The Locksmith Was Just The Beginning

I didn’t wait for the car to fully stop.

I threw the door open and sprinted across the cracked pavement.

“Rachel, wait!” Paul, the driver, yelled, drawing a heavy black pistol from his jacket as he ran after me.

I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

I took the stairs two at a time, my lungs burning, the stitches behind my ear pulling and tearing.

The door to my apartment was wide open. The wood around the deadbolt was splintered.

“Lily!” I screamed.

I tore into the living room.

The coffee table was flipped over. Mrs. Gable, my elderly neighbor, was sitting on the floor in the corner, clutching a bloody towel to her forehead, sobbing hysterically.

“Mrs. Gable! Where is she? Where is Lily?”

“They took her, Rachel!” the old woman wailed. “Two men. They broke down the door. Your guards tried to stop them on the stairs, but there were too many—”

I ran into Lily’s bedroom.

Her bed was empty.

Lying in the center of the rug was her pink backpack.

Beside it was a small piece of blue tape.

The exact same blue tape Vanessa had used to mark the lockers in the staff office.

Written across it in black marker was one word:

SUNDAY.

My knees gave out. I collapsed onto the floor, clutching the pink backpack to my chest, letting out a sound I didn’t know a human throat could make.

Paul grabbed my shoulders, pulling me up.

“We have to go. Now. It’s not safe here.”

“They have my baby!” I screamed, fighting him. “Let me go!”

“Rachel, stop! If you stay here, they will kill you. And if you die, no one saves Lily.”

His words hit me like cold water.

I stopped fighting. I let him drag me down the stairs, past the shattered glass, and back into the armored car.

Paul sped away, tires squealing against the asphalt. He dialed his phone, putting it on speaker on the dashboard.

Luca answered on the first ring.

“Talk.”

“Boss, the apartment was breached,” Paul said, navigating a tight corner. “They took the kid. Left a message. Blue tape. Said ‘Sunday.’”

Total silence on the line.

Then, the sound of glass shattering in the background on Luca’s end.

“Bring Rachel to the warehouse,” Luca’s voice was guttural, stripped of all its polished civility. “Call the tactical team. I’m leaving the estate now.”

“What about the fiancée?”

“She stays at the house. She thinks she’s winning. Let her keep playing her part.”

The line went dead.

We drove in silence for twenty minutes, winding through the industrial district of Chicago until we pulled into an abandoned loading bay. Heavy steel doors rolled up, swallowing the car into the darkness before slamming shut.

Inside, it wasn’t abandoned.

Computers lined the walls. Heavily armed men moved with terrifying efficiency.

A sleek black car pulled in right after us.

Luca stepped out.

He had stripped off his tuxedo jacket. His tie was gone. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar. He looked like a man going to war.

He walked straight to me.

I was trembling, clutching the pink backpack like a lifeline.

“Mr. Moretti,” I choked out, tears spilling over my cheeks. “Please. She’s only seven.”

Luca took my face in his large hands.

“Look at me, Rachel.”

I forced my eyes up.

“Vanessa took Lily as leverage,” Luca said, his voice steady, grounding me. “She knows you found the ticket. She knows you could expose her before Sunday. Lily is her insurance to keep you quiet until Marcus Romano executes his plan.”

“What do I do?”

“Nothing. I do it.”

He turned to a massive man sitting at a bank of monitors. “Trace the Romano safe houses. They wouldn’t take a kid to their main compound. It’s too messy.”

“Boss,” a man with a scar over his eye approached. “If we hit the Romanos before Sunday, we break the treaty. The Commission will retaliate.”

Luca didn’t even blink.

“There is no treaty anymore. Vanessa broke it when she planned a hit with Marcus.”

He looked back at me.

“I am getting married tomorrow at 2:00 PM,” Luca said quietly.

I stared at him, confused. “What?”

“Vanessa wants the perfect wedding. She wants the photos. She wants the legal status of being a Moretti widow when I die on Sunday.” Luca’s eyes were pitch black. “She’s going to get her wedding. And you are going to be there.”

“I can’t! I can’t serve champagne while my daughter—”

“You’re not serving champagne, Rachel.”

Luca reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, antique gold pocket watch. He pressed it into my hand.

“This was my grandfather’s. Tomorrow, during the ceremony, Vanessa is going to ask for the rings. You are going to step forward and hand her this watch.”

I looked at the gold timepiece in my hand.

“Why?”

“Because inside the back casing of that watch is the Romano family crest,” Luca said. “It’s the watch Marcus Romano dropped the night he tried to kill my brother. Vanessa knows it. The moment she sees it in your hand, she will know the game is over.”

“And Lily?”

“By the time you hand her that watch, my men will have already leveled wherever they are keeping Lily.”

He stepped back.

“They thought they were playing a maid,” Luca said softly. “Tomorrow, they find out the maid belongs to me.”

A phone rang on the computer desk.

The tech answered, listened, and looked up at Luca.

“Boss. We’ve got a problem.”

Luca turned. “What?”

“Vanessa just left the estate. But she didn’t go to a Romano safe house.”

“Where did she go?”

The tech swallowed hard.