Chapter 8 - THE PRICE OF SILENCE
The monitor went dark.
The silence inside the cargo van was suffocating.
Isabella's breath hitched in her throat.
"Uncle Lorenzo," she whispered.
Her fingers dug into her jeans until her knuckles turned ivory.
Her uncle was seventy-two years old.
He had spent his entire life restoring Renaissance gold leaf and clockwork mechanisms.
He had never held a weapon in his life.
He had raised her after her parents died on the Dan Ryan Expressway when she was twelve.
He was the only family she had left on earth.
"Dante," she said, turning toward him.
Her voice was raw, stripped of all pride, breaking into terrified pieces.
"Dante, please."
Dante looked at her.
He did not see the defiant woman who had dropped his diamond ring onto the polished table.
He saw the terrified girl who had trusted him to keep her safe.
He sank to one knee before her.
In the cramped, vibrating interior of the tactical van, the most feared mob boss in the Midwest knelt before the woman he had failed.
He did not reach for her hands.
He did not touch her.
He kept his head bowed, his voice low, steady, and full of raw, bleeding humility.
"On my father's soul, Isabella," Dante murmured.
"On every drop of blood in my body."
"Your uncle will not die tonight."
"If a single hair on his head is harmed, I will burn Chicago until there is nothing left but ash."
Isabella looked down at him.
Tears burned the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
"I don't need you to burn the city, Dante," she said softly.
"I need you to be smarter than them."
Dante lifted his head.
His dark eyes ignited with a cold, terrifying light.
"Marco," Dante said, rising to his feet.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Open the armory crates in the floor panels."
"Pull the customized ceramic vests."
"And call Frankie 'The Ghost' in Cicero."
Marco paused, his needle hovering over his skin.
"Frankie? Boss, Frankie hasn't taken a contract in ten years."
"He owes my father his life," Dante said.
"Tell him the debt is called in."
Dante turned to Isabella.
"We need the real sapphire from the museum."
"We can't just walk in," Isabella said, wiping her face.
"The Driehaus Museum has laser-grid motion sensors tied directly to the 1st District Police Station."
"If a case is cracked, thirty squad cars will be there in three minutes."
Isabella reached into her wet coat pocket.
She pulled out a small brass key shaped like a vintage watch gear.
"My uncle built the maintenance bypass for that display case," she said.
"He gave me the master key on my twenty-fifth birthday."
"The alarm won't trip if we use the service sequence."
Dante looked at the tiny brass key in her palm.
"How long will it take to pull the stone?"
"Four minutes," she said.
"Then we have forty minutes before dawn," Dante said, checking his heavy tactical watch.
"Marco, drive to Erie Street."
"We get the key."
"Then we go to the railyard and kill every man who touched her family."
The cargo van surged forward, tires biting into the wet highway as they raced back toward the glowing Chicago skyline.
Thirty minutes later, the van idled in the dark alley behind the Driehaus Museum.
The rain had turned to a freezing mist.
The streets were deserted.
Isabella and Dante slipped through the rear service entrance, moving through the shadows like twin phantoms.
The museum smelled of lemon oil, old marble, and historic paper.
In the center of the grand gallery, the bronze statue of St. Michael towered toward the ceiling.
In the saint's gilded crown, a deep, hypnotic blue light pulsed under the ambient security lamps.
The real Star of Palermo.
Isabella approached the pedestal.
Her hands moved with surgical grace.
She inserted the brass gear-key into the hidden slot beneath the marble base.
Click.
Click.
Turn.
The heavy glass bell-jar slid upward with a silent pneumatic hiss.
Isabella reached out her trembling fingers.
She lifted the true sapphire from the velvet mount.
The stone was heavy, cold as a glacier, and radiating an inner fire that synthetic glass could never copy.
"I have it," Isabella breathed.
Suddenly, a red laser dot appeared on the center of her forehead.
From the second-floor gallery overlooking the statue, a voice chuckled into the dark:
"Thank you for saving us the trouble of picking the lock, Miss Rossi."
May you like
Standing on the mezzanine was Viktor Vance.
Surrounded by six Russian mercenaries with rifles raised.
