Chapter 5 - The Grandmother’s Truth and the Burning Restaurant
“Sniper! Get down!” Adrian roared.
Before the laser could settle on my grandfather’s heart, Adrian launched himself forward, tackling the eighty-one-year-old man to the wet asphalt.
A suppressed gunshot made a sickening thwack against the brick wall, right where my grandfather’s chest had been a fraction of a second earlier. Showered in red brick dust, I screamed and hit the ground, covering my head.
“Into the SUV! Now!” Isabella shouted, pulling the silver revolver from her trench coat with terrifying practiced ease.
She fired three blind shots toward the fire escape at the end of the alley, providing covering fire as Matteo grabbed Sofia and shoved her into the backseat of the armored vehicle. Adrian hauled my grandfather up by his belt, practically throwing him into the passenger side before diving into the back himself.
“Nora, move!” Adrian yelled, reaching a hand out from the sliding door.
I scrambled on my hands and knees, my waitressing shoes slipping on the wet pavement. Another bullet sparked against the rim of the SUV’s tire. I lunged forward, grabbing Adrian’s hand. He yanked me inside with brute force, pulling me across his lap as the heavy armored door slammed shut.
Isabella threw herself into the driver’s seat, slamming the car into gear. The heavy SUV roared to life, tires screeching as she reversed out of the alleyway at sixty miles an hour, smashing through a chain-link fence and careening onto the main street.
Inside the dark, cramped cabin, everyone was breathing heavily. The smell of cordite and adrenaline was suffocating.
I untangled myself from Adrian, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
“Is everyone hit? Is anyone bleeding?” Isabella asked, her eyes darting between the rearview mirror and the dark Chicago streets.
“We’re clear,” Adrian grunted, checking my grandfather for bullet holes.
Sofia was weeping hysterically in the far back seat, clutching Matteo’s arm. “What is happening? Who are you?” she cried, looking at Isabella.
Isabella’s grip on the steering wheel tightened until her knuckles turned white.
“I’m your mother, Sofia,” Isabella said, her voice thick with unshed tears. “My name is Isabella. I gave birth to you thirty-five years ago. And I have spent every single day since watching you from afar, praying for the day Vittoria would finally slip up.”
Adrian stared at the back of Isabella’s head, his jaw clenching. “You own Bellamore. I’ve eaten at that restaurant every Friday for the last five years. You poured my wine. You asked about my day.”
“It was the only way I could see you, Adrian,” Isabella whispered. “Vittoria thought I fled to Europe. She didn’t know I bought the restaurant under a shell corporation. I needed to be close to you. I needed to make sure she wasn’t hurting you.”
I sat frozen, trying to process the magnitude of the lie.
I had worked for Isabella for three years. She was a tough, fair boss who always gave me extra shifts when I was short on rent. She had hired me knowing exactly who I was.
“You knew I was Frank Bell’s granddaughter,” I said, my voice shaking. “You hired me on purpose.”
Isabella glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Frank and I have been working together for nineteen years, Nora. When Vittoria ordered the hit on Matteo and Frank, they both came to me. I helped Lorenzo hide Matteo in the meatpacking plant, but when Vittoria’s men got too close, we had to move him. We’ve been keeping Matteo in a safehouse upstate ever since.”
Adrian whipped his head around to look at his father. “You were safe? You’ve been safe this whole time? Then why the hell did you walk into the restaurant tonight acting like you just escaped Lorenzo’s basement?!”
Matteo looked down, shame crossing his weathered face. “Because Lorenzo didn’t know I had been moved. Lorenzo thought his own men had relocated me. We needed Lorenzo to believe Vittoria was the only enemy tonight. If Lorenzo knew I was free, he would have warned Vittoria, and we would have lost our only element of surprise.”
“It was theater,” Adrian realized, his voice dropping into a dangerous, lethal register. “You walked into that restaurant tonight knowing a hit was coming. You used me as bait.”
“No!” Isabella cried, swerving the SUV around a tight corner. “Adrian, we didn’t know about the poison! Frank intercepted a message this morning that Vittoria was going to hit the restaurant, but we thought it would be a drive-by. We thought we had time to extract you!”
My grandfather reached across the console, placing a trembling hand on Adrian’s arm.
“We didn’t know she was going to use your own security detail against you, son,” Frank said softly. “When Vittoria sent that text confirming the second target, she accelerated the timeline. If Nora hadn’t given you that charcoal, you would be dead.”
Adrian looked at me in the dim light of the cabin. His dark eyes were unreadable, but the sheer intensity of his stare made my breath catch.
“You saved my life,” Adrian said to me, his voice barely a whisper. “A waitress with forty-six dollars in her bank account saved the head of the Chicago syndicate.”
“I didn’t do it for the syndicate,” I said fiercely, wiping a streak of soot from my cheek. “I did it because nobody deserves to die eating their favorite soup.”
A tiny, ghost of a smile flickered across Adrian’s lips. It was the first genuine expression I had seen from him all night.
But the moment was shattered by a loud, electronic beeping coming from my grandfather’s coat pocket.
Frank pulled out a heavy, old-fashioned pocket watch. It was the twin to the one Lorenzo wore, but this one didn’t have a scratch.
Frank flipped it open. The face of the watch had been hollowed out. Inside was a tiny, glowing GPS screen.
“Isabella,” Frank said, his voice dropping an octave. “We have a massive problem.”
“What is it?” Isabella asked, pushing the SUV to eighty miles an hour on the empty expressway.
“Vittoria didn’t just send a sniper to the alley,” Frank said, his eyes glued to the tiny screen. “She sent a clean-up crew to our safehouse.”
“So what?” Adrian asked. “We’re not there.”
“No,” Frank said, looking up with absolute terror in his eyes. “But Lorenzo is.”
I frowned, completely lost. “Lorenzo? We left him in the burning cellar!”
“He wasn’t in the cellar when the floor collapsed, Nora,” Frank said grimly. “I put a tracker on Lorenzo three years ago. His signal is moving. Fast. And it’s heading straight for the waterfront safehouse.”
Adrian cursed violently. “Lorenzo is going to steal the bearer bonds.”
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“It’s worse than that,” Isabella said, her voice shaking as she slammed on the brakes, pulling the SUV into a dark, abandoned shipyard. She turned around to face us, the streetlights illuminating the absolute despair on her beautiful face.
“The bearer bonds aren’t in a ledger, Adrian,” Isabella confessed. “They’re digital. And the only decryption key in the world is physically implanted inside Lorenzo’s silver locket.”
