Chapter 2 - The Apartment With No Lights
Sophie’s words came out in broken pieces.
Three men.
Black jackets.
A silver car parked behind their apartment building.
Her mother screaming.
A neighbor closing his door instead of helping.
Vincent listened without interrupting as the sedan tore through downtown Chicago. Sophie sat beside him, wrapped in Tony’s suit jacket, her bloodstained white dress disappearing beneath the dark fabric. Every few seconds, she looked toward the window as if expecting the men to appear beside the moving car.
“They kept asking Mama about a key,” she whispered.
Vincent turned slightly.
“What kind of key?”
“I don’t know. Mama said she didn’t have it anymore.”
“Did she say who did?”
Sophie shook her head. “One man called her a liar. Then he hit her.”
Tony’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.
Vincent’s face did not change, but the air inside the car seemed to grow colder.
“What did the men look like?”
“One had a snake on his hand.”
“A tattoo?”
She nodded. “It went around his wrist.”
Tony glanced at Vincent through the mirror.
Both men knew the mark.
The coiled snake belonged to the DeLuca organization, a family Vincent had driven out of Chicago twelve years earlier after a brutal war that left thirty men dead and two neighborhoods terrified to speak of what they had seen.
The DeLucas were supposed to be gone.
More importantly, they were supposed to be afraid of him.
Vincent reached into his coat and removed his phone.
“Call Mercer,” he told Tony. “Tell him to send a medical team to the Martinez apartment. No uniforms. No sirens.”
Tony made the call without asking why.
Vincent looked at Sophie again.
“Where is your father?”
Her expression changed.
Not grief. Not confusion.
Fear.
“I don’t have one.”
“Did your mother ever talk about him?”
“She said he was dead.”
Vincent held her gaze for a second longer, then looked away.
Something about the answer felt rehearsed.
The sedan turned onto a narrow street lined with aging brick buildings, rusted fire escapes and windows glowing blue from television screens. Sophie leaned forward immediately.
“That one,” she said. “The building with the broken light.”
The front entrance stood open.
No one waited outside.
No curious neighbors.
No police.
That was wrong.
Violence attracted attention, even in neighborhoods trained to mind their own business. Yet the entire block seemed to be holding its breath.
Vincent stepped from the car before Tony could open his door.
“Stay here with her.”
“No!” Sophie grabbed his sleeve again. “I have to see Mama.”
Vincent looked down at her small hand.
“You will. But first, I need to make sure it’s safe.”
“She’ll be scared.”
“So will I,” he said quietly, “if something happens to you.”
Sophie stared at him, startled by the admission.
Then she slowly released his sleeve.
Tony remained beside the car while Vincent crossed the sidewalk. Two black SUVs arrived behind them, and six of his men stepped out. They moved without speaking, spreading across the alley and front entrance.
Vincent entered the building.
The hallway smelled of damp concrete, old cooking oil and something metallic.
Blood.
Apartment 3B stood at the end of the third-floor corridor. Its door had been kicked inward, splintering the frame. A lamp lay shattered near the entrance. One wall was smeared red where someone had tried to hold themselves upright.
Vincent drew his pistol.
He entered slowly.
The living room had been destroyed. Couch cushions were slashed open. Cabinet doors hung crooked. A child’s drawings had been torn from the refrigerator and scattered across the floor.
One picture stopped him.
It showed a woman with long brown hair standing beside a little girl in a white dress. Next to them was a much taller man in a black suit.
The man’s face had been colored with a gray crayon.
Above the drawing, in uneven letters, Sophie had written:
MAMA, ME, AND THE MAN WHO WATCHES US.
Vincent stared at it.
“Boss,” one of his men called from the bedroom.
He followed the voice.
Elena Martinez lay on the floor beside the bed, unconscious, her dark hair soaked with blood. Her wrists were bruised. One side of her face had swollen purple. A broken lamp cord had been tied around her ankles.
But she was breathing.
A medic knelt beside her.
“Pulse is weak,” he said. “Possible internal bleeding. We need to move now.”
Vincent crouched near her.
She looked younger than he expected. Early thirties. Thin. Exhausted. Her blouse was torn at the shoulder, revealing an old scar near her collarbone.
The scar had the unmistakable shape of a bullet wound.
Not a random victim, Vincent thought.
Not an ordinary mother.
As the medics lifted her onto a stretcher, Elena’s eyes opened.
Only for a second.
Her gaze found Vincent’s face.
Terror flooded her expression.
“No,” she whispered.
Vincent leaned closer.
“You’re safe.”
Her fingers suddenly locked around his wrist with surprising strength.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“Who did this?”
Elena struggled to breathe.
“They’ll kill her.”
“Sophie is safe.”
Elena’s eyes widened.
“You brought her here?”
“She came to me.”
A sound escaped Elena’s throat, somewhere between a sob and a warning.
Then she pulled Vincent closer until her lips were near his ear.
“The key isn’t metal,” she whispered. “It’s a name.”
Her grip weakened.
“What name?”
But Elena had already slipped back into unconsciousness.
The medics rushed her from the apartment.
Vincent remained crouched for another moment.
Then one of his men entered carrying a photograph in a plastic evidence sleeve.
“We found this taped under the kitchen table.”
Vincent took it.
The photograph was old, its corners worn white. It showed six men standing outside a warehouse beside the Chicago River. Vincent recognized five of them immediately.
Three were dead.
One had vanished.
One now worked for him.
The sixth man stood partially hidden in shadow.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written a single word in black ink:
JUDAS.
Tony appeared in the doorway.
“Boss, you need to see what’s downstairs.”
Vincent followed him to the alley behind the building.
A silver sedan sat with its driver’s door open. One of the attackers lay inside, dead from a gunshot wound to the temple.
No weapon.
No identification.
But on his right hand, a snake tattoo curled around his wrist.
Vincent examined the body.
“This wasn’t Elena,” Tony said. “She was already unconscious when he died.”
“Then someone cleaned up after the attack.”
Tony nodded toward the dashboard.
A phone had been placed carefully in the center console.
Not dropped.
Placed.
Vincent picked it up.
The screen lit immediately.
A video began playing.
It showed Sophie standing outside the Golden Palm earlier that evening, looking through the restaurant windows.
The footage had been recorded from across the street.
Someone had watched her enter.
Someone had watched Vincent take her into his car.
Then a distorted voice spoke through the phone.
“You always did have a weakness for wounded things, Vincent.”
The video cut to black.
A message appeared.
SHE IS NOT MARIA.
Vincent’s blood went cold.
Only a handful of people knew Maria’s name mattered to him.
Even fewer would dare use it as a threat.
Another message appeared beneath the first.
BRING THE GIRL TO THE OLD UNION STATION LOCKERS BY MIDNIGHT, OR HER MOTHER DIES ON THE OPERATING TABLE.
Vincent checked the time.
9:26 p.m.
May you like
He had less than three hours.
And someone inside his own organization had just proven they knew exactly where Elena was being taken.
