Chapter 4 - THE SHATTERED WATCH
I didn't think. I just ran.
I bolted for the study doors, but Adrian caught my arm before I could reach the brass handles. His grip was like iron—unbreakable, but not painful.
“Let me go!” I screamed, fighting against him, my maternal instincts overriding any fear of the powerful man in front of me. “He has Lily! He’ll hurt her!”
“You are not going alone,” Adrian said, his voice a low, commanding rumble that instantly cut through my panic. “You go alone, you’re walking into a trap. Look at me, Margaret.”
I forced myself to look into his dark, intense eyes.
“I will not let anything happen to your daughter,” Adrian vowed. He hit a button on his smartwatch. “Marco. Bring the armored SUV to the east exit. Now. And send a strike team to—” He looked at me for the address.
I rattled off my address in Logan Square.
“You heard her,” Adrian barked into his watch. “Move.”
Three minutes later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a massive, bulletproof black SUV. Adrian was behind the wheel, driving with a terrifying, calculated speed through the rainy Chicago streets. Two identical SUVs flanked us.
“Why would Paul do this?” I sobbed, clutching the dashboard. “He already stole the scholarship money. Why go after Lily?”
“Because forty thousand dollars isn't a payday for a man connected to the underworld, Margaret,” Adrian said, his eyes scanning the slick roads. “It’s a test. A down payment. If your ex-husband has Victoria in his pocket, he’s aiming for something much bigger than a tuition fund.”
We squealed to a halt in front of my modest brick apartment building. The front door of the complex had been kicked off its hinges.
Adrian drew a sleek black handgun from a shoulder holster beneath his tuxedo jacket. He didn't look like a philanthropist anymore; he looked like the ruthless head of the Moretti family I had only read about in rumors.
“Stay behind me,” he ordered.
We rushed up the narrow stairwell to the second floor. My apartment door was wide open, the wood splintered around the deadbolt.
“Lily!” I screamed, shoving past Adrian into the living room.
The apartment was destroyed. The couch cushions were slashed, the bookshelves overturned, and my nursing textbooks were scattered across the floor.
“Mom!”
A small, terrified figure crawled out from beneath the overturned kitchen table. Lily. She was covered in dust, her face streaked with tears, but she was whole. She ran into my arms, and I collapsed onto the floor holding her, burying my face in her hair.
“Are you hurt? Did he touch you?” I frantically checked her arms and face.
“No, I hid as soon as they broke the front door,” Lily sobbed, clinging to my catering uniform. “Mom, there were three of them. Dad looked crazy. He was yelling at the men to find the ‘insurance policy.’ They tore everything apart.”
Adrian stood in the center of the ruined living room, his men fanning out to secure the perimeter. He looked at the devastation with a cold, analytical eye.
“Did they take anything, Lily?” Adrian asked gently, his deep voice soothing in its calmness.
Lily wiped her eyes and looked at the powerful stranger in the tuxedo. She reached into the pocket of her sweatpants. Her hand was shaking.
“He didn't take anything,” Lily whispered. “But he told me to give you this, Mom. He said you’d know what it meant.”
Lily opened her hand.
Sitting in her palm was a silver pocket watch. The glass face was completely shattered, the metal casing deeply dented.
I stared at it, the blood draining from my face.
“That’s impossible,” I breathed, taking the heavy, cold metal from her hand. “This is my father’s watch. The one he carried every day at the hospital.”
“So?” Adrian asked, stepping closer.
“So,” I looked up at him, my voice trembling, “I buried my father ten years ago. And this watch was stolen off his body the night he died. The hospital said it must have been misplaced in the morgue.”
Adrian’s expression tightened. He reached out and took the shattered watch from my hands. He turned it over in his palm, feeling the weight of it. His thumb traced the ornate, worn engraving on the back casing.
Suddenly, Adrian froze.
He pulled a small pocket knife from his trousers and jammed the blade into a tiny, almost invisible seam along the edge of the watch casing. With a sharp twist, the back of the watch popped off.
It wasn't a solid piece of metal. It was a hollow compartment.
And tucked inside the compartment was a tiny, black micro-SD card.
May you like
Adrian stared at the memory card, then looked at me. The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
“Your father wasn't just a hospital janitor, Margaret,” Adrian said, his voice laced with a dark, chilling realization. “He was my mother’s informant.”
