Chapter eight

“Mmmhhhh ...... Did you say home?” Luciano narrowed his eyes at her. Then he laughed sarcastically. Hiding her face from the elevator cameras. The woman raised her eyes to Luciano.

“Make me understand something first. Where have you been for the past twenty-two years? What was my mother's bodyguard doing when someone shot her dead?” He continued shouting angrily.

The pain of losing his mother was re-living in his mind and body. “Your father held your mother hostage. He used her as leverage for our pack. Your father threatened to kill her if we tried anything, and your mother promised us for years that she was planning a way to get you both out.

“She wanted to run away with you, before, when you were two years old, to return to the pack and failed. When she tried again….”

“I guess… You remember because you were there…. when she got shot and killed. In front of your eyes.”

Listening to her like this triggered a memory and Luciano remembered his father's warning. Salvatore Solana, Luciano's father, warned Luciano. Since he was too young to remember.

That his mother had come from a rival gang and that if Luciano and his mother ever set foot outside their house, that rival gang would kill them. One day, what Salvatore warned Luciano about happened.

They shot his mother down, and she died on the spot. Today marks ten years since he saw his mother die in front of his eyes.

His mother's rival gang was the gang he could not trace, however hard he searched. He had found all the other responsible cartels who his uncle had believed conspired and tried to kill him and killed them all.

But he never found anyone from his mother's side's rival gang. And now he was in the presence of one of them. He wanted so badly to make them pay.

His father and uncle could never honestly say with truth about where his relatives from his mother were located or pinpoint them for him, which made it hard for him to find them.

“My father warned me about you people. He was right. You killed my mother.”

“No one could kill your mother from our Pack. Even if they wanted to, they would never. It wasn't us….” He noticed she was seeing his dizziness increase because of the amount of blood still flowing out of him as she tried to help him stand still. “You need help. Let me bandage you to stop the bleeding.”

“I don't need your help, plus I don't trust you.” Luciano was vulnerable, and his chances of being in control were running low.

His body was losing increased blood. And what rang a bell in his head was that he felt she was stalling. Buying herself more time to see him lose more blood and, eventually, he would have no power to do anything.

So, he thought of the only option then, to keep him alive, and placed the button on his phone for an emergency call to ask James for help. When she noticed what he had done, she stood in front of him with a serious face and spoke.“I know you tried to escape five years ago,” she announced.

And that canceled all the doubts in Luciano's mind that he had kept up believing his mother's people were innocent.

That was the sentence that made adrenaline flow into Luciano's body like crazy. And it threw him back into fight mode. His body was alarmed. She was more of a threat than he thought.

She knew something that got people killed. Everyone, absolutely everyone. That is aware of that event. He killed them with his hands. Everyone that had that piece of information was dead, except for the three people he considered family.

“How do you know that?” Luciano quickly pointed a gun at her. “So it was all true. You were a part of the people that tried to kill me!” he shouted angrily.

“No... Luciano.” She raised her hands in surrender, then the door opened with a bang.

They had reached the penthouse floor.

“I tried to help. I am the one that abandoned my car with the keys for you at the corner stop.” Luciano pulled her out of the elevator with his gun still aimed at her.

Five years ago, Luciano lied to himself that he had it all figured out and tried to take a step outside their house. He thought he had done better with his plan to escape.

He believed he had planned a better plan than his mother's plan five years prior which cost him her life. He tried walking away from his father's house and from the Mafia life. But that plan was the biggest mistake of his life.

It cost him the life of his father, which made it easy for him to become his worst nightmare. He could no longer stand still and let people make a game out of wanting to kill him every time he tried walking out of the Mafia life.

And with the killings, he broke his mother's promises, taking over his father's cartel to rule along with his uncle and becoming this thing he detested most: the bullet. “THAT IS A LIE,” Luciano shouted angrily, pointing a gun at her forehead.

Luciano believed his uncle had saved him that day. He had left him the car keys. And he had helped him find all the people responsible for what happened that day.

“That was my uncle's car. Don't play games with me.”

“Your Uncle lied. I am telling the truth. Don Mauro's car was parked inside the house. Did he come to your house with two cars?” Before she could say more, or Luciano could enquire more.

Bullets started flying down to them from above, to where they stood.

And the woman jumped, protecting Luciano as she hurried pulled him back into the elevator, and pressed the button to lock the door. Luciano stood still and frozen.

A realization came to him that his gun was no longer in his hands after she aimed at the cams in the elevator.

She shot down the cams on the elevator and pressed the ground button of the elevator. When the elevator closed completely, Luciano, who was still frozen, his phone rang, and he picked it up.

She observed him cautiously as he picked up the phone. And she pressed the button on his phone for the loudspeaker, before she hurriedly climbed up, hiding on the roof of the elevator.

Like a Spiderman, as she spread her body to be invisible from outside, she waited for the elevator to go to the ground floor.

“Luciano, are you okay?” James inquired on the other side of his phone. Luciano raised his head at her, his phone on speaker. “I am coming in. Get prepared,” James announced on his phone.

Luciano heard sounds on the ceiling, and the woman jumped off the ceiling.

Luciano was sure James was trying to get in from above. She pressed hard on the opening button of the elevator. And switched off Luciano's phone. Quickly standing in front of him, she held his hands lovingly.

“I am running out of time, and I don't know how to tell you this. But…. Your mother was a shapeshifter, a werewolf, just like me.

“And if you truly are her son, you will shift into your wolf's form on your next birthday. And you need to be with us to help you in understanding and navigating through the shift.”