Chapter 4 - THE CHILD'S DRAWING
The silence inside the SUV was absolute, broken only by the roar of the engine and the screech of tires as Dante violently took a sharp right turn, blowing through a red light.
Clara felt the air leave her lungs. She stared at the three-year-old boy. “What did he just say?”
Rico’s face had drained of all color. His gun remained in his hand, but it was lowered, forgotten. He leaned over the console, his voice shaking. “Leo. Buddy. What did you say?”
Leo shrank back against his car seat, intimidated by his father’s intensity. He clutched his pale-blue sweater. “No.”
“Leo, please,” Rico pleaded, his tough exterior shattering completely. “Did you see the car that hurt Mama?”
“Boss, back off,” Dante warned from the front, taking another erratic turn down a narrow one-way street. “You’re scaring him. And we have company.”
Dante was right. One of the black sedans had successfully navigated the turn and was accelerating rapidly, closing the distance to less than fifty feet.
Clara unbuckled her seatbelt. Ignoring Rico’s shout of protest, she slid across the leather seat until she was sitting right beside Leo. She didn’t ask him a question. She didn’t demand an answer. Instead, she took the warm glass of milk from his hands and set it in the cup holder. Then, she opened her purse.
She pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper and a blue crayon—items she kept for restless kids at the restaurant. She placed the paper on Leo’s lap.
“Leo,” Clara said softly, keeping her voice completely calm despite the terrifying swerve of the vehicle. “Can you draw the bad car for Aunt Clara?”
Leo looked at the crayon. He looked at Clara. He took the crayon in his little fist.
“Get down!” Dante roared.
CRACK!
The rear windshield exploded inward. Glass rained over the backseat like brutal hail. Rico lunged forward, throwing his large body over Clara and Leo, shielding them as cold wind howled into the cabin. Clara curled tightly around the boy, her heart screaming in her chest.
Dante slammed the brakes, forcing the pursuing sedan to rear-end them with a sickening crunch of metal. The jolt threw Rico against the door, but Dante instantly floored the gas again, using the momentum to spin the SUV in a savage 180-degree turn. For a brief second, they were face-to-face with the men in the sedan.
Clara saw them. Two men in dark suits. The driver was bleeding from the forehead, but the passenger was raising a submachine gun.
Dante didn’t flinch. He raised his own weapon and fired three times through the broken windshield. The passenger slumped forward. Dante spun the wheel, tearing down an adjacent alleyway and leaving the crippled sedan behind.
“Is everyone okay?” Dante barked, checking the mirror.
Rico pushed himself up, brushing glass off his suit. He looked at Clara, his hands frantically checking her shoulders, then Leo’s arms. “Are you hurt? Clara, are you bleeding?”
“No,” Clara gasped, pulling a shard of glass from her hair. “I’m okay. Leo is okay.”
Rico exhaled a shuddering breath and collapsed back against the seat. For a moment, he just looked at her. Really looked at her. The fierce, protective way she had shielded his son. “You’re completely insane,” he whispered. “You should have stayed on the floor.”
“I’m used to protecting what’s mine,” Clara fired back, her hands still shaking. She looked down at Leo.
The little boy hadn’t cried. He hadn’t screamed. During the entire gunfight, beneath the terrifying weight of his father and Clara, Leo had been coloring.
Clara gently took the paper from his lap. In rough, aggressive blue scribbles, Leo had drawn a car. But it wasn’t just a car. Next to the car was a stick figure with long hair. Elena. And standing over her was another stick figure.
Clara traced her finger over the drawing. The second figure had a massive, exaggerated red scribble over its face.
“Leo,” Clara asked, her voice trembling. “Who is the man with the red face?”
Leo pointed at the drawing. “The fire man.”
Rico leaned over, staring at the child’s drawing. He frowned. “Fire man? Leo wasn’t even in the car when Elena crashed. He was at home with the nanny.”
“Then how does he know?” Clara asked, looking at Rico.
Before Rico could answer, Dante slammed on the brakes. They had pulled into a dark, abandoned subterranean parking garage. “We’re safe here for now,” Dante said, cutting the engine. “But Boss, we have a bigger problem.”
Dante turned on the interior light and held up a thick, leather-bound notebook. “When we hit the sedan, the trunk popped open. I grabbed this off the street before I spun the car.”
He tossed it to Rico. Rico caught it, his eyes narrowing as he saw the gold emblem stamped on the cover. A crescent moon.
“That’s Silas’s ledger,” Rico said, stunned.
May you like
“No,” Clara corrected quietly, staring at the book. She reached out and flipped it over. Engraved into the back leather were the words: Two vines, one root.
“It’s Elena’s,” Clara realized, a cold dread washing over her. “The safety deposit box… Silas already emptied it.”
