THE DRIVE INTO THE DARK

“Hey!” Luca slammed his fist against the heavy steel door.

It didn’t budge.

Smoke began curling beneath the doorframe. Gray. Thick. Acrid.

“They’re burning it down,” Elena said, her voice disturbingly calm. “I always knew this was how they would erase us.”

I clutched the gold bracelet in one hand and the sewing box in the other. My brain was misfiring.

How did Julian Moretti know my sister? Chloe was a twenty-year-old college student.

“Emma.” Luca grabbed my shoulders, snapping me out of my panic. His dark eyes were intensely focused. “Are you hurt?”

“No. But how does he know Chloe?”

“We’ll find out. Right now, we survive.” He turned to Elena. “Is there a fire escape?”

“The windows are reinforced glass. The Bellinis made sure nobody could jump.”

Luca didn’t waste time arguing. He looked around the nursery. His eyes landed on the heavy cast-iron radiator beneath the window.

“Help me,” he ordered.

I rushed over. Together, we gripped the rusted metal. Luca strained, the muscles in his back pulling taut beneath his expensive suit. With a brutal wrench, he ripped the heavy iron cover off the wall.

“Stand back,” he told us.

He picked up the forty-pound piece of iron and hurled it at the window.

The reinforced glass shuddered. A massive spiderweb crack appeared.

Smoke was filling the room rapidly now, burning my throat and stinging my eyes. Elena was coughing hard, dropping to her knees.

Luca picked up the iron cover again. He let out a roar of effort and slammed it into the center of the crack.

The glass shattered outward, sucking the thick black smoke into the freezing night air.

“Go,” Luca commanded, lifting Elena by her waist and pushing her through the jagged opening onto the rusted metal fire escape.

He turned to me.

I threw the sewing box out onto the metal platform, then climbed through. Luca followed, his suit jacket snagging on a piece of glass, tearing the fabric.

We scrambled down three flights of icy metal stairs as flames licked out of the third-floor windows.

When we hit the ground, we ran for the tree line.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Luca leaned against a massive oak tree, catching his breath. He looked at the burning hospital, his face an unreadable mask of grief and fury.

“They tried to kill you,” I whispered, shivering in the snow.

He took off his torn suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders. The heavy wool retained his body heat.

“They tried to kill us,” he corrected softly. He looked at the bracelet in my hand. “Why your sister, Emma? What does Chloe have to do with this?”

I shook my head, fighting back tears. “I don’t know. She goes to community college. She works part-time at a diner. She barely leaves the South Side.”

Elena leaned against the tree next to us, coughing up soot.

“Does she wear a silver rosary?” Elena asked hoarsely.

I stared at her. “Yes. It belonged to our grandmother.”

Elena closed her eyes. “Julian didn’t run away alone five years ago. He was injured. He hid in a diner on the South Side. A young girl found him bleeding in the alley. She kept him hidden in the storage shed for three days and brought him food.”

My stomach dropped. Chloe’s old job.

“He gave her the bracelet to pay for her silence,” Elena continued. “But Julian also told her where to hide Leo.”

Luca stepped forward. “Where is my nephew?”

Elena looked at me. “Ask her.”

I felt dizzy. “I don’t know where he is!”

“Think, Emma,” Luca said, his voice urgent but gentle. “Has your sister brought anyone home? A little boy?”

“No!” I cried. “It’s just been me, Chloe, and my dad. My dad barely leaves the basement because of his—”

I stopped.

My father’s heating system had failed last winter.

He had been spending all his time in the basement “fixing” it. He put a padlock on the door. He said it was dangerous.

Chloe brought him meals down there.

I worked ninety-hour weeks at Luca’s mansion. I was never home.