Chapter 3 - The Cell Beneath the Lakehouse
“The lead weight,” I answered instantly.
My voice was breathless.
“Old uprights and grands use lead slugs in the keytails to balance the touch.”
Luca grabbed the seventh wooden key from the scarred piano bed.
He ripped the rear felt off with his pocket knife.
Inside the hollowed core was not lead.
It was a miniature brass key with four circular grooves.
A safe deposit box key.
Stamped with the seal of the Geneva National Bank.
“The backup bypass codes,” Luca whispered.
“My mother kept the master override for the lakehouse flood gates.”
He looked at me.
His eyes were dilated with pure adrenaline.
“You're coming with me. If the lockbox has mechanical tumblers, I need hands
that know fine brass.”
“I’m just a maid, Mr. Moretti!”
“You stood in front of thirty armed capos to save my mother's memory,” Luca
said, grabbing my wrist gently but firmly.
“You’re coming.”
We ran to the underground garage.
Marco threw two assault rifles into the back of an armored Mercedes G-Wagon.
The engine roared like an enraged beast.
We tore through the security gates into the freezing Chicago rain.
Eighty miles per hour down Lake Shore Drive.
Wipers slapped against the glass in frantic rhythm.
The digital timer on Luca’s dashboard ticked down:
00:31:05.
“The Lake Geneva property belonged to my grandfather,” Luca said, his jaw tight.
“The Bellinis seized the shoreline during the winter merger. The basement was
built in 1920 as a bootlegger's canal.”
He looked at the brass key in my palm.
“The bypass box is hidden behind the water turbine in the boathouse.”
Twenty-five minutes later, the gravel driveway of the lakehouse appeared through
the pines.
Two black pursuit trucks were parked near the entrance.
Floodlights swept the rain-drenched grass.
Luca didn't slow down.
He rammed the heavy steel push-bar of the G-Wagon straight into the iron gates.
Sparks rained into the dark.
May you like
The gates sheared off their hinges with a scream of tortured metal.
Gunfire erupted from the second-story balcony.
