Chapter 7 - The Glass Conservatory
The conservatory was a cathedral of fractured moonlight and exotic greenery, built of arched iron girders and hundreds of panes of beveled glass. Rain had begun to fall outside, drumming a chaotic rhythm against the glass dome high above.
Clara moved through the shattered French doors, her bare feet stepping over twisted iron and broken glass, feeling neither the cold nor the sharp edges. Her senses were dialled to an impossible sharpness.
Vincent Moretti stood near the central stone fountain, his silver-tipped cane discarded on the flagstones. His designer coat was splattered with white plaster dust, his slicked-back hair disheveled. In his right hand, he held a sleek snub-nosed revolver, his hand trembling as he aimed it into the shadows where Clara stood.
"Clara!" Vincent shouted, his voice quavering between paternal affection and sheer terror. "Put the gun down, darling! You don't understand what happened! Leo Rossi poisoned your mind just like he poisoned this entire city!"
Clara stepped out from behind a towering palm, the shotgun resting casually against her hip. The moonlight caught the cold steel of the barrel and the dried blood smeared across her cheek.
"Did he poison my father, Vincent?" she asked, her voice dangerously calm. "Did Leo slip digitalis into his Scotch while you smiled across the yacht table?"
Vincent flinched, the color draining from his face until he looked like an old, withered corpse. "Your father was weak, Clara! He was going to throw away forty years of enterprise over moral vanity! He was going to ruin us all! I did what had to be done to preserve our legacy—to preserve your future!"
"My future was never yours to buy," she said, taking a slow, deliberate step forward.
Vincent’s eyes darted toward the exit behind him, where his getaway driver had supposedly been waiting. But the driveway was silent. The estate gates were blocked by the crushed frame of his own assault vehicle.
"I loved your father like a brother!" Vincent pleaded, raising both hands slightly, the revolver shaking wildly. "I took care of you! I negotiated your protection!"
"You put me in a red dress so your sniper could blow my husband's head off while I stood next to him," Clara spat, the rage finally cracking through her icy demeanor. "You made me an unwitting accomplice in the murder of the only man who ever truly protected me."
Vincent’s expression twisted, shedding the mask of the doting uncle once and for all. A venomous sneer curled his lip. "That butcher? You think Leo Rossi loves you? You're a trophy, Clara! A pretty little bird in a gilded cage! Without me, you'd have been nothing more than an ornament to his empire!"
Vincent snapped his revolver up, aiming straight for her chest.
A single shot rang out from the conservatory doorway behind Clara.
It wasn't Clara’s shotgun.
Vincent gasped, looking down in shock at the small, neat hole that had appeared through the center of his right shoulder. The revolver slipped from his numb fingers, clattering onto the flagstones and splashing into the fountain pool. He stumbled backward, clutching his wound, collapsing against the stone rim of the basin.
Clara turned.
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Leo was leaning heavily against the shattered frame of the conservatory doors. He was using a broken iron curtain rod as a crutch, his knuckles raw, his face pale as death, but his right hand held his pistol with unwavering precision. He was bleeding through his bandages, his breath coming in ragged gasps, but his eyes were fixed on Vincent with the merciless finality of a judge delivering a sentence.
"You touch my wife," Leo whispered, his voice vibrating through the glass room like thunder, "and I tear your empire down to the bedrock."
