Elena closed her eyes. “Yes.”
“And you hid me from him too?”
“I hid you most of all from him.”
Maya’s laugh broke apart. “Wonderful. Any other dead relatives returning tonight?”
A sound came from the elevator.
Everyone turned.
The private elevator display lit up.
Rising.
Luca moved immediately, drawing a gun from beneath the side table. Elena pulled Maya behind her. Maya’s mind reeled at the absurdity of it: her mother protecting her from the elevator in a billionaire’s penthouse while her assassin father called her from the dead.
The doors opened.
A young man stumbled out, bleeding from his temple.
He looked like Luca, but softer. Younger. His dark hair hung over frightened eyes.
“Matteo,” Luca said.
Matteo collapsed to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, Luca.”
Luca crossed to him. “Who did this?”
Matteo lifted his head.
His eyes went to Maya.
Then Elena.
Then Luca.
“They made me,” he whispered.
Luca stopped.
Maya saw the truth land before she understood it.
Matteo’s hand moved.
Not toward his wound.
Toward the inside of his jacket.
Luca fired.
Matteo jerked backward. The shot struck his shoulder, spinning him against the marble floor. Something small and black rolled from his hand.
A device.
It beeped once.
Enzo burst from the stairwell at the far side of the room. “Down!”
Luca seized Maya and Elena and threw them behind the sofa as the device erupted—not in fire, but in sound.
A piercing metallic shriek split the air. The windows cracked. Lights exploded. Maya clamped her hands over her ears and screamed without hearing herself.
Then silence crashed down.
Smoke curled from the marble.
Matteo lay unconscious, blood spreading beneath him.
Luca rose first, staggered, then grabbed the device with a cloth and crushed it under his heel.
“Tracker,” Enzo said grimly. Blood ran from his nose. “Signal pulse.”
Luca looked toward the windows.
Across the city, on the roof of a neighboring tower, a red light blinked.
Once.
Twice.
Then vanished.
“They have our location,” Elena said.
“No,” Luca replied. “They always had it.”
Enzo stared at him.