Chapter 3 - Track Four
The black Suburban tore down Michigan Avenue, tires screaming across the wet asphalt as Luca’s driver cut through two red lights with emergency flashers strobing against the brick facades.
In the back seat, Dr. Frank Rossi—Luca’s personal physician for twenty years—worked swiftly on my crushed hand. He sprayed a cold numbing agent directly over the broken knuckles, and I had to bite the collar of my uniform to keep from crying out.
"Three hairline fractures across the third and fourth metacarpals," Dr. Rossi muttered, wrapping my hand tightly against a padded aluminum brace. "Another quarter-inch of pressure, Grace, and the bone would have powdered. Who did this?"
"The gate," Luca said from the front passenger seat. His eyes were glued to the GPS monitor on the dashboard. "Marcus Bellini is three minutes ahead of us. How did Marcus get an emergency custody warrant on a Sunday evening?"
Dr. Rossi looked up from my bandages, his gray brows furrowed. "Marcus sits on the Cook County Family Welfare Board, Luca. If someone filed a report alleging child abandonment or neglect by an active-duty soldier with combat trauma, Marcus could have a temporary protection order signed by a duty judge within forty minutes."
"Neglect?" Luca slammed his open palm against the dashboard, shaking the console. "Nicholas has four commendation medals! He survived an IED blast outside Kandahar! He brought his daughter home to his family!"
"He brought her to a family that slammed the iron gate on her nose," I whispered.
The words slipped out before I could stop them. Dr. Rossi froze, tape halfway around my wrist.
Luca didn't turn around, but in the rearview mirror, I saw his dark eyes catch mine. There was no anger in them. Only a hollow, bleeding ache that stripped twenty years of hardened authority from his features.
"You're right," Luca said, his voice flat. "Her grandfather slammed the gate."
We screeched to a halt at the corner of Canal and Adams, the tires hopping the curb right outside the side entrance of Union Station. Before the car fully settled, Luca was out the door.
The chill Chicago wind off the river hit like a wet sheet. Rain had started falling, slicking the granite stairs. Luca moved with a frightening, focused speed, his heavy overcoat billowing behind him. Marco and two armed drivers fell in behind him like a phalanx.
"Grace, stay behind Marco," Luca ordered without looking back.
We burst through the brass-trimmed doors into the Great Hall. The cavernous room with its vaulted skylights was half-shadowed, echoing with the distant sound of rolling luggage and platform announcements. Near the baggage claim toward the rear exit, a knot of six men in dark suits had formed a tight circle around a bench.
A little girl's scream tore through the marble terminal.
"Daddy! No! Daddy!"
Nicholas Moretti was on his knees against the cold terrazzo floor. Two burly men in trench coats had his arms twisted behind his back, forcing his chest toward the ground. His duffel bag lay kicked open three yards away, cheap cotton toddler clothes and a worn green baby blanket spilling across the dirty floor.
Standing over him was Marcus Bellini—thirty-two, slicked-back blond hair, wearing a bespoke cashmere coat that reeked of expensive cologne and family arrogance. In Marcus’s arms, wrapped in the pink coat, little Lily was thrashing like a trapped sparrow, kicking her small patent-leather shoes against his chest.
"Get your hands off her!" Nicholas roared, his face pressed against the stone. Blood was trickling from his lower lip where someone had cracked him with a ring. "She has my name! She’s my daughter!"
"She's an endangered dependent in the custody of an emotionally unstable veteran," Marcus said coolly, pulling a tri-folded legal document from his breast pocket. "You're lucky I don't have the transit police arrest you for disorderly conduct, Moretti. Vanessa told me you were coming to cause trouble."
"Marcus."
The name wasn't shouted. It was spoken with the quiet, chilling clarity of a church bell.
Marcus froze. The two guards pinning Nicholas looked up, their eyes widening as they saw Luca Moretti walking across the terminal floor.
