Chapter 4 - THE BLUE COAT
The paper crumpled in my trembling left hand.
My mind went entirely blank with terror.
Leo was at my small apartment across the city, asleep in his bed while my teenage neighbor sat in the living room watching TV.
He was supposed to be safe. He was my whole world.
Matteo straightened up, adjusting his cuffs.
He looked at Luca, completely ignoring my silent panic.
“I found that in the hallway outside the kitchens,” Matteo said smoothly. “Thought the poor girl might want it back.”
It was a lie.
Staff lockers were locked.
Matteo had broken into mine specifically to find leverage. He knew I was in the pantry. He knew I had seen Vanessa.
Luca’s face was a mask of carved stone.
He didn’t look at the drawing. He didn’t look at me.
He looked dead center into his brother’s eyes.
“How thoughtful of you, Matteo,” Luca said quietly. “Since you’re here, perhaps you should go upstairs and say hello to Vanessa. She’s been complaining about a headache. I’m sure seeing you would lift her spirits.”
The words were perfectly polite.
But beneath them was a clear, unmistakable challenge.
I know what you are to her.
Matteo’s smile flickered, just for a second.
“I’ll do that, brother. We have a lot to celebrate tonight.”
He turned and walked out of the study, pulling the heavy oak door shut behind him.
The moment the latch clicked, the terror in my chest exploded.
I shot out of the chair, ignoring the stabbing pain in my right wrist.
“He has my son’s drawing,” I gasped, my voice cracking. “He knows where Leo is. He’s going to hurt him.”
Luca moved faster than I thought possible for a man in a tailored suit.
He crossed the room, grabbed my shoulders, and forced me to look at him.
“Breathe, Emma.”
“I have to go,” I choked out, tears spilling hot and fast down my cheeks. “I have to get to my apartment. If he hurts my baby—”
“Listen to me,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a register of absolute command. “Matteo is playing a game of chess. He handed you that drawing to keep you quiet. If he wanted to hurt your son, he wouldn’t have warned you. He’s holding him as collateral.”
“I don’t care about his game! I care about Leo!”
“And so do I,” Luca said fiercely.
The sincerity in his dark eyes stopped me.
He wasn’t looking at me like a maid who had inconvenienced him.
He was looking at me like someone under his protection.
“Matteo expects me to stay here and wait for the New York hit squad to arrive,” Luca said rapidly, releasing my shoulders. He walked to the desk, grabbed the black velvet bundle containing the watch, and shoved it deep into his suit pocket.
Then he opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a sleek, black 9mm handgun.
He racked the slide with a sharp metallic snap.
“We are leaving,” Luca said. “Right now. Out the back service entrance. We are getting your son.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t hesitate.
I followed him out of the study, sprinting down the dark, carpeted servant corridors.
We reached the staff breakroom at the back of the house.
“Grab your coat,” Luca ordered, keeping his eyes on the hallway. “It’s freezing outside.”
I ran to my locker.
The metal door was slightly ajar. The padlock had been snapped off.
Matteo’s work.
I pulled my heavy wool coat off the hook.
As I shoved my uninjured left arm into the sleeve, my fingers brushed against something stiff in the pocket.
Something that hadn’t been there when I arrived for my shift.
I pulled it out.
It was a stiff piece of cardstock.
A one-way Amtrak train ticket.
Destination: Montreal, Canada.
Departure: 1:30 A.M. Tonight.
Tucked beneath the ticket was a small piece of heavy, cream-colored stationery.
The handwriting was elegant. Sharp.
I recognized it instantly from the wedding invitations I had helped seal last month.
Vanessa’s handwriting.
There was only one line written on the card.
Leave tonight with the boy, or Matteo will kill him. I cannot stop him. - V.
I stared at the note, the words blurring together.
“What is it?” Luca asked, stepping into the breakroom.
I handed him the note and the ticket.
Luca read it, his eyes narrowing.
This was the reversal.
Vanessa wasn’t working in perfect harmony with Matteo.
She was terrified of him.
She had tied my wrist in the pantry to keep me quiet, yes—but maybe she did it so Matteo wouldn’t find out I was there. She was trying to buy me time to run.
“She’s a hostage to him,” Luca murmured, staring at the elegant handwriting. “Just like you.”
“We have to go,” I pleaded.
Luca dropped the ticket, grabbed my good hand, and pulled me out the back door into the freezing Chicago night.
We bypassed the main garage, running through the manicured hedges to a nondescript black sedan parked near the gardener’s shed.
Luca drove like a madman, weaving through the late-night city traffic.
It took twelve minutes to reach the lower-middle-class neighborhood where my apartment building stood.
Twelve minutes of agonizing, suffocating panic.
Luca parked the car halfway onto the sidewalk.
We sprinted up the concrete stairs to the third floor.
I reached my door.
Apartment 3B.
My heart completely stopped.
May you like
The door was standing wide open.
The deadbolt had been violently kicked in, the wood splintered around the frame.
