Chapter 12 - Betrayal at Lake Forest: The Alfieri Underboss Who Switched Sides for a Handshake
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We returned to Northwestern Hospital at 1:15 PM.
When the elevator doors on the eleventh floor opened, Dr. Morrison was standing outside the recovery suite, still wearing his surgical scrubs, with his mask pulled down around his neck.
When he saw me running down the corridor, the tired lines around his eyes softened into an enormous, weary smile.
"He's awake, Adeline," Morrison said.
I let out a ragged sob, pressing my hands to my mouth as my knees nearly gave out. Rocco caught my elbow, steadying me with surprising gentleness.
"The new conduit is seated perfectly," Morrison explained, walking us toward Room 1104. "His pulmonary pressures dropped forty percent within ten minutes of coming off the bypass machine. His blood oxygen saturation is currently ninety-nine percent on room air. He’s asking for strawberry popsicles and asking where you went."
I pushed through the door of the recovery room.
Wes was propped up on three white pillows, an IV line in his small left hand, a pulse oximeter glowing red on his right index finger, and a clear oxygen cannula beneath his nose. But his skin—for the first time in seven long, agonizing years—was not pale, not shadowed with that terrifying bruised blue hue.
His cheeks were flushed with a warm, radiant peach color. His lips were bright, natural pink.
When he saw me, his brown eyes lit up with unmistakable life.
"Addy," he whispered, his voice hoarse from the intubation tube, but stronger than I had ever heard it sound. "Look. My fingernails aren't purple anymore."
I crossed the room in two strides, dropping to my knees beside his bed, wrapping my arms gently around his small frame, burying my face into his shoulder while tears of pure, blinding relief soaked the hospital sheets.
"You did it, bug," I choked out, kissing his forehead again and again. "You did it. Your heart is all fixed."
"Mr. Nico came too?" Wes asked, looking past my shoulder toward the doorway.
I turned around.
Nico had wheeled himself into the room. He sat quietly near the foot of the bed, watching us with an expression so soft, so completely stripped of his usual ruthless armor, that it took my breath away.
"Hey, kid," Nico said quietly.
Wes looked at Nico’s chair, then up at his face. "Did the dragon on your roof bite the mean people?"
A genuine, warm laugh escaped Nico’s throat—a rich, deep sound that filled the sterile hospital room like sunlight breaking through winter clouds.
"Every single one of them, Wes," Nico said, leaning forward to tap the little boy's knuckle with his finger. "The dragon took care of everything. And when you get out of this bed next week, I’m having a custom playground built in the private gardens by the lake. Just for you."
Wes beamed, his eyelids already growing heavy with post-operative sleep. Within minutes, his breathing evened out into the deep, restorative slumber of a child whose body was finally, beautifully whole.
At 3:30 PM, leaving Rocco and four armed guards stationed outside Wes’s recovery door with strict orders to permit nobody inside without my biometric authorization, Nico and I departed the hospital.
We returned north toward the Lake Forest estate in the heavy Suburban.
The afternoon sky was turning into a bruised, ominous purple as we turned off the public highway onto the private forest road leading to the Alfieri gates.
As the vehicle crested the final hill, Rocco suddenly slammed his foot on the brake.
The heavy Suburban skidded to a halt on the wet asphalt.
"Boss," Rocco whispered, his hand dropping instantly to the custom automatic pistol mounted beside the gear shift. "Look at the gatehouse."
Fifty yards ahead, the wrought-iron security gates of the Alfieri estate stood wide open.
The two armed guards Nico had stationed there that morning were lying face down on the manicured lawn beside the stone pillars, zip-tied and motionless. Parked along the private crushed-gravel driveway were four black pickup trucks without license plates.
Stepping out from the gatehouse was a man in his early fifties with a heavy scar slicing through his left eyebrow: Salvatore "Sal" Varga.
Varga was the senior underboss of the Alfieri South Side logistics yards—a man who had carried Nico’s father’s casket three years ago, a man who controlled forty union dockworkers in Calumet Harbor.
Standing beside Varga were eight men carrying short-barreled tactical shotguns.
"Varga switched sides," Rocco snarled under his breath, his eyes darting to the rearview mirror.
Behind us, two additional vehicles turned onto the narrow forest road, blocking our retreat toward the main highway. We were completely boxed in on a one-lane road lined with century-old pine trees.
Nico’s face hardened into a mask of pure, absolute granite. "Sal always had more greed than brains. Camille’s father may be in federal custody, but Julian’s brothers in New York had a contingency fund. They bought Sal's allegiance with the promise of the southern terminals."
Sal Varga walked slowly toward our Suburban, stopping twenty paces away, raising a hand in a mock gesture of greeting. In his other hand, he held a heavy chrome revolver.
"Nico!" Varga called out, his gravelly voice echoing through the quiet pine woods. "Roll down the window, kid! Let’s talk about retirement!"
Inside the Suburban, Rocco checked the slide on his weapon. "Boss, there are ten of them with heavy scatterguns. The Suburban’s glass is level-four ballistic, but if they surround us and shoot out the tires, we’re trapped in a tin can until they bring up thermite."
I looked at Nico. My heart was hammering, but strangely, I felt no panic. In the last seventy-two hours, I had watched this man survive poison, betrayal, and thirty years of syndicate treachery.
Nico wasn't looking at Varga.
He was looking down at his own legs.
Underneath the cashmere blanket, his hands rested on his knees. His jaw was clenched so tightly that a tendon in his temple was throbbing visibly.
"Adeline," Nico said, his voice terrifyingly quiet.
"Yes, Nico?"
"Do you trust me?"
"With my life," I answered without a fraction of a second’s hesitation. "With Wes’s life."
"Rocco," Nico commanded, his eyes blazing with an unearthly, lethal fire. "When I give the order, you drop the passenger air suspension three inches and pop the rear side door. You draw their fire toward the front left fender. Adeline stays between the rear seats on the floorboards."
"Boss..." Rocco hesitated, his eyes wide. "What are you going to do?"
Nico pulled the cashmere blanket away from his lap, folding it with deliberate, mechanical precision, setting it onto the seat beside him.
He gripped the leather edge of the console.
For the first time in eight long, agonizing months, Nico Alfieri planted both of his leather dress shoes flat against the rubber floor mats of the vehicle.
His leg muscles engaged. The tendons behind his knees pulled taut like steel cables.
With a low, feral growl tearing from the depths of his chest, Nico hauled his six-foot-two frame upward, his back straightening, his shoulders expanding to their full, terrifying width inside the cabin.
He stood.
He was trembling slightly from the raw shock of unconditioned muscle, but his spine was locked, his posture imposing as an ancient warlord rising from an iron throne.
Rocco stared at him, his mouth falling open in stunned, reverent disbelief. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph..."
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"Not Jesus, Rocco," Nico whispered, racking the slide on a customized .45 caliber pistol he pulled from beneath the driver's bench. "Just the Boss. Now open the damn door."
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