Chapter 5 – THE YELLOW GASOLINE CAN

The heat radiating from the burning apartment building could be felt even through the thick bulletproof glass of the SUV.

“Mom!” I screamed, tearing at the door handle. It was locked from the front. “Let me out! Luca, please, my mom is in there!”

“Keep the doors locked,” Luca ordered the driver. His eyes were fixed on the figure standing across the street.

It was a woman wearing a yellow raincoat, calmly holding the empty gasoline can. As the flames reached the third floor, illuminating the street in a hellish orange glow, she slowly turned her head toward our idling vehicle.

It wasn’t Vanessa Bellini.

It was my mother’s landlord, Mrs. Higgins.

“What is she doing?” I choked out, pressing my hands against the window. “Mrs. Higgins, what did you do?!”

Luca reached into his jacket, his hand resting on the grip of his pistol. “Driver, pull up beside her. Keep the windows up.”

The heavy SUV rolled forward until we were mere feet from the elderly woman. She didn’t run. She didn’t look afraid. She just stared at us with a blank, hollow expression.

Luca rolled his window down exactly two inches.

“Where is she?” Luca demanded, his voice slicing through the roar of the fire.

Mrs. Higgins let the gas can drop to the concrete. “They took her,” she shouted over the flames. “A black van. Ten minutes ago. They told me if I burned the building down, they would forgive my grandson’s gambling debt.”

“Who took her?” Luca barked.

“Dominic Bellini,” she cried, stepping back as sirens began to wail in the distance. “He said to tell you the price for the mother is the ledger. He said you know exactly where it is.”

Luca’s face hardened into stone. He rolled the window up. “Get us out of here. Back to the estate.”

“No!” I sobbed, grabbing the back of his seat. “We can’t leave her! Dominic will kill her to keep her quiet!”

Luca turned around in his seat. His dark eyes were filled with a fierce, protective intensity that made me freeze.

“He won’t kill her, Rachel,” Luca said firmly. “He needs her alive to trade for what he wants. And I am going to give it to him.”

“What is the ledger?” I asked, wiping away tears. “Vanessa mentioned it too. What is so important that they would orchestrate a murder and burn down a building for it?”

Caleb, who had been completely silent beside me, suddenly reached into his backpack.

“Daddy?” Caleb whispered.

Luca looked at his son. “What is it, buddy?”

Caleb’s hands were shaking as he unzipped the front pocket of his canvas bag. He reached inside and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook. The pages were yellowed, and the cover was stained with dark spots that looked disturbingly like dried blood.

“I didn’t know what it was,” Caleb said, tears welling in his eyes. “I found it in Mommy’s closet the day before she died. She was crying. She told me to put it in my backpack and never, ever show it to Vanessa.”

The air in the SUV was instantly sucked out.

Luca stared at the small book. He reached out with trembling fingers and took it from his son.

“You’ve had this the entire time?” Luca asked, his voice barely a whisper. “For four years?”

Caleb nodded, a tear slipping down his cheek. “I thought it was her diary. I kept it safe because I missed her. But today, when Vanessa told Coach Robert she was giving away my glove… I got mad. I opened the book to read what Mommy wrote. But it wasn’t a diary, Daddy.”

Luca opened the leather cover. I leaned forward, my heart pounding in my ears.

The pages weren’t filled with journal entries. They were filled with dates, bank account numbers, and names.

And every single transaction was tied to a massive offshore account.

“Millions of dollars,” Luca murmured, turning the pages rapidly. “Illegal weapons trades. Extortion payments. Bribes to federal judges.”

He stopped on a page near the middle of the book. His breath hitched.

“What is it?” I asked, terrified of the look on his face.

“Isabella didn’t just find out the Bellini family was stealing,” Luca said, his eyes scanning the ink. “She found out they were working as informants for the FBI. Vanessa and Dominic have been selling out rival Chicago families for the last five years to wipe out their competition.”

The realization hit me like a freight train. “If the other mafia families find out the Bellinis are rats…”

“They will butcher them,” Luca finished coldly. “Every single member of their bloodline. That’s why they needed Isabella dead before she could show me this. And that’s why they need your mother now. She’s the only living witness who can tie them to the murder.”

Luca snapped the book shut.

“Driver,” Luca commanded. “Take us to the Northside baseball field.”

“The baseball field?” the driver asked, confused.

“Dominic wants to make a trade,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a deadly calm. “He knows the estate is heavily guarded. He knows I won’t meet him on his turf. He’s going to take your mother to the one place he thinks I’m vulnerable. The place Caleb was supposed to be tomorrow morning.”

I grabbed Caleb’s hand, holding it tight. We were heading straight into a war zone, and the only weapon we had was a notebook filled with secrets.

As the SUV sped toward the empty community baseball field, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was a text message from an unknown number.

I opened it, my blood running cold.

It was a picture of my mother, tied to a chair in the middle of home plate.

And beneath the photo was a message that didn’t make any sense.

Bring the boy, Rachel. Or I tell Luca who your father really was.