Chapter 7 - The Hostage in Silk
The eastern tower of the Moretti estate had originally been built in nineteen-twenty as a lookout post during the violent beer wars of Prohibition.
Its walls were three feet of reinforced limestone, its windows were narrow slits framed in heavy wrought iron, and there was only one entrance reachable via a spiraling iron staircase.
It was a cage designed for royalty, but a cage nonetheless.
I climbed the cold iron steps at two o'clock that afternoon, carrying a tray that held a pitcher of ice water, a fresh bowl of broth, and a clean roll of gauze.
My broken wrist throbbed with a dull ache beneath its fiberglass cast, but the sling helped distribute the weight against my collarbone.
Two guards dressed in black tactical suits stood outside the reinforced oak door, their hands resting on the grips of their holstered sidearms.
They didn't ask me for identification.
Luca had already issued orders that gave me unrestricted access to every wing of the estate, a privilege that usually took twenty years of syndicate service to earn.
The senior guard turned the heavy brass key in the deadbolt, pushed the door open four inches, and nodded for me to enter.
"Five minutes, Miss Dawson," he murmured respectfully.
"If she attempts to lunge at you, scream once and step backward."
"I won't need to scream," I replied quietly.
I pushed the door open and stepped into the circular room.
The luxury inside the tower was staggering, but it felt like a mausoleum.
An antique four-poster bed sat against the curved wall, draped in heavy emerald velvet that matched the expensive rugs covering the floor.
Vanessa was sitting on the edge of the mattress, still wearing her ruined ivory blouse and pleated skirt from breakfast.
Her face was swollen along the left jawline where her father had struck her, and a dark purple bruise was blooming beneath her eye.
Her expensive blonde hair was tangled and greasy, hanging across her face like a ragged veil.
When the door latched shut behind me, her head snapped up.
The moment she recognized my face, the despair in her eyes instantly curdled into pure, venomous hatred.
"Look at the little charity case," Vanessa whispered, her voice raspy from hours of screaming in the empty room.
"Have you come to clean my chamber pot, maid?"
I walked over to the small cherrywood table near the window and set the tray down with my good right hand.
I didn't answer her right away.
I poured a glass of ice water and set it beside the bowl of broth.
"Mr. Moretti asked me to bring you fresh water," I said, keeping my tone perfectly flat and devoid of emotion.
Vanessa let out a sharp, hysterical bark of laughter that ended in a ragged cough.
"Mr. Moretti," she mocked, leaning forward on the bed.
"Do you honestly believe you are special to him, Claire?"
"Do you think that because you played the heroic little informant, he's going to save you?"
"He is a monster."
"He was born in blood, he breathes blood, and he will discard you the second this storm passes."
"He didn't threaten to kill a sick nine-year-old girl in a hospital bed, Miss Bellini," I said, turning to face her directly.
"That was all you."
Vanessa sneered, tossing her tangled hair back over her shoulder.
"That little parasite sister of yours is alive only because I didn't make the call three weeks ago!"
"I should have had Marco pay off an orderly to slip sixty units of potassium chloride into her IV line the moment I noticed you snooping around the third floor!"
"You think you're clever because you stole that memory card?"
"You didn't stop a coup, Claire."
"You just ensured that when the dam breaks, Chicago will drown in bodies."
Before I could reply, the heavy satellite radio clipped to my belt chirped with a sharp, static tone.
It was the encrypted frequency Luca had given me an hour earlier.
I reached down, pressed the button, and held the receiver to my ear.
"Claire," Luca’s voice came through the speaker, crisp, deep, and steady.
"I am here, Mr. Moretti."
"Dr. Vance just called from Northwestern Memorial."
My breath hitched in my throat, my knuckles turning white against the plastic radio casing.
"Is Lily alright?" I asked, unable to keep the panic out of my voice.
Vanessa watched my face, a cruel, mocking smirk playing on her split lips.
"She is resting in the pediatric intensive care suite on the eighteenth floor," Luca said.
