Chapter 8 - THE BELL AND THE GUN
Emergency lamps glowed red near the exits, revealing only fragments of movement. Damian’s men seized Luca before his eyes adjusted. Aaron struck him behind the knee and forced him down beside the altar. Another man caught Isabella’s arms and dragged her toward Richard.
The transmitter inside the envelope was still active, but its signal weakened beneath Damian’s jammer. Naomi’s team could hear broken words, not enough to confirm where Isabella stood or whether Damian had found the second device.
Damian picked up the duplicate ledger. The weight told him something was wrong. He tore the binding apart and found blank paper beneath the copied pages.
“You brought me a decoy.”
Luca wiped blood from his mouth. “You expected trust?”
Damian aimed a pistol at him. “I expected you to value Matteo more than a woman you met yesterday.”
“He valued the truth,” Isabella said. “That is what you never understood.”
Damian turned the weapon toward her. “Search her.”
The man holding Isabella released one wrist to reach beneath her coat. She drove her elbow into his throat, twisted free, and seized the same iron candle stand she had knocked over the previous afternoon. Damian fired. The bullet struck stone inches from her shoulder.
Isabella hurled the stand through the tall stained-glass window beside the altar.
Glass exploded outward into the snow. The crash gave Naomi’s tactical team the confirmation it needed. Agents surged from the ridge as Marco drove the utility truck through the outer gate.
Inside, Luca slammed Aaron into the altar and caught Damian’s gun wrist with both hands. Damian struck him across the face. The weapon discharged again, this time tearing through Luca’s shoulder.
Richard tipped his chair sideways into the legs of the man reaching for Isabella. It was the first thing he had done to protect her, and it came years too late to purchase forgiveness. It was still enough to give her one second.
She reached beneath the altar and found the black leather book Damian had brought to compare with the decoy. Beside it lay Peter Alden’s original recorder and a folder containing the genuine proxy documents.
Damian saw the evidence in her hands. His composure vanished. “Give me that ledger. You don’t know whose names are inside.”
The chapel doors burst inward.
Federal agents flooded the aisle. Aaron dropped his weapon. One guard tried to run through the side door and collided with Marco. Damian kept fighting until Luca forced his gun hand against the floor and Naomi kicked the weapon beyond reach.
Damian looked at Isabella as agents restrained him. “Everything your father built will disappear because of you.”
“No,” she said, holding the ledger against her chest. “Everything you stole will be returned because I survived.”
Paramedics reached Luca first, but he pointed them toward Isabella. She was unshot, although glass had cut one cheek and the strain had reopened the injury around her wrist. Only after she was examined did she kneel beside him.
His shoulder bled through his shirt. “You broke another candle stand,” he said.
“It worked better this time.”
Naomi secured the ledger and recorder. The second transmitter had captured Damian’s demands, his description of the lake, and his attempt to reclaim the evidence. Body cameras recorded his final statement about the names inside the book.
Richard was placed on a stretcher under armed guard. He reached for Isabella as paramedics lifted him.
“Bella, I’m sorry.”
She looked at the father who had used her love for the company to sign away her freedom. “Tell the truth in court. That is the only thing you can still give me.”
Outside, the storm finally began to weaken. Damian entered one federal vehicle, Richard another. Luca was carried toward an ambulance with no armed entourage and no promise that cooperation would spare him.
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Isabella watched the doors close. Twenty-four hours earlier, Damian controlled her name, her inheritance, and whether she lived through the night. Now the evidence he tried to bury rested in federal hands, and every man who had traded her safety for power was being taken away.
The snow had hidden nothing.
