Chapter 6 - THE TWIN IN THE SHADOWS
The bitter Chicago wind whipped around us, but I couldn't feel the cold. The doctor’s words echoed in my mind like a gunshot. She had twins. She hid your son.
A son. I had a son.
I looked at Renee, who was sitting safely in the back of Dante’s armored car, sipping hot cocoa from a paramedic’s thermos. She was half of a whole I never knew existed.
"Where is he?" I demanded, grabbing the doctor by his lapels. "Where is my son?"
"I don't know!" the doctor cried, his eyes wide with genuine terror. "Clara knew your mother was trying to kill her. Before she was poisoned, she begged a nurse to smuggle the boy out of the clinic. She told the nurse to take him to someone she trusted, someone outside the Mafia. I only knew about the girl because Paula took her and sold her to the orphanage."
I shoved the doctor back to my men. My mind raced, piecing together the fragmented puzzle of Clara’s final, desperate days. If she smuggled our son out, she must have left a clue.
I looked down at the charred safe deposit key in my hand. Box 402. Clara had sent the hitman? No, that didn't make sense. The hitman was hired by Carmen, but the hitman left this key on the bomb.
A massive reversal hit me. The cartel hitman wasn't loyal to my mother. He was mocking her. He had taken her money, planted the bomb, but intentionally ensured it detonated after I left the garage. He wanted me to survive. And he left the key to Clara's box as a breadcrumb.
"Dante, leave a heavy guard detail with Renee at the safehouse," I ordered, my voice hard with determination. "Take three cars. We’re going to the First City Bank vault."
"At 2:00 AM, boss?" Dante asked, raising an eyebrow.
"We own the bank manager," I reminded him. "Wake him up."
Forty minutes later, I stood in the sterile, echoing subterranean vault of First City Bank. The terrified manager had opened the heavy steel gates and fled. I stood alone in front of Box 402, sliding the charred key into the lock. It clicked.
I pulled the long metal drawer out and set it on the viewing table.
Inside wasn't a collection of love letters. It was a thick, leather-bound diary, and a small, faded photograph.
I picked up the photo. It was a picture of Clara, smiling, holding two swaddled newborns. On the back, written in her elegant handwriting, were two names: Renee and Leo. My beautiful angels.
My chest tightened with an unbearable ache. Leo. My son's name was Leo.
I opened the diary. The final entry was hastily scribbled, the handwriting frantic.
Michael, if you are reading this, I am already dead. Your mother found out about my father’s FBI connections. She poisoned me tonight. I am fading fast. I managed to hide Leo with the only person I knew your mother would never suspect. Her own flesh and blood. I gave Leo to your estranged brother, Vincent.
The journal slipped from my hands.
Vincent. My older brother. The man who had walked away from the DeLuca family twenty years ago, disgusted by the violence and the bloodshed. He had changed his name, moved to the suburbs, and cut all ties. My parents considered him dead. I hadn't spoken to him in a decade.
Clara had given my son to the one man who possessed the DeLuca blood but rejected the DeLuca sins.
I pulled out my phone and dialed a number I hadn't called in ten years. It rang three times before a groggy voice answered.
"Hello?"
"Vincent," I said, my voice thick with emotion. "It's Michael."
Silence stretched over the line. Then, a heavy sigh. "I told you never to call this number, Michael. I don't want any part of your world."
"I don't care what you want," I said firmly. "I know about the boy, Vincent. I know about Leo."
A sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line confirmed it.
"Listen to me," Vincent said, his voice dropping to a panicked whisper. "You can't come here. It's not safe. They found us, Michael. Mom found us."
"What are you talking about?" I demanded, panic surging back into my veins.
"Mom figured it out," Vincent said rapidly. "She realized Clara had twins. She sent men to my house an hour ago. They took him, Michael. They took Leo. I tried to stop them, but they had guns."
"Where did she take him?!" I roared, kicking a metal trash can across the vault.
"I don't know," Vincent sobbed. "But the man leading the crew... he had a silver scar across his eye. He said he was taking the boy to the shipyard. To finish the job."
The shipyard. The abandoned docks owned by the DeLuca family, used for importing black-market weapons. It was a graveyard of rusted shipping containers.
Carmen wasn't just fleeing the country. She was tying up the final loose end. She was going to execute my son to ensure there was no rightful heir left to challenge her control of the offshore accounts.
"I'm coming, Vincent," I said. "And I'm bringing an army."
I hung up the phone and walked out of the vault. Dante was waiting by the cars, smoking a cigarette.
"Change of plans, Dante," I said, drawing my custom 1911 pistol from my shoulder holster and racking the slide. "We aren't going to the airstrip. We’re going to the shipyard. And Dante?"
May you like
"Yeah, boss?"
"Call in every capo, every soldier, every hitter on the payroll," I said, my eyes cold and dead. "Nobody leaves those docks alive tonight except my son."
