Chapter 10 - Bloodlines, Debts, and the Mother’s Last Journal
================================================================================
The black Escalade tore through the red lights along Michigan Avenue at eighty miles per hour, its blue-and-red grille strobes flashing as Matteo leaned on the horn, scattering late-night delivery trucks and stray taxis.
Inside the vehicle, the tension was so thick it was hard to breathe.
“Call the Cermak station master,” Luca ordered, his phone pressed tightly to his ear. “Matteo, how far are our closest perimeter scouts from the bus terminal?”
“Six minutes out, boss,” Matteo replied, his hands wrestling the steering wheel as the heavy SUV drifted around a sharp corner onto Roosevelt Road. “The terminal is closed to passengers between two and five in the morning, but the commercial package depot on the lower level stays open twenty-four hours. If Arthur’s hired muscle has already breached the facility, they could be cutting into those rental lockers right now.”
I clutched the armrest, my heart hammering like a trapped bird.
“Mr. Moretti,” I said, pulling my mother’s framed wedding photograph from my purse—which I had retrieved from my apartment during our brief stop earlier. With trembling fingers, I pried open the cardboard backing of the frame.
Taped to the yellowed paper was a small, brass key stamped with the number: *Locker 418.*
Luca took the brass key, running his thumb over the jagged teeth. His jaw was set in stone, his eyes glowing with fierce determination.
“My mother kept that journal for twelve years, Natalie,” he said softly, looking at the tiny piece of brass. “In those pages are the recorded confessions of women who were beaten, exploited, and discarded by Arthur Bellini’s inner political circle. Corrupt judges who took kickbacks to award custody to abusive donors. City inspectors who covered up hazardous building violations in low-income housing projects that burned down. It is not just a ledger of secrets. It is a ledger of justice for people who had no voice.”
He looked into my eyes, his expression softening with immense gratitude.
“You and Sister Beatrice saved those women’s truth from being erased.”
“I just wanted to do what was right,” I whispered. “When your mother helped us in the hospital nine years ago, she told my mother something I never forgot. She said, *‘The measure of a human soul is what you do for people who can never repay you.’* Your mother lived by that, Mr. Moretti. And tonight, I saw that you live by it too.”
Luca’s throat moved as he swallowed hard. He reached out and gently brushed a stray curl of hair behind my ear, his fingers warm against my cool skin. For a moment, the dangerous world around us faded into absolute silence.
“Call me Luca,” he whispered. “Please.”
“Luca,” I repeated, the name feeling sacred and intimate on my tongue.
“Boss!” Matteo shouted, breaking the trance as the SUV slammed its brakes, skidding across the wet asphalt of the Cermak bus terminal parking lot. “We have company!”
Ahead of us, through the dense morning fog, two dark, unmarked conversion vans were parked haphazardly against the loading bay doors of the terminal’s south wing.
Four men dressed in dark tactical gear, carrying crowbars, heavy bolt cutters, and suppressed submachine guns, were standing guard near the shattered glass entrance of the public locker concourse!
“They’re already inside,” Matteo growled, drawing his weapon.
“No warning shots,” Luca commanded, his voice turning deadly and cold. “Contain the perimeter. Secure the locker concourse. Natalie, you stay in the vehicle with the driver.”
“No,” I said firmly, grabbing his arm before he could open the door.
Luca paused, looking back at me with surprise.
“Locker 418 has a secondary magnetic sensor behind the dial,” I said, my voice unwavering. “If anyone tries to pry it open with a crowbar or turn the key without deactivating the magnetic relay switch hidden under the adjacent bench, the internal lock will release a small vial of sulfuric acid that Sister Beatrice installed inside the casing. The journal will be destroyed in thirty seconds. Only I know where the release lever is.”
Luca stared at me, astonished by the lengths his mother and the old nurse had gone to protect the document.
A slow, grim smirk touched his lips. “My mother always was three moves ahead of everyone else.”
He pulled a lightweight Kevlar vest from beneath the seat and slipped it over my silk dress, fastening the Velcro straps securely around my ribs. Then he drew a compact revolver from his ankle holster and pressed it into my hand.
“Do you know how to shoot?” he asked.
“My brother taught me on a target range in Indiana,” I nodded, feeling the cold, reassuring weight of the steel.
“Keep your finger off the trigger until you intend to destroy whatever is in front of you,” Luca said softly. “Stay behind me. Step where I step.”
Luca and Matteo kicked open their doors simultaneously, dropping into low tactical stances as they advanced into the foggy gloom of the loading bay.
The two guards outside the shattered glass doors spotted them immediately!
“Contact! Moretti’s here!” one of them yelled, raising his weapon!
*Crack! Crack!*
Matteo fired twice with pinpoint accuracy. The first guard dropped clutching his shoulder, his weapon clattering across the pavement. The second guard scrambled inside the terminal, shouting panicked warnings into his radio headset.
Luca grabbed my hand, pulling me into the building right behind Matteo’s covering fire.
The interior of the bus terminal was a dimly lit cavern of cracked linoleum, rows of bolted plastic seats, and flickering fluorescent tubes that buzzed like angry hornets. The smell of gunsmoke and ozone hung in the damp air.
At the far end of the concourse, lined against a tiled wall, stood four hundred rusted metal rental lockers.
Two men were kneeling in front of the middle row, sparks flying as a portable angle grinder screamed against the reinforced steel hinges of the locker frames!
“Stop grinding!” a harsh voice barked from behind a concrete pillar.
A man stepped out into the aisle. He was tall, wiry, with a jagged scar cutting through his left eyebrow—the very man I had seen entering Luca’s private study with Vanessa two weeks ago!
“Silas Cole,” Luca growled, leveling his gun directly at the scarred man’s chest. “Arthur Bellini’s personal cleanup dog.”
Silas smiled, a grotesque, yellow-toothed grin, holding a detonator switch in his gloved left hand. On the floor beneath locker row four sat a block of commercial plastic explosive wired to a digital receiver.
May you like
“Welcome to the party, Luca,” Silas sneered, his voice raspy. “The senator told me you’d come running like an obedient little pup if your mother’s diary was on the line. Back off, or I press this button. The whole locker bank goes up, the book burns, and you can bury whatever is left of your family legacy under four tons of concrete.”
================================================================================
Related Stories
