Chapter 8 - [THE FINAL SACRIFICE]
“Read it,” Luca choked out, handing the letter to Daniel.
He couldn't bear to say the words out loud.
Daniel took the cream-colored stationery.
His hands shook as he read Lucia’s final message to her son.
My Dearest Lucio,
Holding you last night was the greatest gift God could have given me before the end. I am so proud of the man you have become. You are strong, but more importantly, you are merciful.
But I cannot stay.
I have carried a sickness in my blood for two years. The doctors gave me six months to live, but I held on for twenty-four. I held on because I needed to see you one last time. I needed to know you were free of Carlo’s grasp.
I saw you put your gun down. I saw the girl who stopped you. Hold onto her, Lucio.
Do not look for me. I am going to the place where your father asked me to marry him. I want to watch the sun set on the lake one last time.
I love you.
Mom.
Silence crashed down on the room.
Terminal illness.
She hadn’t just been hiding from Carlo.
She had been slowly dying in the shadows, fighting just to stay alive long enough to clear her son’s name.
“She’s dying,” Luca whispered, staring at the floor.
“Where did your father ask her to marry him?” I asked quickly.
“She said she’s watching the sunset on the lake. We can find her.”
Luca shook his head, his hands pulling at his hair.
“I don't know! They never talked about it. It was a secret. His family hated her.”
He looked at Daniel.
“Daniel, you knew them before they were married. Where did he propose?”
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut, searching his memory.
“They used to walk along Navy Pier. Or maybe the old lighthouse...”
“Maybe isn’t good enough!” Luca shouted, panic breaking his calm facade.
“She’s sick. It’s freezing outside. If she sits by the lake all day, she won’t survive the night!”
I grabbed Luca’s arm.
“Think. Did she ever leave anything behind? A ticket stub? A photograph? Something that proves where they went?”
Luca froze.
He looked at me.
“The box,” he said.
“What box?”
“The rosary box,” Luca said, his voice dropping.
“In my room. She kept the rosary in a small wooden box. But the rosary in my room is fake. She took the real one the night of the crash.”
He turned and bolted out the door.
I ran after him, my sensible housekeeper shoes slipping on the marble.
We raced up the grand staircase.
Luca threw open the double doors to his master suite.
He went straight to the heavy oak dresser.
Sitting next to a silver comb was a small, ornate wooden box.
Luca flipped the lid open.
Inside lay the fake silver rosary—the one Carlo had bought to sell the lie.
Luca pulled the rosary out and tossed it on the bed.
He pressed his thumbs against the velvet bottom of the box.
Click.
It was a false bottom.
He pried the velvet up.
Hidden beneath the lining was a single, faded photograph.
Luca pulled it out.
His hands were shaking so badly I had to steady his wrist to see it.
It was a Polaroid.
Luca’s father and mother. They were young. Maybe twenty.
They were sitting on a rocky shoreline. Behind them was a massive, rusted steel structure.
It wasn't Navy Pier.
It wasn't the lighthouse.
“The old steel mill,” Luca breathed.
“South Works. On the edge of the lake. It’s abandoned now.”
He flipped the photo over.
Written in faded blue ink was one sentence:
Where she said yes. 1990.
Luca shoved the photo into his pocket and ran.
It took us forty minutes to drive to the South Side.
Luca broke every speed limit, weaving the heavy SUV through Chicago traffic like a madman.
We reached the abandoned South Works site.
The rusted steel skeletons of the old mill loomed over Lake Michigan. The wind coming off the water was brutal, carrying the bitter bite of a coming winter.
We parked the car and ran toward the shoreline.
“Mom!” Luca shouted over the wind.
Nothing but the sound of crashing waves.
We scrambled over massive chunks of broken concrete and rusted beams.
Then, I saw it.
A flash of gray wool near the water's edge.
“Luca! There!” I pointed.
Sitting on a flat slab of concrete, wrapped in the heavy gray coat Vanessa had left behind, was Lucia.
She was staring out at the gray, churning water.
She looked incredibly small.
Luca ran to her.
He dropped to his knees on the hard concrete.
“Mom,” he cried.
Lucia turned her head slowly.
Her face was pale. Her lips were tinged with blue from the cold.
She smiled. A weak, beautiful smile.
“You found me,” she whispered.
“Of course I found you,” Luca said, taking her freezing hands in his.
“You left me the picture.”
Lucia chuckled softly, a weak, rattling sound.
“I hoped you would look.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder.
“I just wanted to see the water, Lucio. It’s so peaceful here.”
“We’re going to the hospital,” Luca said, pulling his phone out.
“I have the best doctors in the city. I have the money. We’re going to fix this.”
Lucia reached up and placed her cold hand over his phone.
“No doctors, baby,” she whispered.
“I’m tired. I’ve been running for so long.”
“You don't have to run anymore!” Luca pleaded, tears streaming down his face.
“Carlo is gone. You’re safe. Please, Mom. Don't leave me again.”
Lucia looked past him.
She looked at me.
I knelt down beside them.
I took off my scarf and wrapped it around her neck.
She reached out and touched the silver olive branch bracelet on my wrist.
“You kept him from the dark,” she whispered to me.
“He found his own way out,” I said softly, tears blurring my vision.
“He just needed to know you loved him.”
Lucia smiled.
She looked back at her son.
“I love you, Lucio,” she said, her voice barely a breath against the wind.
“More than life.”
She closed her eyes.
She rested her cheek against his chest.
And she stopped fighting.
Luca let out a sound I will never forget.
It was the sound of a boy losing his mother for the second time, but this time, there were no lies.
There was only love.
May you like
He held her against the wind, rocking her gently as the sun finally broke through the gray clouds, reflecting off the vast, endless lake.
TITLE: THE END OF THE SYNDICATE
