Chapter 2 – THE COAT AND THE SURVEILLANCE

The smell of old blood and stale air hit me like a physical blow.

I dropped the dark blue coat onto the concrete floor, my hands trembling violently.

“The target suspects nothing. Proceed with the extraction.”

I stared at Rebecca’s elegant handwriting on the back of the surveillance photo. Dominic wasn’t just a man whose wife had left him. He was a target.

I frantically shuffled through the rest of the photos in the manila envelope. They were all taken surreptitiously. Dominic leaving a restaurant. Dominic walking into a federal building. Dominic sitting in his car.

But the final photograph made my blood run ice cold.

It was a picture of Emma.

She was seven years old, wearing a little red coat, holding her mother’s hand as they walked out of a park.

Written on the back, again in Rebecca’s handwriting:

“The child is the leverage. Take her.”

I stumbled backward, hitting the metal wall of the storage unit.

Lauren hadn’t left Dominic because she hated the mafia life. She hadn’t abandoned Emma.

Lauren had been running.

Rebecca—or whoever she worked for—had orchestrated a kidnapping. And judging by the blood-soaked coat lying on the floor, Lauren had fought back.

I scrambled to pick up the documents still sitting in the box. They were bank transfers. Millions of dollars moved from Dominic’s syndicate accounts into shell corporations, slowly siphoned off over the last four years.

Rebecca wasn’t just a cruel fiancée. She was a parasite, bleeding the Castellano empire dry from the inside out, while keeping Dominic blind with a false narrative about his broken family.

I shoved the photos, the documents, and the bloody coat into a canvas tote bag I had brought with me. I had to get this back to Dominic immediately.

I pulled the storage door down, locked the padlock, and sprinted down the hallway toward the freight elevator.

The moment the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, my heart stopped.

Standing in the lobby, casually chatting with the clerk, was a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a tailored grey suit. I recognized him instantly.

It was Silas, Rebecca’s personal driver and bodyguard.

He hadn’t seen me yet.

I froze, backing slowly into the shadows of the elevator car. If Silas saw me leaving this building with a tote bag, he would know I had accessed the unit. He would kill me before I reached the street.

I frantically hit the button for the basement level. The doors slid shut just as Silas turned toward the elevators.

The car descended, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

When the doors opened in the subterranean parking garage, I bolted. I ran between parked cars, heading for the exit ramp that led up to the alleyway behind the building.

I burst out into the freezing Chicago air, sprinting down the alleyway toward the main street where Dominic’s secure car was supposed to be waiting.

I saw it idling at the curb. A sleek, black town car.

I practically threw myself into the backseat, slamming the door shut.

“Drive!” I gasped, clutching the canvas bag to my chest.

The driver didn’t say a word. He pulled away from the curb, accelerating smoothly into traffic.

I leaned my head back against the leather seat, trying to catch my breath. We were safe. I had the evidence. Dominic would finally know the truth.

I pulled my phone out to text him.

But as the car turned onto the expressway, I looked out the window. We were heading south. The Castellano mansion was north.

“Excuse me,” I said, my voice shaking slightly. “I think you took a wrong turn. We need to go back to the estate.”

The driver looked at me in the rearview mirror. His eyes were cold and dead.

“Change of plans, Miss Dawson,” the driver said, his voice completely devoid of emotion.

My blood ran cold.

He wasn’t Dominic’s driver.

I lunged for the door handle. It was locked. I slammed my hand against the window, screaming for help, but the tinted, bulletproof glass muffled the sound entirely.

“Sit down,” the driver ordered, pulling a suppressed pistol from his jacket and aiming it directly at me over the seat. “Or I put a bullet in your kneecap right now.”

I froze, sinking back into the seat, absolute terror washing over me.

We drove for thirty agonizing minutes into the industrial district on the outskirts of the city. The driver pulled into an abandoned, rusted warehouse, the heavy metal doors closing behind us, plunging the car into darkness.

The driver got out, opened my door, and grabbed me roughly by the arm, hauling me out of the car. He snatched the canvas tote bag from my hands.

“Move,” he grunted, shoving me toward a small, dimly lit office inside the warehouse.

He threw me into a wooden chair. I gasped, clutching my ribs as I hit the hard wood.

The office door opened again.

And walking in, wearing an immaculate white trench coat and a cruel, triumphant smile, was Rebecca.

“Hello, Claire,” Rebecca purred, stepping into the room.

I stared at her, sheer hatred cutting through my fear.

“You killed her,” I spat, glaring at the bloody blue coat peeking out of the tote bag Silas was now holding.

Rebecca laughed softly, a delicate, chilling sound.

“I didn’t kill anyone, Claire,” Rebecca said, walking around the desk to stand in front of me. “Lauren was a loose end. My father’s syndicate needed Dominic’s empire. The easiest way to break a man like Dominic is to break his heart.”

She leaned closer, her eyes gleaming with malice.

“We staged the kidnapping. We made it look like Lauren ran away with another man because she couldn’t handle the mafia life. But Lauren fought back. She managed to escape my father’s men, but she was badly wounded.”

Rebecca looked at the bloody coat.

“She hid the coat, the evidence of our surveillance, and the bank transfers in that storage unit. She mailed the receipt and the music box to Dominic, hoping he would find it.”

“But you intercepted it,” I realized, feeling sick to my stomach.

“Of course I did,” Rebecca smiled. “I’ve intercepted every piece of mail, every phone call, and every birthday card Lauren ever sent to Emma.”

My eyes widened in shock. “Lauren is still alive?”

“She was,” Rebecca shrugged casually. “Until last month. She finally succumbed to an infection from the gunshot wound she took four years ago. She died in a charity hospital in Seattle, completely alone, believing her husband and daughter hated her.”

The sheer, suffocating evil of this woman was unfathomable. She had orchestrated a tragedy, stolen a child’s mother, and was now sleeping in Dominic’s bed, preparing to marry him to finalize the takeover of his empire.

“Why am I here?” I demanded, my voice trembling with rage. “If you have the evidence, why not just kill me?”

“Because Dominic knows you went downtown,” Rebecca explained smoothly. “If you disappear, he’ll suspect foul play. But if you call him, terrified, and tell him you were ambushed by a rival family looking for the storage unit… he’ll be distracted.”

She pulled a sleek burner phone from her pocket and tossed it onto my lap.

“Call him, Claire,” Rebecca ordered, her voice hardening into a lethal command. “Tell him the Moretti family ambushed you. Tell him they took the evidence. You have exactly thirty seconds to convince him, or Silas puts a bullet in your head.”

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