Chapter 3 - The Twelve-Hour Vigil
Dante drove through the sleet-slicked streets of Chicago in his armored Maybach, tearing through red lights with sirens blaring from the concealed grill. The city was a blurred canvas of neon signs, gray slush, and weeping skies. Beside him on the leather passenger seat lay the biohazard bag holding the 14-second audio recording and his son’s tiny knitted hat.
Every time the vehicle hit a bump, the audio device shifted, and Dante’s heart seized.
He couldn't escape the sound of his wife's shredded voice. *Forty-seven calls.* While he was sipping rum, laughing at Vanessa’s jokes, Elena had been surrounded by cold monitors, screaming in agony as surgeons cut through her abdominal wall without adequate anesthesia because the emergency came on too violently for an epidural to settle.
Dante’s cell phone rang through the car’s dashboard console. It was Dr. Thorne.
Dante hit the receiver. "Talk."
"Mr. Moretti," the doctor said, his breath ragged. "I went back through the toxicology panels from the cord blood. As per your command, we ran an ultra-sensitive mass spectrometry on the placental tissue."
Dante gripped the steering wheel so hard the reinforced leather groaned. "What did you find?"
"Synthetic prostaglandins," Dr. Thorne stated, his voice clinical yet trembling. "A massive dose. It mimics natural preterm labor, inducing catastrophic contractions and placental tearing within three hours of ingestion. It’s odorless, tasteless, and completely undetectable unless you run a targeted forensic panel."
The steering wheel nearly cracked under Dante's grip.
"When was it administered?"
"Based on the metabolic rate, between 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM yesterday evening. She ingested it with food or drink."
Dante slammed his foot on the brake, the Maybach skidding sideways across the wet asphalt of Michigan Avenue before roaring to a halt in front of a modest, brick apartment building in the heart of Pilsen.
Yesterday evening at 9:00 PM, Elena had been here. Alone.
Dante cut the engine. He didn't wait for his backup. He stepped into the freezing Chicago rain, his long black coat billowing in the wind, his polished shoes splashing through dirty puddles.
The building was a decrepit relic from the 1920s. The exterior iron fire escape was rusted, the front door buzzer hung by exposed copper wires, and the narrow hallway smelled of damp wood, boiled cabbage, and cheap paint.
Dante ascended the stairs, each step feeling like a march to the gallows.
He reached apartment 3B. The door was unlocked, hanging open by an inch. Dante pushed it with the tip of his fingers.
The apartment was barely four hundred square feet. The radiator in the corner clanked and hissed, struggling against the draft from the cracked windowpane. In the center of the living room sat an old easel holding an unfinished oil canvas.
Dante walked inside, his towering frame dominating the tiny space.
There was no luxury here. No marble countertops. No silk sheets. The small twin bed in the corner was made with an inexpensive woolen blanket. On the nightstand sat a bottle of cheap iron supplements, a half-eaten sleeve of soda crackers, and a ceramic mug half-filled with cold herbal tea.
Beside the mug was a small delivery box from a luxury patisserie in the Gold Coast—*Le Petit Panier*.
Dante walked over to the box. Inside was a single raspberry tart, untouched.
Taped to the lid was a card. The handwriting was not Elena’s. It was Vanessa Sterling’s looping, flamboyant script:
*“A little sweet treat for the expectant mother. Think of it as a parting gift from the man who used to love you. Bon appétit, Elena.”*
Dante’s hand closed around the pastry box, crushing the cardboard into pulp, strawberry jam and pastry crumbs oozing between his knuckles.
Vanessa had visited her. Vanessa had poisoned her.
He turned toward the easel. His eyes widened.
The canvas was not a portrait of vengeance or despair. It was a painting of a baby’s nursery—the very nursery they had dreamed of during their second year of marriage, when Dante had promised to step down from the family’s violent operations to build an empire of legitimate trade. In the painting, golden morning light poured through arched windows, illuminating a hand-carved mahogany crib. Leaning over the crib was the silhouette of a tall man in a dark suit, his face soft, cradling an infant in his arms.
In the bottom right corner of the canvas, Elena had written in white paint:
*“The dream that died before the dawn. Forgive me, Leo. Your father was once a good man.”*
Dante fell to his knees in the middle of the drafty room. The sound that tore from his throat was not human; it was the howl of a wounded, dying animal. He buried his face in his jam-stained hands, sobbing uncontrollably against the bare wooden floorboards.
He had believed Vanessa’s poison. He had treated the only woman who ever loved his fractured soul as a traitor. He had exiled her to this freezing hovel, allowed his mistress to feed her chemical poison, and left his firstborn son to choke on his own blood while he drank under the tropical sun.
"Boss!"
Frank appeared in the doorway, his coat dripping with rain, three armed men standing behind him with submachine guns at the low ready.
Dante didn't look up. He remained on his knees, his shoulders shaking with uncontainable grief.
"We found the cab driver," Frank said, his voice taut with urgency. "He dropped Elena off at the 12th Street Harbor forty minutes ago."
Dante’s head snapped up. The tears on his cheeks dried instantly in the cold draft.
"The harbor?" Dante whispered, horror dawning in his eyes. "She’s fresh out of an emergency cesarean. The temperature out there is twenty-six degrees. What is she doing at the harbor?!"
"Mateo Rossi has an offshore yacht anchored at the outer breakwater," Frank replied grimly. "She contacted him from the hospital payphone. She's leaving the country, Boss. If she gets past the three-mile territorial waters on Rossi’s vessel, we can’t touch her without starting a full-scale cartel war with New York."
Dante surged to his feet, the Kimber .45 locked in his fist.
May you like
"I don't give a damn about New York," Dante roared, his eyes blazing with madness. "Call the gunboats. Call the tactical air unit. If Mateo Rossi thinks he can take my wife away from this city, I will drown every Rossi who walks the earth."
***
