Chapter 9 - The Ice on the Glass Table and the Confession Extracted at Gunpoint
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The speedometer in Luca’s Maybach didn't drop below one hundred and ten miles per hour as we rocketed north along Michigan Avenue.
Behind us, a convoy of eight tactical SUVs ran red lights, their sirens screaming through the downtown canyons. The rain had returned, turning the asphalt into black, shimmering mirrors under the neon lights of the skyscrapers.
I sat in the passenger seat, my ribs taped tightly beneath a dark wool coat Luca had thrown over my shoulders. Every bump in the road sent sharp stabs of pain through my bruised back, but I refused to complain. All my thoughts were pinned to the fourteenth floor of Northwestern Memorial.
Sophie. My mother. Teresa.
Three defenseless women guarding one another against a monster who had clawed his way out of an eight-year-old grave.
Luca’s knuckles were bone-white against the leather steering wheel. His jaw was set with such pressure that I feared his teeth would crack. He reached down and grabbed the tactical radio mounted beneath the dashboard.
“Eagle One, report! Eagle One, do you copy?!”
Only static answered.
*“Kzzzt... Luca... kzzzt... fire in the lobby... breach on the fourteenth... perimeter compromised... kzzzt!”*
The radio went completely dead.
Luca slammed his palm against the steering wheel with a furious roar, flooring the accelerator. The heavy sedan leaped forward, swerving violently around a city bus before sliding sideways onto Huron Street, coming to a halt directly in front of the hospital’s private pavilion.
The scene outside was terrifying.
Two hospital security vehicles were overturned in the circular driveway, their sirens wailing uselessly into the night. Smoke poured from the ground-floor triage entrance where a smoke grenade had been detonated to cause mass panic and clear the civilian staff.
Luca kicked his car door open, racking the slide of an assault rifle he pulled from the locking rack behind the front seats.
“Stay behind me, Hannah,” he commanded, his voice cold iron. “Matteo, take four men and secure the stairwells! Cut the main elevators! No one leaves this tower alive!”
We breached the shattered glass doors of the pavilion. The lobby was filled with lingering chemical fog, smelling of sulfur and burnt rubber. Three of Luca’s perimeter guards lay unconscious on the floor, restrained with tactical zip-ties—proof that Dante’s strike team had moved with military precision, targeting only the Moretti inner circle.
We sprinted toward the private express elevator that bypassed the main floors directly to the fourteenth-floor VIP wing. Luca jammed his master override key into the panel, and the elevator surged upward with stomach-churning speed.
*Ding.*
The doors parted on the fourteenth floor.
The hallway was dead quiet. The soft, sterile fluorescent lights flickered overhead.
At the far end of the corridor, the heavy double doors of the presidential suite stood wide open.
Luca moved like a ghost, keeping his rifle raised at eye level, clearing every doorway with ruthless efficiency. I followed right behind him, holding the small snub-nosed revolver he had returned to me in the car.
We reached the entrance of the suite.
Inside, the living area was in pristine order. The television was on, muted, displaying a flickering news broadcast about the shooting at Navy Pier.
Sitting on the plush sectional sofa, unhurt, was eight-year-old Sophie, clutching her favorite stuffed bear to her chest. Sitting on either side of her, their arms wrapped protectively around the child, were Teresa Moretti and my mother, Eleanor.
Standing behind the sofa, with his hands resting casually on the leather cushions, was a tall, broad-shouldered man in a charcoal trench coat.
Dante Moretti.
He looked older than his photograph. His jet-black hair was streaked with silver at the temples, his left eye dark and calculating, while his right eye was a clouded, milky orb scarred by old trauma. He held no weapon in his hands. Resting on the low glass coffee table in front of him was an antique silver ice bucket filled with champagne and four crystal flutes.
“Welcome home, little brother,” Dante said, his voice deep, gravelly, and carrying a heavy Sicilian cadence. “You're five minutes late. I was beginning to think you let Vincenzo’s men put an end to our family reunion.”
Luca didn't lower his rifle by a single millimeter. The red laser sight from his barrel settled squarely between Dante’s eyes.
“Take your hands off that sofa, Dante,” Luca whispered, the hatred in his voice vibrating through the entire room. “Move three feet away from my daughter, or I will paint that wall with your brains before you can take another breath.”
