Chapter 4 - The Sound of the Gate
The conservatory was a long, glass-roofed room at the western edge of the family wing, filled with massive white orchids, lemon trees in terra-cotta pots, and a grand piano made of black lacquer that looked like a lake frozen in the middle of the floor.
Luca didn't want to play his scales. He sat on the velvet bench with his knees tucked to his chest, his gray eyes fixed on the glass roof where the clouds were starting to turn that greasy shade of gray that meant a storm was coming from the Atlantic.
"Elena," he said, his voice small against the high glass.
"Yes, Luca?" I was sitting on a wicker chair near the door, a book of children's stories open on my lap, though I hadn't turned a page in an hour.
"Why don't you have a car?"
"I don't need a car, Luca," I said. "I take the transit line from Elm Street."
"My dad has seven cars," the boy said, his finger tracing a scratch on the black lacquer of the piano. "The black ones are for the city. The silver ones are for when we go to the house with the big sand. He said if people don't have cars, they're not real."
"I'm real, Luca," I said, a small, bitter smile touching my lips.
"My mom didn't have a car," he whispered.
The book on my lap slipped an inch. "Your mother?"
"She went into the water too," Luca said, his voice dropping until it was barely louder than the hum of the air conditioning through the floor vents. "But she didn't come back up like me. Dad said she went to Switzerland, but Marco told the cook that the Switzerland house doesn't have a roof."
Before I could ask what he meant, the double doors of the conservatory didn't just open—they were thrown back so hard the brass handles struck the plaster walls with a sharp, ringing report.
Marco stood in the doorway. His suit jacket was unbuttoned, revealing the heavy silver butt of his revolver against his ribs, and his face was gray, wet with sweat despite the cool air of the house.
"Elena," he barked. "Get the kid. Now."
"What's happening?" I stood up, dropping the book onto the wicker chair.
"The south gate just went off-line," Marco said, his hand already on his radio as he pulled Luca off the bench by his shoulder. "Two cars just came through the perimeter wire at the orchard. It’s the Moretti crew. They're not here for a meeting. Get into the vault under the pantry. Move!"
The house—the quiet, iron-ribbed clock—suddenly turned into a machine of war.
From the hallway outside, the sound of heavy boots running against the marble was followed by the sharp, metallic clack-clack of assault rifles being chambered. A siren—low, rhythmic, like a foghorn—began to wail from the walls, turning the golden light in the corridor into a pulsing, angry red.
I didn't think about the agency. I didn't think about the eighty thousand dollars Anthony had sent to Clara’s clinic. I reached down and scooped Luca into my arms, his five-year-old body unexpectedly heavy against my chest, his small hands locking around my neck with the same desperate, freezing grip he had used in the deep end of the pool yesterday.
"Elena!" he screamed against my ear as the first explosion shook the glass roof of the conservatory.
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It wasn't a bomb. It was a vehicle—a heavy, reinforced SUV—striking the glass doors of the northern terrace forty feet away. The sound of shattering plate glass was like a wave of iron teeth falling onto the marble, followed immediately by the rapid, deafening pop-pop-pop of automatic weapons clearing the room.
"I've got you," I whispered into his hair, my sneakers skidding against the polished oak of the nursery corridor as I ran toward the service stairs. "I've got you, Luca. Don't look back."
