead, he spoke quietly.
"We don't kill blindly."
Several captains exchanged confused glances.
Lucas continued.
"We find the truth."
"And when we do?"
His expression turned colder than winter steel.
"We make sure the guilty never hurt another family again."
No one argued.
Because everyone in the room realized something terrifying.
The fire had not created a monster.
It had created something far more dangerous.
A patient man.
Months became years.
Lucas transformed the Moretti empire from the shadows.
Illegal businesses disappeared one by one.
Money flowed into construction companies, shipping firms, hotels, and technology investments.
Federal investigators couldn't understand it.
The Moretti organization seemed to be becoming legitimate.
Some believed grief had broken Lucas.
Others believed he had grown weak.
Only Victor Romano knew better.
Or so everyone believed.
Victor remained at Lucas's side through every meeting.
Every expansion.
Every funeral anniversary.
Every lonely birthday that Daniel would never celebrate.
He was still the trusted brother.
Still the loyal adviser.
Still the man with complete access to Lucas's schedules, finances, medicines...
...and medical records.
Including one detail almost nobody knew.
After inhaling thick smoke while searching the burning mansion, Lucas had developed severe respiratory damage.
Stress could trigger violent asthma attacks.
His doctors insisted he carry emergency inhalers everywhere.
Victor always reminded him.
"Don't forget your inhaler, boss."
Lucas usually smiled.
"You worry too much."
Victor smiled back.
"Someone has to."
Neither man noticed the faint satisfaction hiding behind Victor's eyes.
Because every attack made Lucas weaker.
Every attack brought the Moretti empire one step closer...
to the man who had wanted it all from the very beginning.
And on an ordinary Tuesday morning, three years after the fire, while a struggling housekeeper quietly entered the mansion for her first day of work...
Someone removed one small inhaler from Lucas Moretti's office.
No fingerprints.
No cameras.
No witnesses.
Only a silent plan already set in motion.
A plan that should have ended with the most feared man in New York dying alone on his own marble floor.
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Instead...
A six-year-old girl named Lily Carter had walked into the hallway carrying the only inhaler she had left.
