Chapter 4 – The Twin Left in the Dark
The panic room felt like a tomb.
Dominic stared at the caterer’s crying daughter in my arms, the realization crashing over him like a physical blow. Vanessa had used the blackout not just to attack, but to steal his daughter.
“Where did she take her, Anthony?” Dominic roared, shaking his bleeding brother. “WHERE?”
“The old shipyard,” Anthony coughed, his face growing pale. “Pier 39. She’s trading Rosie to the Marchesi remnants. They want you to surrender the city, Dom.”
Frank was sobbing, trying to stop the bleeding from Anthony’s stomach. “Don’t speak, son. Save your strength.”
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Anthony whispered, his eyes fluttering shut. “I was so jealous of Dom. You always looked at him with so much pride. I just wanted to be the favorite for once.”
“You are both my favorites,” Frank wept, kissing Anthony’s forehead until the younger man lost consciousness.
Dominic stood up. The grief in his eyes was gone, replaced by a cold, hollow fury that terrified me. He wasn’t Frank’s gentle son right now. He was the ruthless Mafia boss who controlled Chicago.
He opened the silver rosary. Inside the hollow cross was a tiny, rolled-up piece of microfilm. The proof of the Marchesi sins.
“Claire,” Dominic said, his voice deadly flat. “Stay here with my dad and Anthony. Barricade the door. If anyone but me tries to enter, shoot them.” He handed me a heavy black pistol.
My hands shook as I took it. “Mr. Moretti, you can’t go alone. It’s a suicide mission.”
“He isn’t going alone,” a new voice echoed from the hallway.
We turned. Stepping through the shattered wreckage of the mansion was an army of men in dark suits. Dominic’s loyalists. The true muscle of the Moretti family.
But walking at the front wasn’t a mobster. It was Frank.
He had left Anthony’s side and picked up a discarded shotgun from the hallway floor. He stood tall, the patched brown jacket covered in dust and his own son’s blood.
“Dad, put that down,” Dominic commanded.
“Thirty-nine years ago, I ran from Lorenzo Marchesi to save a baby,” Frank said, his voice steady as a rock. “I’m not running tonight. That’s my granddaughter.”
Dominic looked at the 76-year-old mechanic. He didn’t argue. He nodded once.
“Claire, lock the door,” Dominic said.
Before the steel door slid shut, I made a choice that defied all logic. I handed the pistol back to Dominic’s lieutenant.
“I’m coming with you,” I said, stepping into the hallway.
Dominic frowned. “Claire, this isn’t your fight.”
“She’s an eight-year-old girl who likes me to braid her hair,” I said, my voice trembling but firm. “She’s terrified. She needs someone she trusts.”
Dominic looked at me for a long second, then nodded.
We drove through the rain-slicked streets of Chicago in a convoy of black SUVs, running every red light. The docks at Pier 39 were dark, shrouded in heavy lake fog.
Dominic’s men fanned out, moving silently between the rusted shipping containers. Frank stayed close to Dominic, clutching the shotgun. I stayed behind them, my heart hammering against my ribs.
At the end of the pier, a massive cargo ship idled in the water. Under a solitary floodlight on the dock stood Vanessa. She was still wearing the ruined red silk gown.
Beside her, held tightly by a massive Marchesi enforcer, was Rosie. The little girl was crying, clutching the pink birthday envelope Frank had made her.
“Dominic!” Vanessa called out, her voice echoing over the water. “I knew you wouldn’t send the police.”
Dominic stepped out from the shadows, his hands empty. He walked slowly toward her.
“Let her go, Vanessa,” Dominic said. “You want the city? You want my territory? It’s yours. Just give me my daughter.”
Vanessa laughed, a bitter, broken sound. “I don’t want your territory, Dominic. I want you to know what it feels like to have your family stolen.”
She stepped closer to the light. “You had a loving father. You had a home. Do you know what happened to the twin brother Frank left behind? Lorenzo beat him every day of his life until the boy finally jumped off a bridge at sixteen!”
Dominic froze. The twin from the photo. Dead.
“I am Lorenzo’s niece,” Vanessa sneered. “I watched your brother die. I watched Lorenzo burn. You got the perfect life, Dominic. And you didn’t even know it was stolen from us.”
“So you steal an innocent child?” Frank shouted, stepping into the light.
Vanessa’s eyes locked onto Frank. Pure, unfiltered hatred crossed her face.
“You,” she hissed. “You’re the mechanic who broke our family.”
Vanessa didn’t hesitate. She pulled a silver revolver from her clutch and aimed it directly at Frank’s chest.
She pulled the trigger.
The gunshot echoed like a cannon blast over the water.
But it wasn’t Frank who fell.
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