Chapter 6 - THE RANSOM AT THE RIVER
Richard Bellini’s face drained of color.
“Vanessa, stop this,” he barked into the phone. “You’re out of control. Let the woman go.”
“She ruined everything!” Vanessa screamed, her facade completely shattered. “Luca left our engagement dinner! He knows, Daddy! He knows about the crash!”
“I can fix it, Vanny—”
“No, you can’t! Bring me the girl. We finish what we should have finished nine years ago.”
The line went dead.
Richard stared at the phone. For the first time, the powerful mob boss looked like a terrified, broken old man.
He turned to his men. “We go to the shipping yard.”
“You’re not taking her,” I said, stepping in front of Lucy.
Richard looked at me. “If I don’t bring the child, my daughter becomes a murderer. And Luca will slaughter her. I am trying to save my child, Emma.”
“By sacrificing hers?” I pointed at Lucy, who was sobbing into my skirt. “You’re a monster.”
Before Richard could order his men to grab us, the glass patio doors behind him shattered.
Luca came through the broken glass like a force of nature. He didn’t use a gun. He moved with brutal, terrifying speed, taking down the first guard with a strike to the throat and disarming the second before the man could raise his weapon.
Richard stumbled back, drawing his own pistol, but Luca was faster. He slammed Richard into the wall, pinning him by the throat, the stolen watch clattering to the hardwood floor.
“Where is she?” Luca hissed, his eyes black with rage.
“Vanessa has her,” Richard choked out. “The shipping yard. Pier 4.”
Luca dropped him. He turned to me, his chest heaving. “Are you hurt?”
“No. Luca, Vanessa is going to kill Anna.”
“I won’t let that happen.” He picked up the broken watch from the floor and shoved it into his pocket. “Stay here with Marco.”
“No,” I said, grabbing my coat. “I’m coming.”
“It’s too dangerous—”
“My mother risked her life to help Anna hide the truth nine years ago! She kept that locker ticket secret until the day she died. I am not staying behind.”
Luca looked at my stubborn expression, then nodded once. “Stay behind me.”
We left Richard tied up with his own men and drove like madmen toward the docks. The rain was torrential now, turning the Chicago skyline into a blur of gray.
Pier 4 was a graveyard of rusted shipping containers.
Luca parked a block away. We moved silently through the maze of metal, the sound of the freezing rain masking our footsteps.
At the edge of the pier, illuminated by the headlights of a black sedan, stood Vanessa. Her red silk gown was ruined, soaked and clinging to her.
Kneeling on the wet concrete in front of her was Anna Russo. She was bleeding from a cut on her forehead, her hands bound behind her back.
Vanessa was holding a gun to Anna’s head.
But it wasn’t the gun that caught my attention.
May you like
It was the silver bracelet glittering on Vanessa’s wrist. A bracelet I had seen every day of my childhood. A bracelet my mother lost the week she died in a hit-and-run accident.
TITLE: THE BRACELET ON HER WRIST
