Chapter 6 - The Boy in the Locked Room
“Turn the car around! Now!”
Luca’s voice shattered the tense silence of the SUV. The driver slammed on the brakes, the heavy vehicle skidding on the wet pavement before throwing us backward as he executed a violent, illegal U-turn in the middle of Michigan Avenue.
“What is it?” Luca demanded, grabbing my shoulder.
I stared at the phone in my hand, my heart hammering against my ribs. Vanessa had hung up. The line was dead.
“It’s Vanessa,” I gasped, struggling to catch my breath. “Julian caught her. She said he isn’t running. He’s going upstairs for Daniel.”
The color completely vanished from Luca’s face.
Julian hadn’t fled the estate. The breakout from the basement had been a diversion. He was still inside the mansion, moving through the very halls where a twelve-year-old boy was supposedly locked safely away.
“Step on it!” Luca roared at the driver. “If you blow the engine, I don’t care! Get us there!”
The SUV roared, tires screaming against the asphalt as we tore through red lights, weaving recklessly through the midnight traffic.
My hands shook uncontrollably. Daniel was up there. With Teresa. Two vulnerable targets against a desperate man with nothing left to lose.
“I told my mother to lock the doors,” Luca muttered, his eyes wide and unblinking as he stared at the road ahead. “The master suite has steel-reinforced deadbolts. They’re safe. They have to be.”
Answer one.
The master suite was a fortress. But my stomach plummeted as I realized the flaw in that logic.
“Mr. Moretti,” I whispered, my voice trembling.
He looked at me, his eyes begging me not to say what he already knew.
“Teresa has the master keys,” I said softly. “But Julian is the CFO. He designed the estate’s security upgrades last year. He has the master override codes.”
Luca closed his eyes, a sound of pure agony escaping his throat.
Ten excruciating minutes later, we smashed through the front iron gates of the Moretti estate. The gates were already hanging off their hinges—broken from the inside out when Julian’s traitor guards made their fake escape to draw away the remaining loyal men.
The mansion loomed in the darkness, rain lashing against the massive stone facade.
Luca didn’t wait for the car to stop. He threw the door open while we were still moving, hitting the gravel driveway and breaking into a dead sprint.
I grabbed my coat and ran after him, the cold rain instantly soaking my hair.
The front double doors of the mansion were wide open.
Inside, the grand foyer was a disaster. The antique vases were shattered, and two of Luca’s loyal guards lay unconscious on the marble floor.
Luca stepped over them, drawing his weapon, his eyes locked on the grand sweeping staircase.
“Mom! Daniel!” Luca screamed, his voice tearing through the silent house.
No answer.
We ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. My lungs burned, but I couldn’t stop. I had to know Daniel was safe.
We reached the second floor. The long hallway was eerily quiet. The thick Persian runners muffled our footsteps.
At the far end of the hall, the heavy oak doors to the master suite stood wide open.
The wood around the electronic lock was splintered and black. Julian hadn’t used a code. He had blown the lock with a shaped charge.
Luca froze in the doorway, his gun raised.
I peeked around his shoulder, terrified of what I would see.
The room was trashed. Drawers pulled out, mattresses flipped.
But there was no blood.
And the room was completely empty.
“They’re gone,” Luca breathed, lowering his gun slightly, the panic finally overriding his control. “He took them.”
I walked into the room, my eyes scanning the destruction.
Why would Julian take them? He needed cash. Kidnapping the boss’s mother and son would guarantee the entire Chicago underworld would hunt him down before sunrise.
Unless they weren’t a hostage. Unless they were a shield.
I walked toward the large bay window at the back of the room. It overlooked the sprawling gardens and the dense woods bordering the property line.
As I looked down, something caught my eye on the floor near the thick velvet curtains.
It was a small, wooden object.
I bent down and picked it up.
It was a hand-carved wooden knight from a chess set.
I recognized it immediately.
It belonged to Daniel. He hated chess, but he loved the little wooden horses. He carried this one in his pocket everywhere he went.
But it wasn’t just dropped.
It was placed deliberately, standing perfectly upright, pointing directly toward the small, hidden panel in the wall beside the fireplace.
“Mr. Moretti,” I said urgently.
Luca turned around. I pointed to the panel.
“The dumbwaiter,” I said.
The mansion was built in the 1920s. The old servant’s dumbwaiter ran from the master suite all the way down to the sub-basement, bypassing the main floors entirely. It hadn’t been used in decades.
Luca rushed to the panel and ripped it open.
The ropes were cut.
“They didn’t go out the front,” Luca realized, his eyes widening. “Julian couldn’t risk carrying them past the perimeter guards. He forced them down the shaft to the sub-basement. It connects to the old Prohibition tunnels leading into the woods.”
Julian was taking them underground.
Without a word, Luca turned and sprinted out of the room, heading for the basement stairs.
I followed him down, deeper into the bowels of the mansion. The air grew colder, smelling of damp earth and old concrete.
We reached the sub-basement. The heavy steel door leading to the old Prohibition tunnels was blown open.
Beyond it lay complete, suffocating darkness.
Luca clicked on a tactical flashlight attached to his weapon.
“Stay behind me, Hannah,” he whispered.
We stepped into the tunnel. The floor was slick with mud and water seeping through the old brick ceiling.
We walked in silence for what felt like miles, though it could only have been a few hundred yards.
Suddenly, a sound echoed ahead of us.
A sharp, cruel laugh.
Julian’s laugh.
Luca killed his flashlight instantly, plunging us into total darkness. We crept forward, using the faint ambient light ahead to guide us.
The tunnel opened up into a large, cavernous storm drain beneath the woods.
Standing near a rusted iron ladder leading up to the surface was Julian Rossi.
His face was bruised and bloody from where Luca had struck him with the crystal decanter, but he held a heavy assault rifle in his hands.
And standing in front of him, shielding Daniel with her frail body, was Teresa Moretti.
Julian smiled, raising the rifle.
May you like
“Drop the gun, Luca,” Julian echoed into the dark. “Or your mother and your heir die right here in the mud.”
TITLE: The Matriarch's Shield
