Chapter 4 - The House Where Dead Men Lived|
I had never seen Luca Moretti look genuinely frightened until I told him about the shoe outside my mother's apartment.
He took my phone and spoke to her himself.
“Mrs. Sullivan, this is Luca Moretti.”
My mother went silent.
“I need you to stay inside until someone I trust arrives.”
“Nobody is going to hurt you.”
Then he looked toward Tomas.
“Send two people.”
“Quietly.”
My mother was a sixty-year-old widow who worked part-time at a grocery store and worried about the price of electricity.
She had nothing to do with Chicago's criminal families.
Now someone was threatening her because I had helped an elderly woman.
I felt anger rise through my fear.
“Victor did this.”
Luca didn't deny it.
“Most likely.”
“Then make him stop.”
His expression darkened.
“I intend to.”
There was something about the way he said it that frightened me almost as much as Victor.
I stepped closer.
“Not by hurting somebody.”
Luca looked surprised.
“Claire—”
“If this ends with more violence, we're no better than the people who did this to your father.”
For a long moment, he simply stared at me.
Then he nodded.
“You're right.”
I wasn't sure whether he believed that yet.
But I wanted him to.
By two in the morning, Tomas confirmed that my mother had been moved to a safe apartment under the protection of two employees he trusted.
Meanwhile, Luca had made a decision.
We would investigate Cedar House before approaching Northlake Residence.
Margaret insisted on coming.
Nobody could persuade her otherwise.
“I know the building,” she said.
“And I know what we might find.”
Cedar House stood behind an abandoned playground on a narrow street lined with aging brick buildings.
Its windows were boarded.
Weeds grew through cracks in the parking lot.
A rusted sign still showed the faded outline of a smiling elderly couple.
I stared at it.
The place looked ordinary.
That somehow made it worse.
Tomas unlocked a side entrance using a key supplied by the property's former maintenance supervisor, who had agreed to meet with Luca's attorney later that morning.
The air smelled of dust and old disinfectant.
Our footsteps echoed through empty hallways.
Margaret moved slowly.
Her eyes traveled across the peeling walls.
“Dominic was here,” she whispered.
“How can you know?” I asked.
She pointed toward a chipped wooden door.
“Rosa once described the room where she saw him.”
“She said there was a painted blue bird above the door.”
We approached.
A faded blue bird remained visible beneath layers of peeling paint.
Luca opened the door.
Inside stood a metal bed frame, a broken wheelchair, and a narrow cabinet.
A rectangle of cleaner paint marked where a picture had once hung.
The room seemed to have been emptied in a hurry.
Margaret stepped inside.
Then she began crying.
“I kept telling myself he was somewhere better.”
Luca stood motionless in the doorway.
I could barely imagine what he was feeling.
Thirty years of birthdays, Christmas mornings, illnesses, and lonely nights had passed while his father might have been trapped in rooms like this one.
Tomas examined the cabinet.
“There is something underneath.”
He carefully pulled out a thin metal box wedged behind a loose panel.
Inside were old medical identification bracelets and a stack of handwritten transfer slips.
One bracelet contained the initials D.M.
The date was six years earlier.
A transfer form listed a patient named Daniel March.
The destination was Northlake Residence.
Luca took the paper.
His hands shook.
“This is him.”
I noticed another name at the bottom.
Dr. Adrian Vale.
The physician's signature appeared on several forms.
But there were no patient consent documents.
No family authorization.
Nothing that explained why a man who might be Dominic Moretti had been kept under another identity.
Tomas photographed everything and called Luca's attorney.
We were about to leave when I noticed something under the bed frame.
It was a small folded drawing.
I picked it up.
A child had drawn a gray wolf standing beside a red house.
On the back, written in a man's uneven handwriting, were four words.
My Little Wolf, Luca.
I looked up.
“Luca.”
He turned.
I held out the drawing.
His face changed the moment he saw it.
“Oh, God.”
He slowly sat on the edge of the bed.
“I drew this.”
His voice broke.
“I was nine.”
“I gave it to my father for his birthday.”
He touched the paper as though he were touching something living.
“I thought it burned with him.”
Margaret sat beside him.
For several moments, neither spoke.
Then Luca covered his eyes.
I had seen that man frighten rooms full of powerful people with a single look.
Now he was crying over a child's drawing.
And all I could think was that somewhere, perhaps only a few miles away, an old man might still be waiting for the little boy who had drawn it.
We left Cedar House shortly before sunrise.
In the parking lot, Tomas stopped beside the car.
He crouched near the rear wheel.
Then he looked up sharply.
“Everybody stay back.”
Luca moved toward him.
“What is it?”
Tomas pointed underneath the vehicle.
Someone had cut the brake line.
The damage was deliberate.
My heart began pounding.
Margaret gripped my arm.
A black SUV appeared at the far end of the street.
It slowed.
Then its headlights turned toward us.
Tomas pulled out his phone.
“Luca, get them inside.”
But before anyone moved, a window lowered.
May you like
A man's voice shouted across the empty parking lot.
“Mr. Bellini says your father's already lived thirty years too long!”
