Chapter 5 - The Traitor’s Bed and the Desperate Sister
By midday, the winter storm had cleared, leaving Chicago draped in blinding white snow and freezing sub-zero sunshine.
Inside the private Bruno medical clinic, a syndicate surgeon had neatly closed the gash on my forearm with twelve surgical sutures.
I now sat in Jarro’s penthouse library, wearing a fresh charcoal cashmere sweater provided by his staff and sipping warm peppermint tea.
The three million dollars was safely locked in Jarro’s primary offshore trust, but my work was far from complete.
On the desk before me lay the encrypted cell phone we had recovered from Walter Finch’s desk in River North.
For two hours, I had been running a deep data-extraction program to reconstruct the deleted call logs and encrypted messaging apps.
What appeared on the screen made my blood run colder than the lake wind outside.
A series of encrypted messages had been exchanged over the past forty-eight hours between Silvio Marconi and an unsaved Chicago number.
I cross-referenced the cell tower routing and the serial number of the SIM card.
The phone belonged to Gemma Caruso.
My breath caught in my throat as I read through the chat logs line by painful line.
“Lydia took the ledger pages before Jarro arrived,” Gemma had texted Silvio at 11:45 PM the night before.
“She figured out the Meridian Harbor routing. Silvio, you promised me that when Jarro killed my father, I would get the Lake Forest trust assets.”
Silvio’s response three minutes later was chillingly clear:
“Keep your mouth shut and make sure your father offers you as the bride. Once Bruno marries you, I will eliminate Bruno, and you and I take the entire Chicago shipping grid.”
My sister had not merely tried to marry Jarro to save our family from financial ruin.
Gemma had been sleeping with Silvio Marconi for six months, actively plotting the murder of our father and the assassination of Jarro Bruno.
She was willing to step over my corpse and our father’s grave to become the undisputed queen of the Chicago underworld.
The library double doors swung open, and Jarro walked in, flanked by Dante.
Jarro’s face was dark, thunderous, and radiating cold fury.
“We caught a trespasser attempting to breach the lobby security desk,” Dante announced, stepping aside.
Two armed guards shoved a disheveled, frantic woman into the room.
It was Gemma.
She was no longer wearing her glamorous red evening gown; she wore an oversized designer mink coat over rumpled silk trousers.
Her blonde hair was tangled from the wind, her mascara streaked down her cheeks, and her hands were trembling with frantic desperation.
“Jarro, you have to listen to me!” Gemma cried, stumbling across the carpet toward him.
Jarro didn't move, looking at her as if she were a piece of garbage washed up on the shoreline.
“How did you find this building?” Jarro asked in a flat, lethal monotone.
“My father’s private investigator tracked your convoy!” Gemma blurted out, her voice high-pitched and hysterical.
She pointed an accusatory finger directly at me, sitting calmly behind the desk.
“You have to throw her out, Jarro! Lydia is a liar and a thief!”
“She fabricated those wire transfer documents in our library to frame your men!”
“She has been stealing from my father’s company for five years, and now she’s trying to manipulate you so she can steal your money too!”
I didn't say a word; I simply turned the laptop screen toward Jarro and tapped the spacebar.
The complete, decrypted message history between Gemma and Silvio Marconi filled the massive 65-inch wall monitor in crystal-clear high definition.
Gemma’s voice died in her throat.
Her eyes bulged as she looked at her own words, her private photos, and her promises to help Silvio murder Jarro displayed for everyone to see.
The color drained from her face until she looked like a walking corpse.
“No…” Gemma whispered, backing away toward the heavy oak doors.
“That’s… that’s not real… Lydia hacked my phone and fabricated those messages!”
Jarro Bruno slowly turned his head away from the screen and locked his dark, predatory eyes onto my sister.
The sheer, murderous hatred radiating from his posture made the armed guards at the door take an instinctive step backward.
“You conspired with my lieutenant to orchestrate a hit on my life,” Jarro said, each syllable dropping like an iron weight.
“You offered yourself as my bride while plotting to put a bullet in the back of my head on our wedding night.”
Gemma collapsed onto her knees, sobbing violently, clutching the hem of her expensive mink coat.
“He forced me, Jarro! Silvio threatened to kill me if I didn't help him! Please, I swear on my life!”
“You have no life left to swear on,” Jarro said coldly.
He looked toward Dante.
“Take her down to the holding cells in the basement.”
“No! Please! Lydia, tell him!” Gemma screamed, crawling across the rug toward my desk and reaching out to grab my slacks.
“Lydia, I’m your sister! We share the same blood! Tell him to let me go!”
I looked down at the woman who had spent fifteen years treating me like subhuman dirt.
The woman who had laughed while my father called me an unlovable burden.
The woman who had plotted to have our father executed so she could inherit a penthouse.
I pulled my foot back, breaking her desperate grip on my clothes.
“You told me in the library to stay in my lane, Gemma,” I said softly, my voice devoid of pity or anger.
“My lane is the truth.”
“Yours was always poison.”
Dante grabbed Gemma by the collar of her mink coat, hauling her to her feet like a sack of laundry as she shrieked and clawed at the air.
The heavy oak doors slammed shut behind her, cutting off her pathetic wails.
The room returned to dead silence.
Jarro walked over to my desk, his large hands resting on the edge of the mahogany surface.
He looked down at me, his scarred eyebrow furrowed in deep contemplation.
“Your own sister betrayed you,” he said quietly.
“Gemma never considered me family,” I replied, closing the laptop screen.
“To her, I was just an unpaid employee who cleaned up her messes.”
Jarro reached out, his warm, calloused fingers gently brushing a stray strand of dark hair behind my ear.
“Then she is about to discover what happens when you turn on the only person who was keeping you alive.”
Before I could answer, my secondary hard drive finished decrypting the private archive we had pulled from Silvio’s safe in River North.
A series of legal trust documents popped up on my personal tablet.
The heading at the top of the file made my heart stop beating entirely:
ESTATE OF ELENA CARUSO: FINAL TESTAMENTARY TRUST LIQUIDATION.
I stared at the screen, my hands beginning to shake violently.
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The three million dollars had never been the real objective.
My father, Anthony Caruso, had committed a crime far more monstrous than anyone in Chicago had ever imagined.
