Chapter 2 - Bloodlines Written in Silver
The private elevator descended slowly through the center of the building, its brass gears humming against the quiet tension inside the car.
I stood between Gabriel and two of my most seasoned veterans, checking the slide of my custom Kimber forty-five pistol.
Upstairs in the private dining room, Marco had locked the inner suite, guarding the starving girl with his life.
I had left Antonio with explicit orders to feed her warm broth and wrap the shivering infant in wool blankets.
When the elevator doors parted on the ground floor, the warmth of the upper floors vanished completely.
A blast of icy air swept through the shattered front vestibule, where snow dusted the Italian marble floor like white ash.
Four men in matching black tactical coats stood in the center of my dining room, their hands tucked inside their pockets.
They did not look like common street enforcers; their haircuts were precise, their posture disciplined, and their eyes calculated.
Their leader was a broad-shouldered man with a scar splitting his left eyebrow, chewing on a toothpick with unearned confidence.
I recognized him immediately as Victor Cross, a former military contractor who served as Julian Vance’s personal attack dog.
“You’re trespassing on private property, Cross,” I said, my voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings.
Cross turned slowly, his boots grinding shards of broken glass into the expensive tiles beneath him.
“Dominic Moretti,” Cross said, offering a mocking nod of his head.
“We don’t want trouble with the Moretti syndicate tonight, Dominic.”
“We’re here on official family business for Mr. Julian Vance.”
“One of his domestic servants walked out of his Gold Coast penthouse two hours ago during the storm.”
“She stole an expensive family heirloom and abducted an infant under Mr. Vance’s legal guardianship.”
“Hand over the girl and the baby, and we’ll be out of your dining room before the snow plows clear the avenue.”
I walked deliberately past the velvet ropes until I stood less than five feet from his chest.
“You break my door, intimidate my staff, and dare to issue demands under my roof?” I asked, my voice dangerously calm.
Cross smirked, glancing at the three armed contractors standing directly behind him.
“You don’t want to cross Julian Vance on this specific matter, Dominic.”
“He has an emergency custody order signed by Judge Miller, and the Cook County sheriff's department is backing our warrant.”
“If you harbor that little runaway, you’re looking at federal kidnapping charges before sunrise.”
“Do you really think legal paper carries any weight in a room where I am standing?” I replied, meeting his gaze without flinching.
“Tell Vance that whatever walked through my doors belongs to my jurisdiction now.”
Cross’s smile vanished, replaced by the ugly tension of a man realizing his intimidation had failed.
“She’s a street rat carrying a child that doesn’t belong to her,” Cross hissed, his hand twitching toward his waistline.
Before his fingers could touch his holster, Gabriel raised his automatic rifle directly at Cross’s forehead.
The sharp sound of three safety catches disengaging simultaneously echoed through the grand dining hall.
“Take one more step toward that weapon, Victor, and my men will paint this marble floor with your blood,” I stated plainly.
Cross evaluated the firing angles, realizing in two seconds that his team was completely outmatched by my positioned guards.
“Julian will tear down every enterprise you own for this,” Cross spat, backing slowly toward the damaged entrance.
“Let him try,” I said, gesturing toward the street.
“Now crawl back into the storm before I decide you’re not worth the cost of the cleanup.”
Cross signaled his men with a curt flick of his wrist, backing out into the howling blizzard while keeping his eyes locked on mine.
As soon as the broken glass doors swung shut behind them, I turned to Gabriel.
“Weld the emergency shutters shut and post four snipers on the parapet roof,” I ordered.
“Nobody gets within fifty yards of this building without taking a warning shot to the engine block.”
I took the elevator straight back up to the third floor, my heart beating with an unusual, relentless rhythm.
The words the girl had spoken before I went downstairs were burning through my mind like acid.
When I stepped back into the private dining suite, the little girl was drinking chicken broth with trembling, frantic sips.
Beside her on the table, the infant was wrapped in three dry flannel napkins, sleeping peacefully under the warmth of the fireplace.
The girl looked up when I entered, terror flooding her eyes until she saw that I had returned alone.
“Did they... did they leave?” she asked, clutching the spoon against her hollow chest.
“They left for now, but they will come back with a small army,” I said, sitting down in my chair.
“Now you are going to tell me the absolute truth, little girl.”
“What is your name?”
“Mia,” she whispered.
“My name is Mia Campbell.”
“And whose baby are you carrying through a blizzard, Mia?”
Mia looked down at the child, her eyes filling with a mixture of reverence and heartbreaking sorrow.
“His name is Leonardo,” she said, her voice shaking.
“Julian Vance claims the boy was born to a surrogate who vanished, but that was all a lie.”
Mia reached into the inner lining of her torn gray sweater with bruised fingers.
She pulled out a small, circular silver medallion suspended from a snapped, blood-spattered chain.
The silver was tarnished, but the detailed engraving in the metal was unmistakable.
It was a crest depicting an eagle perched atop a blooming wild rose, wrapped in the words Sempre Fedele.
My breath caught in my throat, freezing the air inside my lungs.
I reached out with a hand that had never trembled in thirty years of underworld warfare and picked up the pendant.
I knew every scratch, every groove, and every contour of that medallion.
Twenty-two years ago, I had commissioned that very piece of jewelry from an artisan in Florence.
It was a baptismal gift for my younger sister, Sophia Moretti.
Sophia, who was supposed to have died seven months ago when her luxury sedan plunged off the Lake Shore Drive bridge into icy water.
The police divers had never found her body, claiming the relentless lake currents had pulled her into the deep channel.
Julian Vance, her husband of three years, had held a lavish, weeping memorial service with an empty mahogany casket.
I stared at the silver eagle, feeling the cold weight of a colossal betrayal slamming into my chest.
“Where did you get this chain, Mia?” I demanded, my voice breaking with an emotion I could not contain.
“Mrs. Sophia gave it to me right before she disappeared from the estate,” Mia wept, looking straight into my eyes.
“She hid me in the greenhouse pantry and made me swear on my mother’s grave to protect the baby.”
“She told me that if anything ever happened to her, there was only one man in Chicago brave enough to keep him alive.”
Mia reached down and gently pushed back the flannel cloth covering the infant’s tiny bare shoulder.
There, perfectly stamped beneath the baby's left collarbone, was a deep, crescent-shaped birthmark.
It was the identical mark that had marked every firstborn son of the Moretti family for four straight generations.
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The baby sleeping on my dining table was not an orphan.
He was my sister’s missing son, the blood of my blood, and the rightful heir to the Moretti legacy.
