Chapter 6 – WHERE THE TIME STOPS

The drive to the South Side took less than twenty minutes, but it felt like hours.

The old clocktower cathedral loomed against the dark Chicago skyline like a massive stone giant. The neighborhood was desolate, a graveyard of abandoned factories and broken streetlights. The massive clock face at the top of the tower was frozen permanently at 3:15.

Luca’s SUV screeched to a halt half a block away.

“Stay in the car, Emma,” Luca ordered as he checked the magazine of his pistol.

“I’m not staying,” I said firmly. “If she sees you with a gun, she might run. She doesn’t know who to trust. She knows me.”

Luca hesitated, looking at my determined, dirt-streaked face. He slowly nodded.

“Stay right behind me.”

We approached the heavy wooden doors of the cathedral. They were chained from the outside, but the side entrance—a small, rusted iron door—was slightly ajar.

Luca pushed it open with the barrel of his gun.

The inside of the cathedral was breathtakingly silent. Moonlight poured through the shattered stained-glass windows, casting long, colorful shadows across the dusty pews.

“Sofia?” Luca called out, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings.

No answer.

We moved slowly down the center aisle. Every footstep felt painfully loud.

Suddenly, a small, distinct sound broke the silence.

It was the sound of a child coughing.

It came from the choir loft, high above the altar.

Luca broke into a run. He took the narrow, spiral stone stairs two at a time, with me right on his heels.

We reached the top of the loft.

There, huddled in the corner beneath a torn velvet curtain, was a small figure holding a child.

“Sofia,” Luca whispered, dropping his gun to the floor and falling to his knees.

The figure flinched and pointed a small, silver revolver directly at Luca’s chest.

“Stay back!” a woman’s voice cried out, panicked and raw.

It was Sofia.

She looked terrifyingly thin. Her dark hair was matted, and her clothes were worn and dirty. But her eyes were fierce, filled with the primal desperation of a mother protecting her young.

Clinging to her chest was a little boy, about two and a half years old, with Luca’s exact dark curls.

“Sofia, please,” Luca choked out, tears spilling down his cheeks. He held his empty hands up. “It’s me. It’s Luca.”

Sofia’s hands shook so violently the gun wobbled. “You sent them! You sent Marcus to kill us!”

“I didn’t! I swear on our father’s soul, I didn’t know anything! They lied to me! Vanessa and Marcus lied to me!”

Sofia shook her head, tears cutting through the dirt on her face. “No. I saw the order. Marcus showed me the paper. It had your signature, Luca! You ordered the hit because you thought I stole the money!”

I stepped out from behind Luca.

“Sofia,” I said softly.

Sofia froze. Her wide, terrified eyes locked onto me.

“Emma?” she whispered in disbelief.

“It’s me,” I smiled, tears blurring my vision. “He didn’t sign that paper, Sofia. Vanessa forged his signature. She used to forge his signature on the catering checks all the time. Remember? We used to joke about how perfectly she copied his handwriting.”

Sofia stared at me. The memory of our old jokes in the kitchen seemed to crack the wall of terror she had built around herself.

She looked at Luca. She looked at his tears, at his dropped gun, at the sheer agony on his face.

The silver revolver slipped from her trembling fingers and clattered onto the stone floor.

“Luca?” she sobbed.

Luca lunged forward and wrapped his arms around his baby sister, pulling her and the little boy into a crushing, desperate hug. He buried his face in her hair, sobbing uncontrollably.

“I’ve got you,” Luca wept. “I’ve got you. Nobody is ever going to hurt you again.”

I knelt down beside them, wrapping my arms around Sofia’s shaking shoulders.

The little boy, confused but sensing the safety in the room, reached out a small, chubby hand and touched the silver dove pinned to my apron—a pin Sofia had given me years ago.

“Hi, little one,” I whispered, crying and laughing at the same time.

“His name is Leo,” Sofia whispered against Luca’s chest. “He’s named after Dad.”

Luca pulled back, looking at his nephew for the first time. He gently touched the boy’s cheek with his scarred hand. Leo didn’t flinch; he just stared at the big man with wide, curious eyes.

For a beautiful, perfect moment, the nightmare was over.

Then, the heavy doors of the cathedral slammed open on the ground floor below.

The sound echoed like a bomb going off.

Luca instantly grabbed his gun from the floor and stood up, pushing Sofia and Leo behind him.

Footsteps. Dozens of them. Heavy boots marching up the center aisle of the church.

A voice boomed from the darkness below.

“Well, isn’t this a beautiful family reunion.”

It was Carmine.

Luca peered over the edge of the choir loft.

Standing at the altar, surrounded by eight heavily armed men, was his dead uncle. Carmine was wearing a tailored black coat, holding his expensive cigar in one hand and a submachine gun in the other.

“You shouldn’t have come here, Luca,” Carmine yelled up to the loft. “Now I can bury you all in the same grave. It’s poetic, really.”

Luca ducked back down as Carmine’s men raised their weapons toward the balcony.

We were trapped. There was no fire escape up here. Only one narrow staircase down.

Luca looked at Sofia, then at me. His face was stone cold. He handed me his spare magazine.

“Emma,” Luca whispered. “Do you remember the secret you told me about Vanessa’s father?”

My eyes widened. I nodded.

Luca turned back to the edge of the loft.

He didn’t shoot. He stood up in full view of the gunmen, holding his hands in the air, and yelled the one sentence that would make Carmine’s men freeze in their tracks.