Chapter 4 - The Scent of Treason
Mateo dragged Vanessa down the limestone steps by her upper arm, her satin slippers trailing through the dirty runoff on the steps.
She stumbled into the vaulted cellar, her eyes wide with frantic, cornered desperation.
When her gaze fell upon the black Malinois resting its head on Luca’s lap, she let out a strangled gasp and backed against the damp brick wall.
“You told me she was buried at the farm in Galena,” Luca said without looking up from the dog’s scarred ears.
“You brought me her ashes in a marble urn.”
“You charged forty thousand dollars to my personal account for an upstate memorial garden.”
Vanessa pressed her palms against the rough brickwork, her breath coming in ragged, hysterical gasps.
“Luca... she was vicious!”
“She bit Julian during the memorial service after your father died!”
“Julian had to get fourteen stitches in his forearm!”
“Julian shouldn't have been in my father’s private study at two o'clock in the morning,” Luca said, his voice dropping into an icy whisper.
Julian Bellini was Vanessa’s older brother, the hot-tempered enforcer who ran the Bellini family’s illicit gambling dens across Cicero.
Luca slowly rose to his feet.
Both dogs—the gray-muzzled shepherd and the scarred black Malinois—stood beside his legs like ancient sentinels carved from granite.
Luca held up the battered steel strongbox he had retrieved from the crate.
“My father kept this box in the hidden floor safe beneath his writing desk,” Luca said.
“The safe had a seven-digit combination known only to three people in the world: my father, myself, and Roberto’s personal attorney, Arthur Vance.”
Luca turned the box toward the lantern beam, showing the heavy, gouged steel around the latch.
“This safe wasn't cracked with a drill or an angle grinder.”
“It was opened from the inside with the emergency override key.”
“An override key that my father welded inside the brass identification medal on Bruno’s collar thirteen years ago.”
A wave of suffocating realization washed over the subterranean chamber.
I looked at the worn leather collar in Mateo’s hand, remembering the twisted steel split-ring and the missing brass tag.
“You didn't remove Bruno’s collar because he was sick,” I said aloud, the words escaping my mouth before I could stop them.
Luca turned his dark eyes toward me, a grim nod acknowledging my deduction.
“She removed the collar because Julian couldn't find the key anywhere in my father’s files,” Luca said.
“My father knew the Bellinis were skimming from the maritime pension funds.”
“He knew Salvatore was planning an internal coup the moment his heart began to fail.”
Luca took two deliberate steps toward Vanessa.
She cowered against the masonry, pulling her muddy gown around her knees.
“In this strongbox, my father kept the original shipping manifests from the Port of Newark,” Luca continued, his voice calm, measured, and deadly.
“He kept the ledger containing the names of twelve port inspectors on the Bellini payroll.”
“And he kept the toxicology report his private physician ran forty-eight hours before he collapsed in the dining room.”
The silence in the cellar became absolute.
Even the dripping of the ceiling pipes seemed to freeze in mid-air.
“A toxicology report?” Mateo asked, his voice trembling with suppressed rage.
Luca looked at his head of security.
“My father didn't die of natural heart failure, Mateo.”
“He was poisoned with an odorless, tasteless organophosphate compound mixed into his evening brandy.”
“A compound manufactured exclusively by a pharmaceutical distribution firm owned by Salvatore Bellini’s younger brother.”
Vanessa suddenly threw her head back and let out a shrill, hysterical laugh that bounced off the brick ceiling like breaking porcelain.
“You think you're so brilliant, don't you, Luca?” she spat, the mask of the refined socialite dropping completely.
Her eyes burned with pure malice.
“Your father was a dinosaur!”
“He was sitting on forty million dollars of waterfront real estate and refusing to let our families develop the automated container terminals!”
“He was going to hand the entire maritime empire over to a charitable trust and cut my family out of the contracts!”
“So your brother put rat poison in his decanter,” Luca stated, his voice flat.
“Julian did what was necessary for the survival of the alliance!” Vanessa screamed, pointing an accusatory finger at Luca’s chest.
“And Roberto’s damn dogs knew it!”
“The moment Julian walked into the study that night, that black beast went straight for his throat!”
“She smelled the solvent on his coat!”
“We had to lock her down here before she tore Julian’s throat out in front of the housekeepers!”
“And Bruno?” Luca asked quietly.
“Bruno had the key around his neck,” Vanessa sneered, wiping rain from her cheek.
“We needed the ledger before you returned from Geneva.”
“Julian’s men tried to cut the medal off while you were gone, but the old brute bit two of our drivers.”
“So I locked him in the shed without water until he was too weak to fight back.”
“If that stupid little maid hadn't gone poking her nose where it didn't belong, both of these mongrels would be ash in an Indiana furnace by sunrise tomorrow!”
I stepped backward toward the stairs, a cold chill running down my spine as Vanessa glared at me with absolute venom.
Luca looked down at Bruno, who was resting his chin against Luca’s knee, his breathing steady now that his master was near.
Then Luca reached into his trouser pocket and retrieved a heavy gold signet ring bearing the Moretti family crest.
He slipped the ring onto his pinky finger.
“Mateo.”
“Yes, Boss?”
“Call the gatehouse,” Luca commanded.
“Have the white transport van impounded in the lower garage.”
“Strip the driver of his phone, lock him in the wine storage, and have him ready for questioning at dawn.”
“Understood,” Mateo answered, already pulling his encrypted radio from his vest.
Luca turned back to Vanessa.
He reached down, took her left hand in his grip, and slid the seven-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring off her finger.
He dropped the ring onto the dirty concrete floor and crushed it beneath the heavy heel of his dress boot.
The platinum band flattened with a sickening crunch, the priceless diamond cracking into jagged, worthless splinters against the stone.
Vanessa stared at the crushed ring in horror.
“You... you can't break this engagement,” she whispered, her voice finally losing its bravado.
“The Five Families approved this union.”
“My father controls thirty percent of the longshoremen on the south docks.”
“If you touch me, Luca, Chicago will burn from the loop to the lake.”
Luca leaned down until his mouth was inches from Vanessa’s ear.
“Tell your father that the Moretti family is terminating our maritime contracts effective midnight tonight.”
“Tell Julian that if he is still inside the city limits when the sun rises over Lake Michigan, I will unleash Bella and Bruno onto his front lawn without leashes.”
“And tell Salvatore that I am personally delivering Roberto’s toxicology report to the federal prosecutor’s office on Dearborn Street tomorrow afternoon.”
Luca stood straight, turning his back on her as if she were nothing more than a pile of garbage on the floor.
“Mateo, escort Miss Bellini off my property.”
“Put her in a commercial taxi at the main gate.”
“If she ever sets foot past my perimeter walls again, put a bullet through her tires and throw her into the river.”
Mateo seized Vanessa by the elbow, dragging her toward the stairs despite her screaming curses and flailing heels.
Her shrieks echoed up the stone staircase until the heavy iron door slammed shut above, plunging the cellar into blessed, quiet relief.
Luca stood in the center of the underground vault, the lantern casting his long shadow against the brick arches.
May you like
He knelt once more between his father’s two surviving companions, wrapping his arms around both dogs, pulling their wet, trembling heads against his chest.
For three long minutes, the king of Chicago’s underworld stayed on his knees in the dirt, breathing in the scent of his father’s past, while I stood frozen near the bottom step, wondering if I would ever be allowed to leave this house alive.
