Chapter 5 – THE TRAP IS SET
“You cannot go, sir,” I pleaded, holding Mia closer to me in the backseat. “It’s a trap. Marcus wants you dead so he can take over the family business.”
Giovanni holstered his weapon, his jaw set like stone. “I know it’s a trap, Claire. But Marcus doesn’t just want the business. He wants to erase every trace of my father’s mistakes. That includes Mia.”
He turned back to the driver’s seat and started the engine. But instead of heading to 5th Street, he drove us to a discreet, heavily fortified hotel downtown. He ushered Elena and Mia into a top-floor suite, leaving four of his most loyal, newly-vetted guards at the door.
“Stay with them, Claire,” Giovanni ordered, handing me a burner phone. “If I’m not back by dawn, take them out of the city. There’s an account in your name I set up for my mother’s charities. Use it.”
“Mr. Vitale, please,” I said, grasping his forearm. “Let the police handle this.”
He gave me a sad smile. “The police work for Marcus now. I have to finish this.”
He turned to leave, but I stopped him.
“Wait.” I dug into my pocket and pulled out the small red patch of fabric I had saved from the quilt. I pressed it into his hand. “Your mother said you refused to take this off when you were a boy. She said it made you feel brave. Bring it back to me.”
Giovanni looked at the faded red cotton. He closed his fist around it, nodded once, and walked out the door.
The hours crawled by in agonizing silence. Elena paced the floor while Mia slept on the king-sized bed. I sat by the window, staring out at the Chicago skyline, praying for the man who had treated a widowed housemaid with more respect than his own fiancée had.
At 3:00 AM, the burner phone in my lap buzzed.
I snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Claire.” The voice wasn’t Giovanni’s. It was Bianca’s.
My blood froze. “Where is he?”
“Oh, Giovanni is currently tied to a steel chair, bleeding quite a bit,” Bianca said with a cruel, breathless laugh. “Marcus is highly motivated.”
“What do you want, Bianca?”
“I want my life back,” she snapped. “But Marcus wants the girl. Bring the child to the alley behind the hotel in ten minutes. If you don’t, I will shoot Giovanni myself.”
“I won’t do it.”
“Then listen.”
A sickening thud echoed through the phone, followed by Giovanni’s muffled groan.
“Ten minutes, Claire,” Bianca whispered. “Or the next one goes through his skull.”
The line went dead.
I looked at Elena, who was shaking violently. “They have him.”
I looked at sleeping Mia. I couldn’t hand an innocent child over to a murderer. But I couldn’t let Giovanni die.
I walked over to my coat, my mind racing back to the years I spent surviving on my own before the Vitale mansion. I pulled out a heavy, cast-iron pair of tailoring shears I always carried for work.
“Elena,” I said, my voice surprisingly calm. “Lock the door behind me.”
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