Luca walked with his hands out of his coat pockets, open, relaxed—the posture of a man who didn't need to brandish a weapon because everyone in the county knew what he was capable of.
"Put my granddaughter down," Luca said.
Marcus forced a tight, condescending smile, though a muscle in his jaw twitched. "Luca. Good. You’re here. Vanessa called me in tears from the estate. She told me Nicholas broke through the perimeter, assaulted a maid, and tried to extort her before running off with an undocumented child."
"Assaulted a maid?" Luca stopped three paces from Marcus.
I stepped out from behind Marco, holding my aluminum-splinted hand against my chest where the white bandages were stark against my black work vest.
Nicholas lifted his bruised face from the floor. His breath caught when he saw me. "You... you were the girl at the gate."
"She was," Luca said, never taking his eyes off Marcus. "And the only person who assaulted her was your sister, Marcus. Tell your men to take their hands off my son before Marco puts three holes in the floor between their boots."
The two guards didn't wait for Marcus's command. They knew Luca Moretti’s reputation in Chicago. They let go of Nicholas’s arms and stepped back with their hands raised.
Nicholas pushed himself up, gasping, rubbing his shoulder where the joint had been strained. He didn't look at Luca. He lunged straight for Marcus, ripping Lily out of the man’s arms with a ferocious, protective pull that nearly took Marcus off his feet.
Lily buried her face into Nicholas’s neck, sobbing hysterically, her small arms locked around his collar. "Daddy, don't let him take me! Don't let him!"
"I got you, baby," Nicholas murmured into her damp curls, rocking her against his chest, his own tears cutting tracks through the grime on his cheeks. "I got you. Nobody’s taking you."
Marcus straightened his lapels, his face darkening with humiliated rage. "You’re making a massive mistake, Luca. Vanessa has your signature on the family health directive. She has power of attorney over your domestic assets as of noon yesterday. I have the signed court order declaring Nicholas unfit due to medical discharge. Legally, that child belongs in state custody until Nicholas passes a full psychiatric evaluation!"
"My signature?" Luca’s eyes narrowed into slits.
"Signed and witnessed," Marcus sneered, tapping the paper. "Vanessa knew Nicholas would show up eventually. She protected the family while you were busy playing the sentimental patriarch. You can’t stop this order."
Luca took one step closer to Marcus, leaning in until their noses were six inches apart. "Where did she get the medical discharge files, Marcus?"
Marcus hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his pale eyes. "From the Department of Veterans Affairs. Routine background clearance for your transport contract."
"The VA doesn't release combat personnel files to private transport contractors," Nicholas said, his voice raspy and shaking with pure fury. He turned toward his father for the first time, his gaze hard as flint. "They only release them to immediate family who present a signed request from the soldier's sponsor."
Nicholas reached into the inner pocket of his fatigue jacket with his free hand. He pulled out a crumpled, water-stained piece of heavy bond paper and thrust it at Luca’s chest.
"Read it, Dad," Nicholas choked out. "Go ahead. Read the letter you sent to my battalion commander in Germany three months ago. The letter that got me stripped of my sergeant stripes and sent home on a medical dishonorable."
Luca took the paper. His fingers shook as he unfolded it beneath the terminal lights.
I looked over his shoulder. At the top was Luca Moretti’s private letterhead, embossed in gold with the family crest.
At the bottom was Luca’s unmistakable signature.
And in the middle, the letter formally petitioned the United States Army to revoke Nicholas Moretti’s security clearance, citing "chronic moral turpitude, violent delusions, and the fraudulent claim of a child fathered out of wedlock to secure military housing allowances."
Luca looked up from the paper, his face pale as chalk. "Nicholas... I didn't write this."
May you like
Nicholas let out a broken, humorless laugh that echoed off the high ceiling. "Of course you didn't, Dad. That’s what you always say when someone gets hurt in your shadow. But that’s your wax seal at the bottom. And the notary stamp belongs to the desk clerk at your private downtown office."
***
