But not at me.
At Clara.
Greg moved first.
He threw himself into her.
The bullet struck his shoulder.
Enzo fired.
Salvatore’s gun flew from his hand.
Luca crossed the distance in seconds.
He hit his father so hard both men crashed against a cargo crate.
Leo slipped.
I ran.
The baby fell into my arms.
I hit the concrete on my knees, shielding him.
Luca and Salvatore fought six feet away.
Not like a son and father.
Like two men finishing a war that had begun decades earlier.
Salvatore reached for a second gun.
Luca knocked it aside.
Salvatore laughed even as blood filled his mouth.
“You think you’re different from me?”
Luca froze.
“You built everything I taught you to build.”
“No.”
“You threatened men. Bought judges. Broke lives.”
Luca’s breathing was ragged.
“You made me.”
Salvatore smiled.
“Exactly.”
Then a gunshot sounded.
Salvatore looked down.
Blood spread across his shirt.
Luca hadn’t fired.
Neither had Enzo.
I turned.
Clara stood behind them.
Smoke curled from her gun.
Her voice broke.
“I should have done that twenty-seven years ago.”
Salvatore collapsed.
Silence swallowed the pier.
Then sirens began.
Lots of them.
Luca looked at Clara.
“You called the police?”
She shook her head.
Greg, lying on the ground clutching his shoulder, laughed weakly.
“I did.”
Luca stared.
Greg grimaced.
“Somebody in this family had to make one good decision.”
Clara rushed to him.
I held Leo tighter.
Enzo looked toward the approaching lights.
“We need to leave.”
But Luca did not move.
For the first time, the most feared man in Philadelphia seemed tired.
Not physically.
Completely.
He looked at his father’s body.
Then at Leo.
Then at me.
“No.”
Enzo frowned.
“Boss?”
“No more running.”
The public story became a national scandal.
Salvatore Moretti had spent years operating an illegal adoption network through private clinics, falsified birth certificates and corrupt officials.
Children had been taken from frightened young mothers and transferred to wealthy families who paid to erase inconvenient origins.
Some mothers consented.
Others had not.
Clara had discovered the records as a teenager.
When she tried to expose him, Salvatore threatened her first child.
Me.
Thomas and Susan Hayes had been part of his transportation network.
But when they were ordered to move me to another buyer, they disappeared instead.
They raised me as their daughter.
They never told me the truth because they believed Salvatore would eventually find me.
They died in a car accident when I was sixteen.
An actual accident.
Greg had promised Thomas he would watch over me afterward.
He had kept that promise quietly for eleven years.
Clara had believed I was safest if she stayed away.
I did not forgive her immediately.
Some wounds deserve more than one conversation.
Elena’s story was worse.
Clara had another daughter three years after me while living under another identity.
When Salvatore found her, he took the baby.
Elena was adopted through the same network.
Years later, she met Luca without either knowing the truth.
By the time Clara discovered who Elena was, Elena was pregnant with Leo.
She tried to contact her.
But Salvatore’s surviving organization intercepted the messages.
Then Elena found the truth herself.
That discovery killed her.
Matteo had sabotaged her car under Salvatore’s orders.
He survived the pier.
He confessed.
So did half a dozen others once the empire began collapsing.
