Chapter 7 - THE CHILD'S DRAWING IN THE VESTRY
The silence in the Presidential Suite was broken only by the sound of rain lashing against the glass.
Vincenzo Moretti, the feared and revered Don of Chicago, hadn't been assassinated by his enemies. He had been murdered by his own wife.
I looked at Rosa. The elegant matriarch suddenly looked incredibly small. She didn't scream or deny it. She just closed her eyes, the truth finally catching up to her after twenty years of hiding in plain sight.
“Mom?” Luca whispered, his voice shattering in the quiet room.
“He was going to sell you, Luca,” Rosa said, a tear finally escaping her iron control. She looked at her son with a fierce, terrifying maternal love. “The Feds were closing in. Vincenzo was going to turn you over to the FBI to save himself. I couldn't let him send my only son to federal prison.”
Luca stepped back as if he had been physically struck. The father he had worshipped had been a traitor; the mother he had protected was a murderer. His entire empire was built on a foundation of rot.
Vanessa’s cruel laugh sliced through the heavy tension.
“What a beautiful family tragedy,” she clapped slowly. “But it changes nothing. The priest has the key to the blood samples. Which means he has the only proof that Rosa killed the Don.”
Vanessa raised her hand, signaling her men.
“Kill them all,” Vanessa ordered coldly. “Except the old man. We need him to get the key from the priest.”
Before the men could raise their guns, Luca moved.
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't shout. He moved with the terrifying, lethal speed of a man who had survived the violent underworld for a decade. He grabbed the heavy marble lamp off the nearest side table and hurled it directly at the chandelier hanging above Vanessa’s men.
The heavy crystal fixture crashed down, plunging the suite into semi-darkness and showering the enforcers in broken glass.
“Run!” Luca roared over the shouting.
I grabbed Leo in one arm and hooked my other arm under my father’s shoulder. We scrambled out into the hallway, Luca covering our retreat as gunfire erupted behind us, chewing through the drywall.
We didn't take the stairs. We ran to the service elevator at the end of the hall, slipping inside just as Carlo—Rosa’s man—laid down suppressing fire against Vanessa’s guards.
The elevator dropped.
“Where are we going?” I gasped, my lungs burning as I set Leo down. My father was leaning heavily against the metal wall, his face alarmingly pale.
“St. Jude’s,” Luca said, his chest heaving. He slammed a new magazine into his pistol. “The wedding is scheduled for eight a.m. Vanessa knows the priest has the key. She’s going to tear that church apart looking for him.”
“Luca, she’ll kill Father Thomas,” my dad wheezed.
“Not if we get there first,” Luca promised.
The sun was just beginning to rise over Chicago, casting a bruised purple light over the city as we abandoned the SUV a block away from the towering gothic spires of St. Jude’s Cathedral.
The church was massive, silent, and intimidating. Stained glass windows depicting martyrs looked down on us as we slipped through the heavy wooden side doors into the sanctuary.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
The pews were decorated with white silk ribbons and sprawling arrangements of white roses—Vanessa’s chosen wedding flowers. The irony of standing in the middle of Luca’s impending nuptials while running for our lives made my stomach turn.
“The vestry is in the back,” Luca whispered, gesturing for us to follow him down a shadowed stone corridor.
We found the heavy oak door of the vestry slightly ajar.
Luca pushed it open, his gun raised.
The room was empty. Robes hung neatly in the closet, and a silver chalice rested on a small wooden table.
But Father Thomas wasn't there.
“We’re too late,” I choked out, panic seizing my throat. “Vanessa got to him.”
“No,” my father said quietly, walking unsteadily toward the priest’s wooden desk.
He reached out and picked up a piece of paper resting perfectly in the center of the leather blotter.
It was a child’s drawing.
I froze. I recognized the bright crayon colors immediately. It was a drawing of a house with a crooked chimney and a big yellow sun.
“Leo drew this,” I whispered, stepping closer. “He drew this at Sunday school last week. Father Thomas always kept them.”
But there was something else on the drawing.
A message, written in the priest’s elegant, sweeping handwriting across the yellow sun.
The shepherd protects the flock in the crypt.
Luca’s eyes widened. “The catacombs beneath the church. He saw them coming and took the key down to hide.”
We rushed out of the vestry, heading toward the altar. Hidden behind the marble baptismal font was a heavy iron grate that led down to the old church crypts.
Luca pulled the grate open with a heavy screech of metal. The air blowing up from below was cold and smelled of damp earth.
“Emma, take your father and Leo. Stay behind me,” Luca ordered, pulling a small flashlight from his jacket.
We descended the narrow stone steps. The crypts were a maze of arched corridors lined with ancient stone tombs. The beam of the flashlight cut through the pitch-black darkness, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air.
“Father Thomas?” Luca called out softly.
A shuffling sound echoed from the darkness ahead.
“Luca?” a trembling voice replied.
We hurried forward, turning a corner into a small, rounded chamber.
Sitting on a stone bench, clutching a rosary tightly in his hands, was Father Thomas. The elderly priest looked terrified, his white collar rumpled.
“Thank God,” my father sighed, collapsing onto the bench beside his old friend. “Thomas, do you have it? The key I gave you in the coat?”
The priest nodded vigorously, reaching into the pocket of his cassock.
He pulled out the old, tarnished safe deposit key.
“I kept it safe, old friend,” the priest whispered, handing it to Luca. “Just like I promised.”
Luca closed his hand around the key, the metal proving that everything his mother had built was a lie. He had the power to end the war, to destroy his mother, and to free himself.
But before Luca could speak, a slow, mocking voice echoed through the stone catacombs.
“How wonderfully dramatic.”
We spun around.
Stepping out from the shadows of the arched corridor, holding a suppressed pistol directly at Leo’s head, was Vanessa.
May you like
She was no longer wearing the white silk dress. She was dressed in tactical black, her eyes shining with absolute malice. Behind her stood five armed men, completely blocking our only exit.
“Give me the key, Luca,” Vanessa smiled, cocking her pistol. “Or I paint the crypt with the boy.”
