Chapter 7 - THE ROAD TO MILWAUKEE
The tires of Luca’s black Mercedes sedan hissed against the wet asphalt of Interstate 94 as we sped north toward Milwaukee.
Inside the cabin, the dashboard lights cast a soft amber glow over Luca’s sharp profile. His eyes were fixed on the dark highway ahead, one hand gripping the leather steering wheel while the other rested on the center console between us.
On my lap lay the yellow bank wire receipt we had found in Vanessa’s purse.
Sender: Contessa Sofia Moretti. Amount: $10,000.00. Recipient: Harbor View Apartments, Milwaukee, WI — Account of C. Miller (Elena Rossi).
“Your mother has been living at the family villa outside Florence for the last four years,” I said softly, breaking the tense silence. “She comes back to Chicago twice a year—for Christmas, and for the anniversary of Marco’s death next month.”
“And she’s flying into O’Hare tomorrow morning for my rehearsal dinner,” Luca said, his voice tight with a pain that cut deeper than Vanessa’s betrayal ever could. “Five days ago, she wired ten thousand dollars to cover Elena’s rent in Milwaukee. Which means my mother has known Elena was alive—and known where she was living—all along.”
“Why would Vanessa have a copy of your mother’s bank transfer in her purse?” I asked, turning the slip over in my hands.
“Because my mother’s private Chicago account is managed through Richard Bellini’s investment bank,” Luca replied grimly. “Vanessa must have seen the flagged wire transfer five days ago when she was at her father’s office. That’s how Vanessa and Victor tracked Elena’s address in Milwaukee yesterday.”
I looked over at him. Beneath the formidable armor of the man who ran half of Chicago, Luca looked utterly isolated. His fiancée had caused his brother’s death. His future father-in-law had assaulted the women under his roof. And now, his own mother had kept a twelve-year secret behind his back.
Without thinking, I reached across the console and laid my hand gently over his tattooed knuckles.
Luca glanced down at my small hand covering his, then up at my face. Instead of pulling away, he turned his palm up and laced his fingers firmly through mine. His hand was warm and steady.
“When Marco died, my father had a massive stroke three weeks later,” Luca said quietly, his thumb brushing over the back of my hand. “I was twenty-six. Overnight, I had to hold the family together while rival crews tried to carve up our territory and the federal prosecutor circled our shipping companies. My mother watched me turn into stone to survive it.”
“Wait,” I murmured, looking at the date on the wire receipt again. “If your mother was sending Elena money to help her pay rent in Milwaukee... why did Elena come back to Chicago six months ago to work as a maid in your house?”
Luca’s brow furrowed. “If my mother was supporting her, Elena wouldn’t have needed a housemaid’s wages.”
“And she wouldn’t have needed to sleep in the servants’ hall at the mansion,” I added, the pieces suddenly shifting in my mind. “Unless she didn’t come back for the tin box in the attic at all. What if she only found the tin box by accident while she was already working there?”
“Then why did she take a job in my house six months ago?” Luca asked.
Before I could guess, headlights flashed brightly in the side mirrors.
A heavy black SUV was barreling up the left lane at ninety miles an hour, closing the distance between us far too quickly for a normal commuter on a deserted stretch of highway just south of the Wisconsin border.
Luca’s grip tightened briefly on my hand before he released it to grab the wheel with both hands.
“Hold on, Emily,” he said calmly. “Check that your seatbelt is locked.”
“Are those Matteo’s men behind us?” I asked, twisting in my seat to look through the rear window.
“Matteo’s team is ten minutes behind us in two Range Rovers,” Luca said, watching the rearview mirror as the black SUV pulled alongside our rear quarter panel. “Victor didn’t work alone in Milwaukee. He used a local crew to watch the cannery, and someone tipped them off before Matteo took Victor’s phone.”
The SUV swerved violently to the right, its heavy steel bumper slamming into the rear fender of the Mercedes.
