Chapter 4 - THE BOY IN THE LOCKET
The name hung in the air like a ghost. Leo.
Luca remained on his knees for a long, agonizing second, the reality crashing down on him. The quiet, skittish seven-year-old boy who lived in the drafty room above the estate’s garages. The boy whose "father," the elderly groundskeeper, had died of a heart attack just two months ago. The boy Vanessa constantly complained about, calling him a charity case and demanding he be sent to a state orphanage.
Luca scrambled to his feet. The grief in his eyes had instantly hardened into something sharp and terrifying—a father’s fierce, desperate instinct to protect.
“Marco!” Luca barked, his voice echoing off the marble walls.
The head of security was already moving. “Sir.”
“Lock down the estate. Nobody gets in, nobody gets out. Especially not her,” Luca pointed a shaking finger at Vanessa, who was now weeping violently, her makeup smeared across her face.
“Luca, please!” Vanessa begged, reaching out as he stormed past her.
He didn’t look back. “Emma,” he said, his tone commanding but lined with sheer panic. “Come with me.”
I didn’t hesitate. I dropped my serving tray onto the nearest chair and ran after him. We burst through the heavy kitchen doors, startling the catering staff, and sprinted out the back entrance into the freezing Chicago night. The wind bit through my thin uniform blouse, but I couldn’t feel the cold. All I could think about was Leo.
Sweet, quiet Leo, who always waited by the kitchen door for me to sneak him a warm chocolate chip cookie. Leo, who drew pictures of lions because I told him his name meant brave. Leo, who was actually the billionaire heir to the Moretti empire, sleeping on a cot with a thin wool blanket.
Luca’s long strides ate up the distance across the manicured lawns toward the staff quarters. “How long?” he demanded, his breath pluming in the freezing air. “How long has he been here, Emma?”
“Four years, Sir,” I panted, struggling to keep up. “Since the old groundskeeper, Thomas, brought him in. Thomas said he was his late sister’s boy. We all believed him.”
“Thomas,” Luca muttered, putting the pieces together. “Thomas was my mother’s most loyal driver before she died. She must have set this up. She knew Silvio would come for the boy, so she hid him with Thomas right under my nose.”
We reached the detached garage. The wooden stairs leading up to the staff apartment groaned under Luca’s weight as he took them two at a time. He reached the door and grabbed the handle.
It was unlocked.
Luca threw the door open. “Leo!”
The small room was dark, lit only by the pale moonlight filtering through the single window. The bed was unmade. The small wooden desk where Leo did his drawings was empty.
Luca flipped the light switch.
Nothing. The boy was gone.
“Leo?” I called out, my voice trembling. I rushed to the small closet. Empty. I checked the tiny bathroom. Empty.
Luca stood in the center of the room, turning in circles, panic fully setting in. “Where is he? Emma, where would he go at this hour?”
“He never leaves this room at night,” I said, my chest tightening with dread. “He’s terrified of the dark. Someone took him.”
I noticed something on the floor near the bed. I knelt down and picked it up. It was a crumpled piece of paper. I smoothed it out. It was a drawing of a lion, but a heavy, dark boot print was stamped directly over it.
“Mr. Moretti,” I whispered, showing him the paper.
Luca’s face went completely slack. Then, his radio crackled. It was Marco.
“Boss,” Marco’s voice was tight, urgent. “I’m checking the perimeter cameras. Five minutes ago, a black SUV breached the east gate. It rammed right through the security arm.”
“Whose vehicle?” Luca roared into his own radio.
“Registration tags belong to Silvio Moretti’s private fleet,” Marco replied. “They have the boy, Boss. And Boss... the camera caught the driver’s face.”
“Who?”
“It was Vanessa’s private driver. The one she fired last week.”
Luca lowered the radio. The betrayal was complete. Vanessa hadn’t just hidden the truth; she had been feeding information to Silvio this entire time. She knew Luca was getting closer to asking questions about his mother’s old connections. She knew Mrs. Carter was coming tonight. And she had orchestrated Leo’s kidnapping to maintain her leverage.
“They’re going to the docks,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a deadly calm. “Silvio owns the old shipping warehouses on Pier 4. It’s where he handles problems he wants to disappear.”
He looked at me. His eyes were no longer the eyes of a broken man. They were the eyes of a father going to war.
“Stay here, Emma. Keep Mrs. Carter safe.”
He turned to leave, but my hand shot out and grabbed his sleeve. I thought of Leo, crying in the back of a dark SUV, terrified and alone. I thought of the thirty-nine years Mrs. Carter had spent protecting vulnerable kids. I thought of my own father, fighting for his life in a hospital bed.
“No,” I said firmly. “I know Leo. If you go in there with guns blazing, he’ll panic. He’ll run into the shadows and you might not find him in time. He trusts me. Let me help you get him out.”
Luca looked at my grip on his sleeve, then up at my face. He saw the absolute determination in my eyes.
“Marco,” Luca said into the radio. “Get the armor. Bring the heavy hitters. We’re going to Pier 4.”
We ran back to the main driveway just as three armored black SUVs pulled up, tires screeching on the gravel. Marco tossed Luca a heavy Kevlar vest. Luca strapped it over his tailored tuxedo shirt.
As I climbed into the back of the lead vehicle, I saw Mrs. Carter standing on the mansion’s front steps, wrapped in her lavender coat. She didn’t look afraid. She raised her hand and pointed two fingers at Luca—a silent command. Bring him home.
The SUVs tore out of the estate gates, sirens silenced, moving like shadows through the Chicago night.
Inside the car, the tension was suffocating. Luca loaded a sleek black pistol with terrifying efficiency. He didn’t say a word, but the muscle in his jaw ticked furiously.
My phone buzzed in my apron pocket. I pulled it out. It was an unknown number.
I opened the text message. My blood turned to ice.
It was a photo of my father, asleep in his hospital bed. Standing next to him in the frame was a man in a dark suit, holding a newspaper with today’s date.
The message below read: Tell Luca to turn the cars around, Emma. Or your father’s life support gets unplugged. You have one minute to decide.
May you like
I stared at the screen, my breath catching in my throat. I looked at Luca, who was staring out the window into the darkness, ready to die for his son. I looked at the phone, holding my father’s life in a pixelated image.
The minute started ticking down.