Dante chuckled softly, a low, rumbling sound devoid of warmth. Slowly, deliberately, he raised his open hands into the air and took three steps backward toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, leaning casually against the glass overlooking the glittering lights of the city.
“Still so dramatic, Luca,” Dante mused, glancing down at Sophie. “Your daughter has your eyes. But she has Elena’s smile. You shouldn't leave such precious treasures guarded by second-rate security guards.”
“Dante,” Teresa spoke from the sofa.
Her voice was firm, steady, carrying the absolute authority of a mother who had buried too many men in her lifetime.
Dante’s smile faded slightly as his gaze shifted to the matriarch. “Hello, stepmother. You look remarkably well for a woman who was supposed to be a vegetable. I see the little maid has been doing wonders for your health.”
Dante’s scarred eye drifted toward me. A sinister, admiring spark flared in his expression.
“Hannah Collins,” Dante murmured, nodding respectfully. “The granddaughter of Thomas Collins. When Marco told me he had locked you in the cellar with the rest of the staff, I told him he was an idiot. A Collins never stays in the basement. You proved me right tonight at Navy Pier, didn't you, Donna Moretti? Taking two rounds to the back to save my brother’s worthless life.”
“Why are you here, Dante?” I asked, stepping forward until I stood just behind Luca’s shoulder, my voice unwavering despite the throbbing ache in my ribs. “If you wanted them dead, you would have pulled the triggers before we got here. What do you want?”
Dante’s smile returned, cold and theatrical. He reached into his coat pocket with two fingers, pulling out a sealed leather dossier, and dropped it onto the glass table beside the ice bucket.
“I didn't come here to kill children or grandmothers,” Dante said, his voice dropping into serious, dangerous tones. “I came here to collect my inheritance. The inheritance our father stole from me when he exiled me to Palermo.”
“You tried to put a bullet in our father's heart, Dante!” Luca snapped, his finger tightening on the trigger. “You sold our supply lines to the Cartel! You were a traitor to our blood!”
“Is that what the old man told you?” Dante laughed, a harsh, bitter sound that rattled the crystal flutes on the table. “Our father didn't exile me because I betrayed the family, Luca. He exiled me because I discovered who really murdered your mother!”
Luca froze.
The color completely drained from his face. The rifle barrel wavered for a fraction of a second.
“What did you say?” Luca whispered.
“Elena didn't die of a car malfunction on Lake Shore Drive seven years ago,” Dante said, stepping closer to the glass table, pointing a gloved finger at the sealed leather dossier. “Her brake lines weren't cut by street thugs. They were severed by someone inside the Moretti inner circle. Someone who wanted Elena out of the way so a Bellini could sit at the head of the table.”
Dante looked directly at Teresa Moretti.
“Tell him, Teresa,” Dante demanded, his voice trembling with years of suppressed rage. “Tell him why you kept your mouth shut for seven years! Tell him who visited Elena’s garage the night before the crash!”
Luca turned his head slowly toward his mother. His eyes were wide, filled with a horrific, suffocating dread.
“Mom?” Luca choked out. “What is he talking about?”
Teresa closed her eyes, tears spilling down her weathered cheeks. She reached out and pulled little Sophie closer, shielding the child’s ears with her hands.
“It wasn't... Marco,” Teresa wept, her voice breaking into agonizing sobs. “And it wasn't... Vanessa.”
“Then who was it?!” Luca roared, the fury finally breaking through his disciplined facade like a shattered dam.
Dante kicked the glass table violently, sending the ice bucket and crystal flutes crashing across the floorboards in a shower of freezing water and broken glass.
“It was Don Vincenzo Lucchese!” Dante bellowed. “The very man you just toasted at Navy Pier! The very man who signed your little treaty tonight! Vincenzo orchestrated Elena’s murder to force you into an alliance with the Bellinis—and our father knew! Our father swept it under the rug to avoid a five-family war that would have burned Chicago to the ground!”
Dante stepped forward, pulling an antique snub-nosed revolver from his inner holster, and slammed it onto the marble kitchen island.
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“I didn't come here to take your throne, Luca,” Dante whispered, his face inches from his brother’s weapon. “I came here for blood. Vincenzo Lucchese dies tonight. Either we kill him together as brothers of the Moretti bloodline... or I put a bullet in your head and do it myself.”
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