Chapter 4 - The Woman Who Refused to Die
Elena woke at 3:17 in the morning.
Her first word was Sophie.
Her second was run.
Vincent stood in the corner of the hospital room as the monitors quickened around her. Sophie had fallen asleep on a couch nearby, curled beneath a blanket with one hand still wrapped around the sleeve of Vincent’s jacket.
Elena turned her head and saw them.
Panic surged across her face.
“You brought her here,” she whispered.
“She brought herself to me.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand that men wearing DeLuca marks beat you nearly to death while asking about a key.”
Elena closed her eyes.
“The DeLucas are gone.”
“Apparently, no one told the men in your apartment.”
“They’re not DeLucas.”
Vincent stepped closer.
“Then who are they?”
Elena looked toward Sophie.
“Take her out.”
Vincent signaled to the nurse, who carefully lifted the sleeping child and carried her into the adjoining room.
When the door closed, Elena stared at Vincent for a long moment.
“You knew my father.”
“Carlo Russo.”
Her expression confirmed it.
“He trusted you,” she said.
“He never met me.”
“He studied you. He said you were the only man in Chicago powerful enough to destroy the DeLucas and dangerous enough to become worse than them.”
“That sounds like Carlo.”
“You did become worse.”
Vincent accepted the accusation without reaction.
“Where is the ledger?”
“I don’t know.”
“The men who attacked you think you do.”
“They weren’t looking for the ledger. They were looking for the name that opens it.”
Vincent recalled her warning.
“The key isn’t metal.”
“My father never kept one physical book. He divided the records into encrypted accounts. The files can only be accessed by entering a name, followed by a sequence of dates.”
“Whose name?”
Elena’s eyes shifted toward the adjoining room.
Vincent understood.
“Sophie?”
“No. Her father.”
“Who is he?”
Elena looked directly at him.
“That depends on whether you want the truth or the version that lets you keep sleeping at night.”
Vincent’s patience thinned.
“Say his name.”
Before Elena could answer, the lights went out.
The heart monitor continued beeping on emergency power, but the room fell into darkness.
Vincent drew his gun.
From the hallway came a muffled cry.
Then two gunshots.
He moved to the door and opened it a fraction.
A man in medical scrubs stood over a fallen guard, holding a suppressed pistol.
Vincent fired first.
The man dropped.
Another attacker appeared from the stairwell. Tony hit him from the side, driving him into the wall. They struggled for the weapon before Tony broke the man’s wrist and shot him in the chest.
“Backup generator’s been cut,” Tony said. “This floor is compromised.”
Vincent turned toward Sophie’s room.
The door stood open.
The nurse lay unconscious on the floor.
Sophie was gone.
Elena made a sound that Vincent would hear in his nightmares for years afterward.
“No.”
Vincent ran.
A red emergency light flickered at the end of the corridor. Elevator doors were closing.
He saw Sophie inside, held against the chest of a man in a surgical mask. Her small fists struck uselessly at his arms.
Vincent sprinted toward them.
The doors shut.
Tony reached the elevator controls.
“Stairs!”
They took the stairwell three steps at a time. The elevator display showed the kidnapper descending toward the parking garage.
Vincent emerged onto the lower level as a black van accelerated toward the exit.
He fired at the tires.
One rear tire burst.
The van swerved, struck a concrete pillar and rolled onto its side.
Vincent reached the wreck before Tony.
The driver was dead.
The rear doors had jammed.
Vincent climbed through the shattered windshield, crawling over broken glass and twisted metal until he found Sophie pinned beneath a seat belt.
She was conscious.
“Mr. Vincent?”
“I’m here.”
“The bad man said you killed my daddy.”
Vincent cut the belt and pulled her into his arms.
“Did he say your father’s name?”
Sophie nodded against his shoulder.
“Gabriel.”
Vincent froze.
Gabriel Torino had been his younger brother.
Gabriel, who supposedly drowned in Lake Michigan twenty-two years ago.
Gabriel, whose body had never been recovered.
Gabriel, who had accused Vincent of choosing power over family shortly before his death.
Vincent carried Sophie from the wreckage.
Tony saw the change in his face.
“What is it?”
Vincent did not answer until Sophie had been placed safely with the medics.
Then he walked to the attacker trapped beneath the overturned van. The man was still alive, blood bubbling at his lips.
“You told the girl I killed Gabriel Torino.”
The man smiled weakly.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
Vincent pulled away the surgical mask.
The face was older, scarred along one cheek, but familiar.
Daniel Rizzo.
Once Gabriel’s closest friend.
A man Vincent believed had died beside him.
“Where is my brother?” Vincent demanded.
Rizzo coughed.
“Closer than you think.”
“Is he alive?”
“He’s been living inside your house for years.”
Vincent grabbed his collar.
“Who?”
Rizzo laughed once, then began choking on blood.
“Ask Salvatore,” he whispered.
His eyes went still.
Vincent rose slowly.
Salvatore Bianchi was not merely one of his lieutenants.
He had been Vincent’s mentor.
The man who took him in after his father died.
The man who identified Maria’s body.
May you like
The man who told Vincent that Gabriel had drowned.
And the man who had sat at Vincent’s Tuesday-night table for thirty years.
