Chapter 2 - The Photograph That Rewrote The Past

“Don’t you touch her!” I screamed into the phone.

“Midnight, Emma. Come alone with Mr. Moretti. No guards. No police.”

The line went dead.

My hands shook violently as I dropped the phone. The world blurred around the edges. My mother. My stubborn, frail, seventy-four-year-old mother who couldn’t even walk up the stairs without losing her breath.

Luca stood up.

The grief on his face was entirely gone. It had been replaced by the ruthless, terrifying mask of the man who ran Chicago’s underworld.

“Marco,” Luca commanded. “Get the helicopter ready. We’re going to Indiana.”

“Sir, it’s a trap,” Marco warned.

“I don’t care.” Luca looked at me. “Nobody threatens the people under my roof. Nobody.”

Forty minutes later, the roar of the helicopter blades deafened us as we flew across the state line.

I sat strapped into the leather seat, staring blindly at my hands. I was just a nurse. I administered meds. I took blood pressure. I didn’t negotiate with murderers.

A warm, heavy hand covered mine.

I looked up. Luca was watching me, his dark eyes intense.

“I won’t let him hurt her, Emma,” he said quietly over the headset. “I swear it on my life.”

“Why my mother?” I choked out, tears finally spilling. “Why did he go all the way to Indiana?”

“Because he knew you figured out the insulin,” Luca said. “Harris is Victor Bellini’s puppet. When Vanessa failed to drug me tonight, they panicked. They need the injection case back because it’s the only physical proof of the poison.”

“But Vanessa ran,” I said. “Why didn’t she just take it?”

“Because you locked it in Marco’s office before she could.”

The helicopter touched down in an empty field two miles from my mother’s suburban house.

Marco had a black SUV waiting.

We drove with the headlights off as we entered her quiet neighborhood. The streetlamps cast long shadows across the manicured lawns.

My mother’s house was completely dark.

“Stay behind me,” Luca ordered, chambering a round into his pistol.

We approached the back door. It was unlocked.

Luca pushed it open, stepping into the dark kitchen. I followed closely, my heart hammering against my ribs.

“Mom?” I whispered.

No answer.

The house smelled like peppermint tea and old books. Everything was perfectly in place.

Luca motioned toward the living room.

We crept forward.

Sitting in my mother’s floral armchair, illuminated by the moonlight filtering through the blinds, was Dr. Harris.

He wasn’t holding a gun.

He was holding his chest.

His white shirt was soaked in dark, wet blood.

“Where is she?” I screamed, rushing forward, completely abandoning caution.

Harris coughed, a wet, rattling sound. He looked up at me, his eyes glassy.

“She’s… upstairs,” he wheezed. “Sleeping. I didn’t… I didn’t touch her.”

I didn’t wait. I bolted up the stairs, throwing open my mother’s bedroom door.

She was fast asleep in her bed, her CPAP machine humming softly. She was completely unharmed.

I fell against the doorframe, sobbing with relief.

I ran back downstairs. Luca was standing over Harris, his gun pointed directly at the doctor’s head.

“Who shot you?” Luca demanded.

“Vanessa,” Harris choked out, spitting blood onto the carpet. “She didn’t… she didn’t run from you, Luca. She ran from her father. From Victor.”

Luca’s jaw clenched. “Why?”

“Because Victor… he didn’t just want your empire,” Harris gasped, his hands trembling as he applied pressure to his wound. “He wanted the boy. The heir.”

“Where is my son, Harris?” Luca’s voice was a low, terrifying growl.

“Victor has him,” Harris whispered. “He’s had him for ten years. Anna… Anna didn’t die of cancer. When she got pregnant, Victor forced me to fake the diagnosis. He locked her in the clinic. He wanted to raise the boy himself. Mold him. Use him to take over the Moretti family when you were dead.”

“You let him lock my wife away?” Luca pressed the barrel of the gun to Harris’s forehead.

“I had no choice!” Harris cried. “But Anna… she fought back. The night the boy was born, she gave him to someone. She hid him from Victor.”

“Who did she give him to?” I asked, dropping to my knees next to the dying man.

Harris looked at me. His breathing was growing shallow.

He reached into his bloody coat pocket with a shaking hand.

He pulled out a heavy, tarnished silver rosary.

He pressed it into my palm.

“Find… Father Thomas,” Harris whispered. “St. Jude’s Orphanage. He knows… where Leo is.”

Dr. Harris’s eyes rolled back, and his chest stopped moving.

He was dead.

I looked down at the silver rosary in my bloodstained hands.

Then, the front door of my mother’s house burst open.