Chapter 5 - THE HIGHWAY IN PURSUIT
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Three heavily armored black Suburbans tore through the iron gates of the Moretti estate, kicking up sheets of wet gravel.
The city of Chicago was a blur of neon reflections and slick, black asphalt beneath the relentless downpour.
Luca sat in the front passenger seat of the middle vehicle, a heavy tactical tablet resting on his knee, monitoring live radio chatter.
Mara and I sat in the reinforced leather back seats, watching the headlights cut through the dense fog along Interstate 94.
The rhythmic hum of the high-performance engine was the only sound competing with the roar of the wind outside.
Daniel drove with steady, aggressive precision, keeping the speedometer pinned at eighty-five miles per hour.
Every few minutes, Luca’s phone would vibrate with encrypted updates from his captains in the city.
“The Bellini terminals on the river have been shut down by federal marshals,” Luca reported to the cabin, his voice flat.
“Special Agent Miller executed the search warrants twenty minutes ago.”
“Salvatore Bellini has fled his penthouse on Lake Shore Drive in an armored Mercedes.”
“Where is he going?” Mara asked, leaning forward against the leather console.
“He’s heading north,” Luca replied, zooming in on a flashing red GPS beacon on his screen.
“He knows what was in that safe, Mara.”
“He knows that the only leverage he has left against the Commission is Elena and the boy.”
“If he reaches Door County before we do, he will use them as human shields to negotiate safe passage out of the country.”
I felt a cold knot of dread tighten in my stomach as I looked at the dark highway stretching into the Wisconsin forests.
“Does Elena know we’re coming?” I asked quietly.
Luca turned his head slightly, his profile carved from stone against the green dashboard light.
“Elena hasn't answered a phone in four years, Claire,” Luca said softly.
“She lives off the grid on an apple orchard three miles outside of Sister Bay.”
“She receives cash disbursements through a local attorney who thinks she is a widow fleeing an abusive ex-husband.”
“Which, in a way, was the lie Vanessa sold her,” Mara added bitterly from beside me.
“Vanessa told Elena that Luca had placed a price on her head for taking family money.”
“She told Elena that Luca was celebrating the freedom to marry into the Bellini dynasty.”
Luca’s hand tightened around the heavy tablet until the plastic casing creaked under the pressure of his fingers.
“I spent four years believing the woman I loved had looked at my life and decided I was too monstrous to stay with,” Luca whispered.
“I let the guilt consume me.”
“I threw myself into the business, took more territory, and convinced myself that power was the only thing that could never abandon me.”
He looked out into the black woods rushing past the window, his voice heavy with four years of buried grief.
“And all the while, my boy was growing up in the snow, four hours away, being told his father was a ghost.”
I reached forward instinctively, placing my small, warm hand over his forearm where his sleeve was rolled to the elbow.
The hard muscle beneath his dark sleeve relaxed slightly beneath my palm.
Luca looked down at my hand, then slowly turned his head to meet my gaze in the dim interior.
There was no mob boss in his eyes in that moment.
There was only a father who had been robbed of his child’s first steps, his first words, and his first laughter.
“We’re going to bring him home, Luca,” I whispered, my voice steady and unwavering.
Luca turned his hand over, his long, scarred fingers curling firmly around mine, squeezing with an intensity that made my heart race.
“We are, Claire,” he murmured softly.
Suddenly, Daniel shouted, his foot slamming hard on the brake pedal.
“Brace!”
A blinding wall of high-beam headlights erupted from the tree line fifty yards ahead.
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A heavy logging truck had been jackknifed diagonally across both lanes of the icy highway.
Gunfire shattered the night, sparks raining down on our bulletproof windshield like red-hot hail.