Metal shrieked against metal. I gasped as the impact jolted my shoulders against the seatbelt.
Most drivers would have slammed on the brakes and spun out on the slick pavement. Luca didn’t even flinch. He downshifted smoothly, steering into the skid before tapping the brakes with precision so the SUV overshot our front bumper by half a car length.
Then Luca cut the wheel hard to the left, driving the heavy reinforced nose of the Mercedes straight into the SUV’s rear passenger tire—a classic PIT maneuver executed at eighty miles an hour.
The SUV’s tires lost traction with a deafening screech of rubber. It spun sideways across the wet grass of the median, its headlights sweeping wildly through the dark pine trees before it slammed backward into a drainage ditch, steam billowing from its crushed hood.
Luca didn’t stop. He accelerated cleanly back onto the highway, checking the mirror to ensure the SUV wasn’t moving, then dialed Matteo on the dashboard speaker to have the trailing Range Rovers pick up the two men crawling out of the ditch.
My heart was hammering against my ribs as I looked over at him. “Where did you learn to drive like that?”
A faint, dry trace of humor touched the corner of Luca’s mouth. “When you grow up with my last name in Chicago, Emily, they teach you defensive driving before they teach you parallel parking. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I breathed, though my fingers were still gripping the edge of the leather seat.
Twenty minutes later, we turned off the highway onto a desolate industrial road lined with rusted rail tracks and dark brick warehouses along the Milwaukee River.
At the end of the dead-end pier stood the abandoned Menomonee Cannery.
Luca cut the headlights a hundred yards out, coasting silently to a stop behind a stack of shipping containers. He drew his nine-millimeter from under his jacket, stepped out into the freezing wind off the river, and opened my door, keeping me close behind his broad back as we approached the rusted side door of the warehouse.
The padlock had already been pried off.
We slipped inside the cavernous, shadowy building. The air smelled of river mud and old iron. At the far end of the concrete floor, inside a glass-walled foreman’s office lit by a single bare bulb, Claire was sitting on the floor with her wrists bound in front of her, wrapping her coat around a shivering eleven-year-old boy.
There were no guards left inside—the two men in the SUV on the highway had been the lookouts abandonded by Victor when they realized nobody was paying them the second half of their fee.
Luca holstered his gun, kicked open the jammed wooden door of the foreman’s office, and knelt beside them, pulling a pocketknife from his trousers to slice through the plastic zip ties on Claire’s wrists.
“Emily!” Leo cried out in his small, raspy voice, scrambling out from under his mother’s arm and throwing his thin arms around my waist. “You came! Mom said nobody would find us!”
I knelt on the dusty concrete and wrapped my arms tightly around the trembling boy, pressing a kiss to the top of his dark hair. “You’re safe now, Leo. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
Luca stared at the boy hugging me—stared at the dark curls and the unmistakable Moretti features—and his dark eyes glistened beneath the bare bulb.
Then he looked down at Claire. Even with her dyed blonde hair and thin glasses, up close in the harsh light, the resemblance to the young brunette in the faded photograph was unmistakable.
“Elena,” Luca whispered, his voice cracking with twelve years of sorrow. “I am so sorry.”
Elena rubbed her chafed wrists, tears streaming down her pale cheeks as she looked up at the brother of the man she had loved.
“You don’t need to apologize to me, Luca,” Elena whispered, her voice trembling as she reached out and touched his sleeve. “Your mother told me why you had to pretend I was a thief all those years. That’s why I came back to work at the mansion six months ago—to help her keep the secret from Richard.”
Luca froze on one knee.
“What are you talking about?” Luca asked slowly. “Keep what secret from Richard?”
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Elena blinked through her tears, looking from Luca to me in sudden, dawning horror.
“You... you really didn’t know?” Elena breathed. “Luca, on the night Marco died, I didn’t leave Chicago on that Greyhound bus alone. Your brother was still breathing when Victor pulled him out of the water.”
