Chapter 6 - THE DEAD SPEAK IN WHISPERS
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The cold autumn rain had turned into a freezing drizzle as the grandfather clock struck four in the morning.
The study in the bluff house felt like a military war room.
Luca had set up an antique cassette player on the mahogany desk, its twin reels winding slowly under the green lamp.
Elena, Matteo, and Rosa stood gathered around the machine in absolute silence.
The tape hissed with magnetic static, then a dry, coughing voice filled the room.
“My name is Frank Vance, badge four-eight-two-one, Chicago Homicide,” the voice wheezed.
“If you’re listening to this, I’m probably dead, and Matteo De Luca has finally found his kid.”
Matteo leaned forward, his knuckles resting on the desk until they turned white.
“Eleven years ago,” Vance continued, “I was called to Mercy Hospital for an unattended death.”
“Isabella Rossi.”
“Her charts said stage-four lymphoma, signed off by Dr. Jonathan Vance—yeah, my corrupt cousin who worked for Dario De Luca.”
Elena gasped, gripping the back of a leather chair.
“Jonathan was dirty from his shoes to his collar,” the retired detective’s voice rasped.
“I looked at Isabella’s medical records before they incinerated the original files.”
“She didn't have cancer.”
“Her organs were shutting down from chronic, low-dose thallium poisoning.”
“Someone had been slipping it into her drinking water for six months.”
“The landlord at her Cicero tenement was on Dario’s payroll.”
Matteo let out a guttural sound, like a wounded animal trapped in a snare.
He slammed his fist onto the mahogany desk, splintering the polished surface beneath his palm.
“Dario,” Matteo snarled, his voice vibrating with pure madness.
“He found her eleven years ago and slowly murdered her while I was running his shipping lines!”
The recording kept playing, oblivious to the agony in the room.
“Isabella knew she was dying,” Vance’s voice continued, accompanied by the clink of a glass.
“The night before she passed, she called me to her bedside.”
“She knew I was Jonathan’s cousin, but she knew I had a daughter of my own.”
“She gave me a safe-deposit key and made me swear on my badge that I’d hold it until her girl was in danger.”
“The key opens box nine-four-two at the Continental Trust on LaSalle Street.”
“Inside is Isabella’s original journal and the toxicology samples I stole from the morgue before Jonathan could burn them.”
“If Dario gets that box, he burns the evidence and takes the throne.”
“If you get it, Matteo, you can put your brother under the ground where he belongs.”
The tape hissed into silence.
The plastic reel spun freely with a dry clicking sound.
Elena stood in the center of the room, her vision blurring with hot, furious tears.
All those agonizing months in that freezing hospital room.
Watching her mother waste away, losing her hair, vomiting blood into plastic basins while whispering apologies to Elena for being weak.
It wasn't an illness.
It was an execution carried out by inches.
Dario De Luca had tortured Isabella to death in the shadows while his younger brother sat five miles away, ignorant and grieving.
Elena looked up at Matteo.
The mob boss was no longer just angry.
A cold, terrifying calm had settled over his severe features.
His eyes were dead and empty, like a bottomless well before an explosion.
“Luca,” Matteo said softly.
“Yes, Boss?”
“Call the armory in Cicero.”
“Tell Marcus to assemble the full tactical unit.”
“We hit Continental Trust at sunrise.”
“Boss,” Luca warned, taking a cautious step forward.
“Continental Trust is inside Falcone territory.”
“If we roll twenty armored vehicles into the Loop without Commission clearance, Don Falcone will consider it an act of open war.”
Matteo walked over to the gun cabinet on the wall, unlocked the glass with a brass key, and pulled out an antique silver-plated Beretta.
“It already is war, Luca,” Matteo said, sliding a loaded magazine into the handle.
“Dario killed Isabella in my city.”
“He made my daughter watch her mother rot.”
He turned toward Elena, holding out his hand.
“You are coming with us.”
Elena didn't hesitate for a single second.
She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve and stepped forward.
“Give me a gun,” she said, her voice dropping into a register that made Luca raise his eyebrows in shock.
Matteo looked at her, a fierce, dark smile touching the corners of his lips.
“She doesn't need a gun, Luca,” Matteo said proudly.
May you like
“She has her mother’s blood.”
“Let’s go take back what belongs to us.”
