Chapter 6 - THE YELLOW RAINCOAT
Before the sound of the pistol click even finished echoing off the basement walls, Luca’s arm wrapped around my waist and lifted me off my feet.
He didn't make a sound. In one fluid motion, he pulled me backward into Mrs. Gable’s dark bedroom and kicked the heavy oak door shut, sliding the brass privacy bolt into place a fraction of a second before two silenced gunshots thwipped into the wood at chest height.
Splinters stung my cheek. Luca pressed me down behind the cast-iron frame of the bed, shielding my body with his own as he drew a sleek black nine-millimeter pistol from beneath his suit jacket.
My heart was hammering so violently against his chest that I was sure the gunman outside could hear it. In the darkness, Luca smelled of cedar, warm skin, and cold steel.
"Are you hit?" he breathed against my ear, his left hand moving quickly over my shoulder and arm to check for blood.
"No," I whispered, clutching the folded crayon drawing tightly against my apron. "Miss Bellini—"
"Listen to me," Luca whispered, his lips brushing my temple in the pitch black. "Stay behind this iron frame. Do not move until I call your name."
Out in the sitting room, heavy boots crunched over the broken porcelain teacup. Whoever was out there had night vision or knew the layout of the basement—and they hadn't shot Vanessa in the hallway. That thud we heard had been someone knocking her down, or dragging her out.
The bedroom doorknob rattled once. Then, suddenly, the footsteps retreated rapidly toward the laundry room exit.
Seconds later, the basement emergency lights flickered on, bathing the room in a dim, eerie amber glow as the backup generator kicked in.
Luca waited three beats, listening intently, before unlocking the bedroom door and sweeping the sitting room with his weapon raised.
It was empty.
When we stepped out into the basement corridor, Vanessa was gone. On the linoleum floor where she had been standing lay one of her satin bridal heels, the pearl strap snapped clean in half, and a dark smear of blood near the baseboard.
At the end of the hall, the heavy steel door to the service alley was banging against its frame, busted open from the outside with a crowbar.
Marco stumbled back through the doorway from the alley, holding his bleeding left forearm while two of Luca’s armed courtyard guards rushed in behind him with their weapons drawn.
"Black SUV!" Marco gasped, his face pale and sweaty as he pressed his tuxedo jacket against his gashed arm. "Three men in ski masks! They came through the service gate right as I opened the alley door—one of them hit me with a tire iron, cut the breaker box outside, and dragged Vanessa and the old woman into the truck!"
"Take three cars and block the Kennedy Expressway ramps," Luca ordered his lead guard, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Pull the street cameras on Oak and Michigan. Nobody gets four blocks in the Gold Coast without showing up on traffic grid."
"Yes, Boss!" The guards sprinted back out into the night.
Marco leaned against the cinderblock wall, wincing as blood seeped between his fingers. "It has to be Victor’s men, Luca. When Vanessa didn't come back out to the dining room after twenty minutes, the driver he had waiting outside must have signaled them to pull her out before you could force the truth out of her!"
I stood in the doorway of Mrs. Gable’s apartment, staring at Marco’s bleeding arm.
My fingers tightened around the crayon drawing hidden in my palm.
Do not trust the man who claims to be the father.
Wait. Look at Marco’s tuxedo sleeve.
The tear in his black wool jacket was three inches long, ragged and frayed at the edges. I had repaired hundreds of torn jackets in my life. A blunt tire iron doesn't leave a clean, straight four-inch slice through wool and shirt linen before cutting the skin underneath.
A blade does. Or a sharp piece of metal—like the jagged edge of the breaker box cover outside, if a man sliced his own arm to make it look like he’d fought off kidnappers.
And earlier, when the heavy fire door had been bolted from the outside right before the lights went out... Marco had been the only person on the other side of that door.
If I told Luca right now, without proof, Marco would claim I was hysterical. Worse, if Marco was working with whoever just took Mrs. Gable and Vanessa, then Clara—and that baby—were in mortal danger right this second.
I needed what was inside the laundry chute first.
"Sir," I said, keeping my voice shaking and small so Marco wouldn't suspect a thing. "I—I'll get the first-aid kit and some clean towels from the laundry room for Mr. Santoro’s arm."
Luca glanced at me, his dark eyes softening slightly as he holstered his gun. "Get the kit, Sophie. Stay inside the laundry room until I step in."
I ducked into the laundry room next door. The amber emergency light cast long shadows over the industrial washers and the stainless-steel sorting tables.
In the back corner, built into the tiled wall, was the metal door to the vertical laundry chute that ran all the way up to the third floor.
With one eye on the doorway where Luca was questioning Marco about the SUV's license plates, I hurried to the chute and pulled open the round steel hatch.
Staring up into the dark shaft, I reached my hand inside and felt along the lower rim where sheets sometimes snagged on the damper plate.
My fingers brushed slick, waterproof fabric.
I tugged gently, pulling down a child’s small yellow raincoat—size 6X—that had been wedged into the damper bracket just out of sight.
Holding my breath, I felt along the inside hem of the coat. Just like Mrs. Gable’s note had said, a six-inch section of the yellow nylon lining had been basted shut with large, hasty white stitches.
I slipped my fingernails between the stitches, popped the thread, and reached inside.
I pulled out a flat silver keycard with a brass tag attached to it, and a four-by-six glossy photograph.
I looked down at the photograph under the dim amber light, and my heart stopped.
It had been taken in front of a small yellow house with a green door—the exact house from the crayon drawing. Standing on the porch was the woman I had sewn into that wedding dress fourteen months ago. Clara. She was smiling, holding a dark-haired infant wrapped in a blue blanket.
And standing beside her, with one arm around Clara’s waist and the other resting on the shoulder of a five-year-old boy in a yellow raincoat, was a man.
It wasn't Marco Santoro.
May you like
I turned the photograph over. Written on the back in Clara’s handwriting were the words:
July 28. Little Leo is one week old today, and Danny loves being a big brother. Martha promised she will get this picture to Luca when the time is right, so he finally knows about both his sons.
