Chapter 4 - THE WHISPER IN THE KITCHEN
"Eleanor!" Luca shouted, dropping to his knees beside the fallen woman.
He slid his hands beneath her shoulders, gently turning her over. Eighty-one-year-old Eleanor Price—the same woman who had lived a life of quiet dignity while raising children others had abandoned—gasped softly, her eyelids fluttering open. A dark bruise was already forming along her left temple where she had struck the kitchen counter during the struggle.
"Mr... Mr. Moretti?" she whispered, her voice weak and trembling as she focused her hazy eyes on him.
"I'm here, Eleanor," Luca said, his voice unusually gentle, stripped of all the cold authority he commanded in the boardroom and the streets. "You're safe. Who did this?"
Eleanor winced in pain, reaching out with a weathered hand to grab Luca's sleeve. "They... they broke through the back door... two men in black coats..."
She began to cough, a dry, painful sound. Matteo quickly stepped forward, handing Luca a small bottle of water from the counter to help revive her.
"Did they say who sent them?" Luca asked, pressing the water to her lips.
Eleanor swallowed, taking a ragged breath. "They... they called the boss on a satellite phone. They said the girl was secured. And... and they mentioned a name. A man named Viktor... and someone higher up. They said they were taking her to the old municipal rail yard by the lake."
Luca’s expression hardened into stone. Viktor Vance. The same enforcer who had terrorized Emma and her sister just days before. Richard Harrington's syndicate was trying to consolidate their power by seizing the last remaining blood heir of the Moretti name.
"Matteo," Luca said, standing up slowly. His voice carried the chilling weight of impending war. "Mobilize every unit we have. Notify Arthur Carter. Tell him we're hitting the rail yard in twenty minutes. Nobody leaves until my daughter is back in my arms."
"On it, Boss," Matteo said, pulling out his encrypted radio as he sprinted out the front door toward the waiting vehicles.
Luca looked down at Eleanor, who was struggling to sit up. He gently helped her lean back against the kitchen cabinets, placing a supportive hand on her shoulder.
"You need a doctor, Eleanor," Luca said firmly. "I'm having a medic brought in right now."
"Never mind me," the old woman pleaded, tears spilling over her wrinkled cheeks. "Find my little girl, Mr. Moretti. She's only six years old. She doesn't understand any of this. She just wanted her daddy to come home."
Luca swallowed the lump in his throat. He nodded solemnly. "I found her brother tonight, Eleanor. I swear to you on my life, I will bring my daughter home too."
When Luca returned to the SUV parked outside, Emily Parker was waiting anxiously by the passenger window, holding a sleeping Oliver in her arms. The little boy had stirred slightly when the door slammed, mumbling something about baseball before drifting back off to sleep.
"Mr. Moretti," Emily asked, her eyes wide with fear as she looked at his grim expression. "Did... did you find her?"
"Not yet," Luca said, climbing into the driver's seat as Matteo slid into the passenger side with a map spread across his knees. "Viktor Vance has her. They're taking her to the municipal rail yard by the lake."
Emily’s breath caught. "The rail yard? That's where they held my sister!"
"I know," Luca replied coldly, pulling the SUV into a sharp U-turn, tires screeching against the asphalt. "And this time, they aren't going to walk away."
He looked back through the rearview mirror at Emily holding Oliver. The sight of his son, safe for the moment, fueled a primal fire deep within his chest. He had lost too much. He had lost Caroline to illness, lost years of his son's life to deception, and nearly lost his family to greed. He would not lose his daughter to vengeance.
As the convoy of black SUVs tore through the dark Chicago streets toward the lake, Luca's phone suddenly buzzed in his coat pocket.
He flipped it open and answered on speaker.
"Moretti," a harsh, distorted voice sneered from the other end. It was Viktor Vance.
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"You're a dead man, Viktor," Luca said quietly, his voice devoid of all human warmth.
"Am I?" Viktor laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Because right now, I'm looking at a very pretty, very terrified six-year-old girl who has your exact same eyes. She keeps asking when her daddy is going to pick her up. Too bad she's going to be waiting a very long time at the bottom of Lake Michigan."