"The transport from St. Jude’s was executed forty minutes ago."
"However..."
Luca paused, and the background noise on his end of the line sounded like the rhythmic roar of heavy highway traffic.
"What happened, sir?"
"A stolen black Cadillac Escalade attempted to force the private ambulance off the interstate near the Division Street off-ramp," Luca said calmly.
"Two men with automatic weapons were in the front seats."
The room seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
My stomach plummeted into an icy abyss of pure terror.
"Did they hurt her?" I choked out, tears instantly blinding my eyes.
"They never got within fifty yards of the ambulance, Claire," Luca said, his voice dropping into that chilling, unyielding tone of absolute lethality.
"Gianni and four of my personal security vehicles were tailing the transport."
"The Escalade was pushed into the concrete retaining barrier at seventy miles per hour."
"The driver did not survive the impact."
"The passenger is currently in the back of Gianni’s van, answering questions regarding who gave him the dispatch schedule for St. Jude's."
Luca paused again, and when he spoke, his words were clearly intended for the woman sitting on the bed.
"Put the radio on speakerphone, Claire."
I reached down with a trembling finger and toggled the external speaker switch.
"Vanessa," Luca’s voice filled the circular stone room, smooth as dark velvet and cold as liquid nitrogen.
Vanessa’s smirk vanished instantly, her eyes widening with sudden, frantic fear.
"Luca..." she whispered toward the radio.
"Your driver just gave up the safehouse address in Schaumburg," Luca said through the small speaker.
"He told Gianni that you paid him twenty-five thousand dollars in cash two nights ago to wait outside St. Jude's."
"You instructed him to abduct a sick child if your operation inside this house went sideways."
"Luca, listen to me, it was Marco's idea!" Vanessa cried out, scrambling off the bed and falling onto her knees before the radio in my hand.
"Marco said we needed insurance! He said you were too paranoid, that we needed leverage to get across the Canadian border if the plan failed!"
"I don't care whose idea it was, Vanessa," Luca replied softly.
"I am currently sitting in the back of my car outside the Bellini family import offices on Grand Avenue."
"Your father is sitting beside me."
"We are signing the executive order to seize every shipping container bearing your personal trust stamp at the rail terminal."
"And when that is done, your father will personally sign the warrant declaring you an outcast from the Bellini name."
"No!" Vanessa shrieked, clawing at the air toward the radio.
"Papa, you can't do that! That is my birthright!"
Don Silvio’s voice came over the speaker, sounding older and more exhausted than ever before.
"You forfeited your birthright the moment you put a contract on a child, Vanessa."
"Our family has killed many men in sixty years, but we have never butchered babies in hospital cots."
"May God have mercy on your soul, because this family will not."
The line clicked dead.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Vanessa collapsed completely against the Persian rug, her forehead pressed against the floorboards as she wept bitter, jagged tears of complete ruin.
She was no longer an aristocratic mafia princess wearing diamonds and red silk.
She was a prisoner stripped of her money, her family, and her future, awaiting a trial where the judge had already ordered her execution.
I looked down at her shaking shoulders, feeling neither pity nor triumph.
All I felt was the lingering, terrifying realization of just how dangerous this world truly was.
I turned on my heel and walked toward the heavy oak door.
As the guard pulled the door open to let me out, Vanessa’s hoarse voice rose from the floor behind me.
"You think you've won, don't you, Claire?" she spat, lifting her tear-stained, ruined face.
"You think Luca is going to protect you when the New York soldiers storm this estate?"
"He will use your body as a sandbag to stop their bullets, just like he used your father to take the fall for his own family's corruption!"
I paused in the doorway, looking back over my shoulder into the dim tower room.
"My father died an honest man, Miss Bellini," I said softly.
"And no matter what happens on the seventeenth of October..."
May you like
"You will die a coward."
I stepped into the corridor, and the heavy iron deadbolt slid into place behind me with a final, echoing thud.
