Chapter 5 - ELENA HAD BEEN PROTECTING ME LONG BEFORE I KNEW HER SECRET
The Cicero clinic looked abandoned.
That was deliberate.
Three floors of brown brick sat behind a rusting gate beneath an elevated train line, dark except for one basement window.
Marco wanted me to stay in the SUV.
I told him I would shoot him if he asked again.
He smiled.
That was how I knew he believed I might survive.
Dr. Harris adjusted the portable line beneath my coat.
“You have maybe fifteen good minutes before your blood pressure starts making decisions for you.”
“I need ten.”
“You always were arrogant.”
“You met me four years ago.”
“I formed an opinion quickly.”
Marco handed me a pistol.
My fingers closed around it, then loosened.
Weak.
Too weak.
I hated it.
“You don’t need to prove anything,” Marco said quietly.
“I’m not.”
He looked toward the clinic.
“I know.”
Six men entered through the rear.
Two more took the roof.
Marco and I went through the loading entrance.
No gunfire.
No guards.
That was wrong.
Vincent never left places undefended.
The basement smelled like antiseptic and damp concrete.
Then I heard a child crying.
“Mom?”
Lily.
I moved before anyone could stop me.
The hallway bent right.
A door stood open.
Elena lay on the floor with blood on one side of her face, wrists tied behind her.
Lily was beside her.
Alive.
I nearly dropped where I stood.
“Daddy!”
The word hit harder than a bullet.
She had never called me that.
Not once.
I crossed the room.
Marco cut Elena’s restraints while I dropped to my knees beside Lily.
She threw both arms around my neck.
Pain tore through my ribs.
I did not care.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispered.
I held her tighter.
Behind me, Elena stirred.
“Dominic.”
I turned.
Her eyes opened.
“Are you hurt?”
“Just my head.”
“Who did it?”
“Vincent.”
“Where is he?”
“Gone.”
Marco cursed.
A speaker crackled overhead.
Vincent’s voice filled the room.
“I wondered if you would actually come.”
I looked up.
Camera.
A tiny red light near the ceiling.
“Show yourself.”
“I’m not sentimental enough for that.”
Marco raised his weapon toward the camera.
“Don’t,” I said.
Vincent laughed.
“You always did learn quickly.”
My jaw clenched.
“Why?”
“A dangerous question.”
“I gave you everything.”
“No. Your father gave you everything.”
There it was.
Twenty years of buried resentment.
Vincent continued.
“I gave your family thirty years. I cleaned your father’s mistakes. I negotiated your wars. I buried your brother. Then your father handed Chicago to a thirty-year-old boy because his last name was Romano.”
“My father trusted you.”
“Your father used me.”
The anger in his voice was finally real.
Vanessa’s involvement suddenly made more sense.
She had not built this.
Vincent had.
She had simply wanted what he offered.
“You recruited Vanessa.”
“She recruited herself once she understood what marriage could buy.”
“And Diane?”
“Debt is a persuasive employer.”
I heard movement behind the wall.
Marco heard it too.
His men spread out.
Vincent spoke again.
“You know what I admire about you, Dominic?”
“No.”
“You actually came for them.”
Elena looked at me.
“That surprised me.”
“Then you never knew me.”
“I knew exactly who you were until the maid walked into your house.”
My eyes moved to Elena.
Something in Vincent’s words bothered me.
“When did you know Lily was mine?”
“A year ago.”
Elena’s face went still.
A year.
Long before she was hired.
I looked at her.
She whispered, “I didn’t know he knew.”
Vincent continued.
“She’s the reason your illness began earlier than planned.”
“What does that mean?”
“We had intended to wait until after the wedding. Then Elena started asking questions.”
I turned sharply.
“What questions?”
Elena looked down.
“Tell him,” Vincent said.
I stared at her.
“Elena.”
Her eyes filled.
“I didn’t come to the mansion because I needed a job.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“I needed access.”
“To what?”
“To Vanessa.”
Silence.
Lily watched her mother.
Elena took a shaky breath.
“Three months ago, a man followed Lily home from school. I thought he was after money. Then he called me by a name I hadn’t used since I met you.”
My old world name.
One few outsiders knew.
“I moved us twice,” she said. “He kept finding us.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“Because I didn’t know if he worked for you.”
That answer hurt.
“So you got hired here.”
“Yes.”
“To investigate my fiancée?”
“Yes.”
“And you learned she was poisoning me?”
“Not immediately.”
“What did you learn?”
Elena looked toward the ceiling camera.
“Vanessa had been meeting Vincent.”
Marco stopped moving.
“How do you know?”
“I saw them together before I ever came here.”
“Where?”
“A hotel near O’Hare.”
Vincent’s voice disappeared from the speaker.
Interesting.
Elena continued.
“I followed Vanessa after she met the man who had been watching Lily. Vincent joined her in the lobby.”
“How long ago?”
“Seven weeks.”
My illness began six weeks ago.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have believed the maid who suddenly appeared saying your fiancée and consigliere were trying to kill you?”
I wanted to say yes.
The truth stopped me.
Probably not.
Elena pulled something from inside the torn hem of her blouse.
A tiny memory card.
Marco stared at it.
“What is that?”
“Proof.”
Vincent’s voice exploded through the speaker.
“Elena.”
She flinched.
He sounded afraid.
For the first time all night, Vincent sounded afraid.
I took the card.
“What’s on it?”
“A recording.”
“Of what?”
“Vanessa and Vincent talking about the wedding, your death, and Lily.”
I looked at the camera.
Checkmate.
Then the lights went out.
Lily screamed.
A metallic lock slammed somewhere behind us.
Marco shouted.
“Move!”
Red emergency lights flickered on.
Smoke began pouring through a ceiling vent.
Not fire.
Something else.
Dr. Harris grabbed my arm.
“Cover your mouth!”
I pulled Lily against my chest.
Marco kicked at the door.
Locked.
Vincent’s voice returned through the speaker.
Calm again.
“You should have stayed in bed, Dominic.”
I looked at Elena.
She was staring at a vent near the floor.
“What?”
“The laundry shaft.”
“What about it?”
“It opens outside.”
Too small for an adult.
Perfect for a child.
I understood.
“No.”
Elena grabbed Lily.
“Baby, listen to me.”
Lily started crying.
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to crawl.”
“No!”
I crouched in front of her.
The smoke thickened.
“Lily.”
She looked at me.
“You said you knew I’d come.”
She nodded.
“Now I need to know you can be brave.”
“I’m scared.”
“So am I.”
That surprised her.
I touched the Cubs cap on her head.
“Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you move anyway.”
Marco ripped the vent cover loose.
Lily crawled inside.
Elena gave her the memory card.
“No,” I said.
She looked at me.
“It has to get out.”
Lily disappeared into darkness.
I heard her small body moving through metal.
Then silence.
Thirty seconds.
Forty.
A minute.
I was beginning to black out when an alarm sounded outside.
Fresh air suddenly blasted through the vent.
Marco’s men had reached the exterior controls.
The door crashed open.
We stumbled into the hallway.
Outside, Lily stood in the rain holding the memory card over her head.
“I didn’t lose it!”
I laughed.
Actually laughed.
Then my knees gave out.
As I fell, I saw Elena running toward me.
May you like
And behind her, on the roof across the street, a black silhouette lifted a weapon.
Vincent.
