Chapter 3 - THE BROKEN LOCKET
"Bellini," I said, my fingers tightening on Dominic's forearm as the quiet third-floor hallway seemed to tilt beneath my feet. "Her name was Sofia Bellini."
Dominic stared at the silver locket resting against the velvet backing of the frame.
His thumb brushed the small engraving on the corner—an S intertwined with a V.
"That's impossible," he murmured, his voice rough, stripped of its usual boardroom polish. "Sofia Bellini died in a house fire in Milwaukee twenty-two years ago. Along with her daughter."
"I'm twenty-eight," I whispered, a cold shiver tracing my spine. "And we lived in Milwaukee until I was six. My mother changed our last name to Reed the night we took the Greyhound bus to St. Louis. She told me our house burned down and we could never go back."
Dominic looked at me as if he were seeing a ghost step out of the cedar shadows.
"Your mother was my older sister, Emma," he said, each word heavy as stone. "And I paid Marcus Hale's father fifty thousand dollars twenty-two years ago to protect her when my rivals came after our family."
My hand flew to my mouth.
Before I could process what he had just said—that the dangerous man beside me was my own blood—the private elevator at the end of the hall chimed.
Daniel stepped out, his face pale, his jacket open over his shoulder holster.
"Boss," Daniel said, breathing hard. "We have a problem in the study."
"If Marcus tried the window—"
"He didn't," Daniel said. "He asked for a glass of water, and while Marco was pouring it, Marcus swallowed a nitroglycerin tablet from his pocket. Except it was a double dose on top of his blood pressure meds. His heart is bottoming out. Dr. Russo is keeping him conscious on the rug, but Marcus says he'll only give up the boy's location if you and Emma come down right now."
Pain shot through my stitched ankle as I lunged toward the elevator, forgetting to lean on Dominic.
Dominic caught me around the waist, practically carrying me into the cab.
Thirty seconds later, we burst into the mahogany-paneled study on the first floor.
Marcus Hale was slumped against the base of the leather sofa, his face gray, sweat plastering his thinning hair to his forehead while Dr. Russo monitored a portable pulse oximeter on his finger.
Even with his chest heaving for air, Marcus looked up at Dominic with a bitter, defiant curl to his lip.
"You went upstairs," Marcus wheezed, his eyes flicking to the silver frame still clutched in Dominic's left hand. "I knew you would once the girl talked."
"Where is the boy, Marcus?" Dominic asked.
He didn't shout, but he stepped over and kicked the rolling medical bag three feet away from Dr. Russo's reach.
Dr. Russo froze, looking up at Dominic.
"His blood pressure is seventy over forty, Dominic," the doctor warned quietly. "He needs the ambulance in five minutes or he goes into arrest."
"Then he has four minutes to give me an address," Dominic said, looking down at the man who had run his household for twelve years. "Where is my great-nephew?"
Marcus let out a wet, raspy cough that sounded like a laugh.
"Your great-nephew," he repeated. "So you saw the locket. Sofia gave it to my father the night she ran, to prove to you she was dead. My father kept the fifty grand... and let you mourn beside an empty grave."
"You used my own house to hide that locket on the third floor?" Dominic asked, his voice lethal.
"Safest place in Chicago," Marcus gasped, pressing a hand to his chest. "Until your dead sister's little girl walked through the service door eleven months ago looking for a maid's job. She didn't even know who you were. Sofia never told her."
"Where is Leo?" I cried, dropping to my knees beside him on the Persian rug, ignoring the throbbing in my heel. "Please, Marcus! He's five years old! He's afraid of the dark and he doesn't have his inhaler!"
Marcus turned his sweat-slicked face toward me.
"You think I took him to hurt you, Emma?" he whispered. "Your sister Clara brought him to me at five o'clock this morning."
I recoiled as if he'd slapped me. "You're lying. Clara loves Leo. And you slammed my foot in your car door when I tried to take him back!"
"Because two of Tommy Romano's men were watching your apartment building from a parked van across the street!" Marcus snapped, his breath hitching as pain gripped his chest. "If you had walked back inside with that boy, neither of you would have lived till noon."
My heart stopped.
Tommy Romano.
The man who had been sitting at Dominic's dining table twenty minutes ago—the man Marcus had ordered me to go back and serve right before I stepped on my injured heel.
Dominic's eyes narrowed to dark slits. "Romano is dead downstairs in the driveway, isn't he? Or did he already leave?"
"Romano left right after dinner stopped," Daniel said from the doorway.
"Why does Romano want Emma and the boy?" Dominic demanded, crouching beside Marcus and grabbing the front of his damp shirt. "Talk to me, Marcus, and the ambulance comes through the gate."
"Clara owed Romano's casinos eighty thousand dollars," Marcus breathed, his eyelids fluttering. "To clear the debt, she sold him a secret she found in Emma's old shoebox. The real birth certificate showing Sofia Bellini was alive until ten years ago. Romano wanted the girl and the boy as leverage to force you out of the waterfront contract tonight."
"Then why did you want me to switch the photograph upstairs?" I asked, my voice shaking.
"Because Leo drew that picture when Clara brought him here two weeks ago while you were at the grocery store," Marcus whispered, his voice fading. "Clara was already snooping on the third floor. She hid the locket and the drawing behind the frame to blackmail me later. If Dominic found them before I got you out of Chicago, he would have killed me for what my father did."
"Where is the boy?" Dominic repeated, shaking him once.
Marcus reached blindly into his vest pocket with trembling, bluish fingers and pulled out a dry-cleaning ticket from a shop on Archer Avenue.
Written across the back in blue ink was a locker number and an address.
"St. Jude's Parish basement near Midway," Marcus whispered. "My wife... Martha... she's a kindergarten teacher. She's sitting with him. He's safe."
Dr. Russo immediately lunged forward with an epinephrine syringe as Dominic stood up and handed the ticket to Daniel.
I took the slip of paper from Daniel's hand to read the address myself.
As I turned it over, a smaller photo slipped out from inside the folded ticket and fluttered onto the rug.
I picked it up.
It was a security camera printout from an airport terminal, timestamped three hours ago at 6:00 PM.
It showed Marcus's wife, Martha, walking through the departure gates—completely alone.
May you like
And written on the bottom margin of the photo in Tommy Romano's neat, unmistakable handwriting were five words:
THANKS FOR THE TRADE, MARCUS.
