Chapter 4 - THE VOICE ON THE LINE
The cheap plastic phone buzzed violently against the shredded leather of Vanessa's purse.
Luca stared at it. The muscles in his jaw ticked.
He walked over, picked it up, and hit the green button. He didn't speak. He just held it to his ear.
I watched his face. The color drained from his cheeks, leaving behind an ashen, terrifying pallor. His eyes widened in absolute shock.
He slowly lowered the phone and ended the call.
“Who was it?” I asked, stepping closer.
Luca looked at me, completely shattered. The ruthless mafia boss was gone, replaced by a man whose heart had just been ripped out.
“It was Leo,” Luca whispered.
His younger cousin. The man he had raised like a son after his parents died. The man who sat at his right hand at every family dinner.
“Leo has Vanessa?” I asked.
“Leo isn't just holding her,” Luca said, his voice hollow. “Leo has been blackmailing her. He’s the one who gave her the watch. He’s the one who paid Dr. Aris. Leo has been trying to kill me.”
It made terrifying sense. If Luca died before the wedding, Leo inherited the entire syndicate.
“Why did he call this phone?” I asked.
“To tell me he has Matteo.”
My blood ran cold.
I knew about Matteo. Ten years old. He was the son of Luca’s deceased brother, Marcus. The boy was the only innocent thing left in this family, currently living at a private boarding school under a fake name to keep him safe from the mob life.
“Leo said if I want the boy to live, I have to walk out of the front gates alone,” Luca said, his voice turning dead and mechanical. “No guards. No weapons. He said he has a sniper on the driveway.”
“He’s going to execute you in the street,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You can’t go.”
“I have to. It’s Matteo.”
Luca started walking toward the door.
I grabbed his arm. “Wait. Luca, look at me. You are still recovering from severe hypoglycemia. If you walk out there, your adrenaline will spike, you will crash, and you won’t even be able to stand up straight, let alone fight.”
“I don’t have a choice, Emma!” he roared, slamming his fist against the doorframe.
“Yes, you do,” I said fiercely. “Think like a nurse. Triage the situation. Leo called a burner phone left in Vanessa’s room. Why did he leave the phone behind?”
Luca frowned, his anger stalling.
“Because Leo wanted to make sure you found it,” I said. “Which means Silas and Rocco didn’t just fail to guard Vanessa. They helped her escape. They planted the phone. Silas is working for Leo.”
Luca’s eyes darkened as the betrayal settled in.
“Where is Matteo’s boarding school?” I asked.
“St. Jude’s Academy. Forty miles north.”
I shook my head. “Leo wouldn’t drive forty miles just to call you from outside your own gate. He doesn’t have Matteo yet. He’s bluffing to draw you out into the open.”
Luca looked at me, a profound respect dawning in his eyes.
“We have to get to the boy before Leo’s men do,” Luca said.
“We can’t take the front door,” I said. “And we can’t trust your cars. They might be rigged or tracked.”
“There’s an old service tunnel beneath the wine cellar,” Luca said. “It leads to the woods behind the estate. I have a classic Mustang hidden in a barn half a mile away.”
“Let’s go.”
We grabbed my medical bag and moved silently through the sprawling mansion. We avoided the security cameras, slipping down the stone steps into the dark, damp cellar.
Luca pushed a heavy wine rack aside, revealing a rusted iron door. He forced it open, and the smell of wet earth and mildew hit us.
We ran through the dark tunnel, emerging into the freezing Chicago rain.
We sprinted through the trees. My boots slipped on the mud, but I didn't slow down. We reached the old, rotting barn.
Inside sat a pristine, midnight-blue 1969 Mustang.
Luca grabbed the keys from a hidden lockbox, slid into the driver’s seat, and fired the engine. It roared to life.
I climbed into the passenger seat.
We tore out of the barn, hitting the backroads at eighty miles an hour.
“We have a twenty-minute head start,” Luca said, his grip white on the steering wheel.
But as we rounded a sharp curve in the pouring rain, the headlights washed over something blocking the narrow road ahead.
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It was a black SUV.
And standing in front of it, holding an assault rifle, was Silas.
