Chapter 6 – THE POCKET WATCH AT MIDNIGHT

The drive back to Chicago was entirely different from our desperate flight to Montana.

We weren’t running anymore. We were hunting.

Isabella sat silently in the backseat, her authoritative aura shattered by the confession of her betrayal. I didn’t speak to her. The matriarch who had commanded my respect for six years had built my marriage on my mother’s grave.

Marco drove with lethal focus, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

“If Anthony is trapped in a warehouse by the feds like Vanessa said,” Marco murmured, breaking the silence, “his lieutenants will be scrambling to hide the family assets. The city will be bleeding chaos.”

“Let them bleed,” I said coldly. “Our only priority is finding Lily.”

“If the nuns evacuated the orphanage before Vanessa arrived, they would have followed the emergency protocol your mother set up,” Isabella spoke quietly from the back. “There is only one place they would take the children.”

I turned around to look at her. “Where?”

“The Holy Name Cathedral in downtown Chicago. Father Thomas has been a friend to our family for forty years.”

We hit the city limits just past midnight.

Chicago was electric with rain and sirens. The news of Anthony Moretti’s federal raid had already hit the late-night broadcasts. The syndicate was collapsing in real-time.

Marco parked the armored SUV in a dark alley a block away from the towering gothic structure of Holy Name Cathedral.

“Stay close,” Marco whispered, handing me a flashlight.

We left Isabella in the locked car and approached the heavy wooden side doors of the church.

The door was unlocked.

We slipped inside. The cathedral was pitch black, save for the flickering red votive candles near the altar. The silence was heavy, sacred, and terrifying.

“Father Thomas?” Marco called out softly, his voice echoing in the cavernous space.

No answer.

We walked slowly down the center aisle.

As we approached the altar, the beam of my flashlight caught something metallic gleaming on the marble floor.

I rushed forward and picked it up.

It was a heavy, gold pocket watch. The glass face was shattered, and the hands were frozen precisely at midnight.

“Marco,” I whispered, my blood turning to ice.

I turned the watch over. Engraved on the back was a crest. A falcon with its wings spread.

The Falcone family.

“They beat us here,” Marco said, raising his weapon and stepping in front of me.

A slow, dark chuckle echoed from the shadows near the confessional booths.

“I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever show up, Elena.”

A man stepped out of the darkness.

He was in his late fifties, wearing a tailored charcoal suit that looked completely untouched by the rain. His hair was silver, his eyes dark and piercing.

Dante Falcone.

The man who had fathered my sister. The most dangerous boss in the city.

And standing behind him, held tightly by a massive bodyguard, was a terrified seven-year-old girl with my mother’s exact eyes.

“Lily!” I gasped, stepping forward.

The bodyguard pressed a heavy hand down on the child’s shoulder. She whimpered, clutching a small, stuffed bear to her chest.

Marco leveled his gun directly at Dante’s head. “Let the girl go, Falcone.”

Dante didn’t even flinch. He looked at Marco with mild amusement.

“Ah. The lost Moretti heir,” Dante said smoothly. “Vittorio’s bastard son comes out of the shadows. Isabella must be desperate to put you on the board now that Anthony is wearing federal handcuffs.”

“This has nothing to do with the syndicates,” I said, forcing my voice to remain steady. “Let my sister go.”

Dante turned his dark eyes onto me.

“Sister,” Dante repeated, testing the word on his tongue. “You have your mother’s fire, Elena. Sofia was the only woman who ever dared to lie to me.”

He walked slowly down the altar steps, his polished shoes clicking against the marble.

“Six years ago, I found out Sofia was pregnant with my child. I demanded she bring the girl to me. Instead, she drove her car off a bridge.” Dante’s face hardened into a mask of pure fury. “I thought my daughter died in that crash. Until my men intercepted a frantic phone call from an orphanage in Montana this morning.”

“She doesn’t belong in your world,” I said fiercely, gripping the pearl-handled revolver in my pocket.

“She is my blood!” Dante roared, his voice shaking the cathedral walls. “She is a Falcone! And she is coming home with me.”

“She’s terrified of you!” I yelled back, pointing at Lily’s trembling frame.

Dante took a deep breath, composing himself. He looked at the broken pocket watch in my hand.

“Your mother stole that watch from me the last time I saw her,” Dante said quietly. “She said she would give it back when I proved I was a man capable of peace, rather than war.”

He looked at me, his eyes cold and calculating.

“I will make you a deal, Elena,” Dante offered. “Anthony is gone. The Moretti family is leaderless and weak. I could wipe your entire bloodline off the map tonight. But I want my daughter.”

He gestured to the bodyguard. The massive man pulled Lily forward a single step.

“Give me the offshore ledger your mother hid,” Dante demanded. “Hand over the Moretti fortune to me. In exchange, I will let you, Marco, and Isabella walk out of Chicago alive.”

My heart hammered against my ribs.

He wanted the list of accounts hidden inside Vittorio’s rosary. The list I currently had in my coat pocket.

If I gave it to him, the Moretti family would be bankrupt, defenseless, and destroyed.

If I didn’t, he would take my sister and likely kill Marco and me where we stood.

I looked at Marco. The true heir. The man who deserved that money more than anyone.

Marco didn’t look at Dante. He looked at Lily.

Then, Marco slowly lowered his gun and nodded at me.

Do it.

I reached into my pocket, my fingers brushing against the rolled-up parchment.

But as I pulled my hand out, the massive wooden doors of the cathedral suddenly burst open with a deafening crash.

Dante’s men spun around, weapons raised.

Standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the lightning flashing outside, was a man I thought was locked in a federal holding cell.

Anthony Moretti.

He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, holding an assault rifle, and smiling like a absolute madman.

“Did you really think I’d let you give away my money to a Falcone, Elena?” Anthony laughed.