The Empty Frame On The Floor

“Get my coat?” I repeated, my voice shaking. “Mr. Moretti, they have my mother.”

“I know,” Luca said, slipping a fresh magazine into his pistol. He winced slightly as the movement pulled at the bullet graze on his shoulder, but his eyes never left mine. “Which is why we are going to get her.”

He turned to the blind, groaning man on the floor, the one who had caught the splash of bleach. Luca grabbed him by the collar of his tailored suit and hauled him halfway up.

“Where is she?” Luca demanded.

The man spit a curse in Italian.

Luca didn’t hesitate. He pressed the barrel of his pistol directly into the gunshot wound on the man’s leg.

The man screamed, his back arching in agony.

“Where?” Luca asked again, his voice completely devoid of emotion.

“The warehouse!” the man choked out, weeping in pain. “The old textile warehouse on 18th Street! They’re holding her in the manager’s office until Daniel calls in the clear!”

Luca dropped him. He turned to me.

“18th Street,” Luca said.

My stomach plummeted.

I knew that warehouse.

Every child who grew up in the South Side neighborhood near 18th Street knew that massive, rotting brick building. It had been abandoned for a decade. But more importantly, I knew it because my father used to be a night watchman there before he vanished fifteen years ago.

I used to bring him dinner in tupperware containers. I knew every stairwell, every loading dock, and every broken window in that building.

“I know the layout,” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth.

Luca looked surprised. For the first time all evening, the mafia boss looked at his maid as an equal.

“You know the building?”

“My father worked there,” I said. “There’s a blind spot. A subterranean maintenance tunnel that connects to the old sewer lines. It comes up directly beneath the manager’s office on the second floor. They won’t have it guarded because the door is hidden behind a false wall in the basement.”

Daniel, bleeding on the floor, laughed weakly.

“You’re crazy,” Daniel coughed. “There are twenty armed Romano soldiers in that building. You walk in there, they’ll slaughter you both.”

Luca ignored him. He looked at little Leo, who was still clinging to my skirt, his face pale and tear-stained.

“We can’t take him,” I whispered.

“We won’t,” Luca said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy set of keys. He handed them to me.

“There is a panic room behind the wine cellar,” Luca instructed. “Steel door, independent ventilation, separate phone line. Take Leo inside. Lock it. Do not open it for anyone but me.”

“You’re going alone?” I asked, staring at the keys in my hand.

“I have men loyal to me waiting at a secondary location,” Luca said. “I’ll call them on the way. You stay here. Keep him safe.”

I looked down at the keys. Then I looked at Leo.

My mother was sitting in a chair right now, terrified, waiting for a bullet. And Luca Moretti was about to walk into a fortress to save a maid’s mother just because I had protected his nephew.

I handed the keys back to Luca.

He frowned. “Emma, take the keys.”

“No,” I said, my voice hardening. “You don’t know the tunnel, sir. The basement is a maze of collapsed shelving and rusted pipes. If you get lost down there, they kill my mother.”

“It’s a warzone, Emma. You are not a soldier.”

“I’m a daughter,” I fired back, stepping toward him. “And I’m the only reason you’re holding that necklace right now. You need me to get you into that office.”

Luca stared at me. He saw the fire in my eyes, the absolute refusal to back down.

Slowly, a ghost of a smile touched his lips.

“Daniel was wrong,” Luca murmured. “You’re not a maid at all.”

He turned back to the stairs. He knelt down beside the first man he had shot, a guard who was lying dead near the washing machines. Luca stripped the man’s heavy black tactical coat and tossed it to me.

“Put it on,” he ordered.

It was huge on me, swallowing my black uniform and white apron, but it was thick, heavy Kevlar.

Luca picked up Leo. He carried the boy out of the laundry room, down the long, dark corridor toward the wine cellar. I followed. Luca moved a specific rack of vintage Bordeaux, revealing a heavy steel door. He punched in a code, and the door hissed open, revealing a small, brightly lit room with monitors and supplies.

Luca set Leo down on the cot inside.

“Leo,” Luca said, his voice infinitely gentle. “Uncle Luca has to go do a job. I need you to stay here and be incredibly brave. Can you do that?”

Leo nodded, clutching his stuffed bear. “Will you come back?”

“I always come back for you,” Luca promised. He kissed the boy’s forehead.

Then he stepped out, and the heavy steel door locked with a resounding thud.

Luca turned to me. He pulled a spare, compact pistol from an ankle holster and held it out handle-first.

“Do you know how to use this?” he asked.

“Point and pull,” I said, taking the heavy metal weapon. My stitched hand screamed in protest, but I gripped it tightly with my good hand.

“Safety is off,” Luca warned. “If we see a Romano, you don’t hesitate. You shoot center mass.”

I nodded.

We left the basement through the underground garage. Luca bypassed his fleet of luxury cars and threw the keys to a nondescript black SUV.

Ten minutes later, we were tearing through the rain-slicked streets of Chicago. The Gold Coast vanished, replaced by the crumbling brick and cracked asphalt of the industrial district.

My heart was beating in my throat. I was sitting in the passenger seat of a mafia boss’s car, holding a gun, wearing a dead man’s Kevlar coat, driving toward a heavily armed compound.

Luca glanced at me as he turned off the headlights, coasting the SUV down a dark alley two blocks from the warehouse.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked quietly.

I looked at the towering, dark silhouette of the textile warehouse looming in the rain.

“No,” I said honestly.

I opened my door and stepped out into the freezing downpour.