Chapter 4 - THE VAULT KEY
The tunnel seemed to spin around me.
They have Leo.
"No," I gasped, snatching the brass pocket watch from Lorenzo’s hand. I stared at the crude, jagged letters scratched into the metal. "No, this is impossible. Leo is safe. He's at home with Mrs. Gable."
My brother was ten years old. He was supposed to be doing his math homework, safe in our small, rundown apartment in Rogers Park.
I desperately dug into my apron pocket and pulled out my cell phone. My hands were shaking so violently I dropped it twice before I finally dialed the babysitter's number.
The line rang. Once. Twice.
Click.
"Mrs. Gable?" I cried into the phone, tears streaming down my face. "Mrs. Gable, is Leo there? Is he okay?"
The voice that answered did not belong to the kindly sixty-year-old woman who lived down the hall.
It was a man's voice. Smooth, calm, and terrifyingly cold.
"He's safe for now, Evelyn," the man said. I recognized the voice from the engagement dinner. It was Richard Vane.
A sob tore from my throat. "Where is my brother? If you touch him—"
"Bring Lorenzo Moretti to the old South Side rail yard within the hour," Vane interrupted, completely unfazed by my panic. "And bring the item your father left for you. Do that, and you can have your family back. If you call the police, or if you try to run, you will never see the boy again."
The line went dead.
Before I could even process the threat, Lorenzo reached out and snatched the phone from my hand.
Without a word of warning, he smashed it against the brick wall of the tunnel, shattering it into pieces.
"What are you doing?!" I screamed, pushing him away. "He has my brother!"
"He has technology that can trace your cell signal in minutes," Lorenzo said firmly, gripping my shoulders to steady me. "If they find us in this tunnel before we’re ready, we die, and your brother dies. You need to breathe, Evelyn. Look at me."
I couldn't breathe. The walls were closing in. The image of Leo, terrified and alone with monsters, was suffocating me.
"Evelyn!" Lorenzo's voice cracked like a whip, snapping my attention to his dark, intense eyes. "I know what you're feeling. But panic will kill him. You warned me tonight. You saved my life when you could have looked the other way. I protect my own. And you are mine to protect now. I swear on my mother’s life, we are getting your brother back."
His words carried the absolute, unshakeable weight of a mafia boss who commanded thousands of men. For the first time all night, a tiny sliver of hope pierced my terror.
"Okay," I whispered, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. "Okay. What do we do?"
"We keep moving," Lorenzo said, turning and leading us faster down the tunnel. "Vane said your father left something for you. An item. What is it?"
I jogged to keep up with him. "I don't know! My dad hasn't been home in eight years. He left us with nothing but debts. I don't have anything of his."
"Think, Evelyn," Lorenzo urged. "Vane realizes your father didn't have the master ledger of his offshore accounts. He must have mailed a piece of the puzzle to your home right before he turned himself in. Did he send a package? A letter?"
My mind raced back to the week my father disappeared. I had been eighteen, terrified, fielding calls from angry creditors. There was no package. Just a box of old junk from his office that the landlord had dropped off.
Wait.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
"The toy box," I breathed.
Lorenzo stopped and turned around. "What?"
"When Leo was a baby, right before my dad vanished, he gave Leo a small wooden puzzle box. It was locked. He told me to keep it safe for him until he was older," I explained, the memory rushing back with crystal clarity. "Two years ago, Leo finally dropped it hard enough that it broke open."
"What was inside?" Lorenzo asked, closing the distance between us.
"Just a piece of metal," I said. "It looked like a weird, heavy antique key with no teeth, just a series of magnetic grooves. I thought it was just a piece of junk from his auto shop. I put it on my keychain because Leo liked the way it jingled."
I reached into the pocket of my black waitress slacks and pulled out my apartment keys.
Hanging between my house key and a faded plastic keychain was a heavy, dull-gray cylinder of magnetic metal.
Lorenzo took the keys from my hand, holding the gray cylinder up to the dim light of the tunnel.
"This isn't junk," Lorenzo said, his voice laced with awe. "This is a biometric vault key. It’s used for high-security offshore depositories. This is what Vane wants. It unlocks the ledger your father hid."
"Then we give it to him," I said desperately. "We give it to him for Leo."
"We will," Lorenzo agreed, handing the keys back to me. "But on our terms."
We reached the end of the tunnel. Lorenzo pushed open a heavy iron grate, and we stepped out into the freezing Chicago night air. We were inside an abandoned, echoing parking garage near the industrial shipyards.
Parked in the center of the shadows was a sleek, armored black SUV.
"My grandfather’s escape route comes with modern perks," Lorenzo said, unlocking the vehicle with a fob from his pocket.
He opened the back hatch, revealing a massive, heavily stocked weapons cache. He began loading magazines into a tactical rifle with practiced, terrifying speed.
"Get in the passenger seat," Lorenzo ordered. "I'm going to radio my men on a secure channel. We're going to the rail yard, and we are going to bring hell with us."
I nodded, running toward the passenger door.
I grabbed the handle and pulled the heavy door open.
But as the interior lights of the SUV flickered on, a cold, hard piece of steel was pressed directly against my forehead.
Sitting in the passenger seat, wearing her ruined crimson-red silk gown, was Celeste Vane.
She held a silver handgun aimed right between my eyes.
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And sitting on her lap, a gag tied tightly around his mouth, his eyes wide with absolute terror, was my little brother, Leo.
"Hello, waitress," Celeste smiled, her pristine makeup smeared, giving her the look of a beautiful, deranged porcelain doll. "I believe you have a key that belongs to my family."
