Chapter 6 - The Key Under Lake Michigan
The silence that followed the fall of Julian Falcone was thick, suffocating, and heavy with the scent of iron.
Luca pulled his blade free, letting Julian’s body slump lifelessly against the base of the shattered bookshelf. He didn't spare the dead Don a second glance. Wiping the blood from his blade onto Julian’s cashmere lapel, Luca turned toward the center of the ruined study, where the trapdoor to the subterranean foundation lay open.
Marco stood at the threshold, clutching his shoulder where a stray bullet had grazed his bicep. “Perimeter is clean, Boss. Seven captured, the rest neutralized. Local police have been routed away by our contacts in the sheriff's department. We have forty minutes before anyone questions the noise.”
“Wait up here,” Luca instructed, taking a tactical flashlight from the desk. “This is between me and Elena.”
Luca descended the iron spiral staircase into the earth. The air grew colder, damp with the moisture of the nearby lake, smelling of old concrete, lime, and ancient secrets. At the very bottom of the shaft stood a massive circular vault door, embedded directly into the bedrock beneath Lake Michigan’s water table.
In the center of the heavy dial was an intricate keyhole no larger than the head of a pin.
Luca’s fingers were steady now. The rage had cooled into a solemn, sacred duty. He reached into his pocket, took the miniature iron key that had hung around his daughter’s neck for four years, and inserted it into the lock.
He turned it clockwise.
*Click. Whirrrrr.*
Hydraulic pressure hissed loudly as decades of vacuum-sealed air were released. Heavy steel gears ground against each other behind the wall, and with a low groan, the vault door swung outward.
Luca stepped inside, raising the flashlight.
The room was not filled with stacks of cash or gold bullion. In the center of the concrete room was a single oak desk, draped in a white linen cloth. Resting on the cloth was a silver jewelry box, a high-grade military hard drive, and a framed photograph of Luca, Elena, and Isabella taken on Bella’s tenth birthday at the fair, their faces lit by the neon glow of a Ferris wheel, laughing without a care in the world.
A sharp ache seized Luca’s chest. He walked toward the desk, his rough fingertips brushing the glass of the frame.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to find you, my love,” he whispered into the empty room.
Beside the frame was a handwritten journal. Luca opened the leather cover. Elena’s immaculate script covered the pages, detailing every meeting Julian Falcone and Vanessa Vance had held over eighteen months before her death. But on the final page, written in bold, frantic strokes, was a revelation that made Luca’s blood run cold.
*Luca,*
*Falcone isn't the head of the snake. He is merely an arm. Vanessa Vance was paid twenty million dollars through an offshore trust in the Cayman Islands. The money came from the United States Department of Justice, Division Six.*
*Special Agent Marcus Sterling.*
*They don't want to arrest you, Luca. They want your distribution network. They wanted me dead so they could insert Vanessa, manipulate you into a war with the five families, and use federal authority to seize the Moretti shipping hubs under the Patriot Act. Once you were locked away or killed in the crossfire, Vanessa and Sterling were going to privatize your routes for their own cartel.*
*Isabella knows nothing of this. If Sterling finds out she carries the key, he will eliminate her. Keep her safe. Use the drive. The drive contains Sterling’s unredacted audio recordings.*
Luca froze.
Marcus Sterling. The federal prosecutor who had been assigned to the Moretti task force for the past three years. The man who had sat across from Luca in formal depositions, adjusting his gold spectacles, offering Luca immunity if he gave up his lieutenants.
Sterling wasn't a righteous lawman trying to clean up Chicago. He was a predator using the badge to orchestrate a corporate-mafia coup.
Suddenly, the satellite phone in Luca’s pocket began to buzz violently.
Luca snatched it up, pressing it to his ear. “Marco?”
“Boss! It’s an ambush at the airstrip!” Marco’s voice screamed over the roaring sound of jet engines and heavy automatic fire. “The jet never took off! Federal tactical teams swarmed the hangar! They claim they have an emergency federal arrest warrant for Isabella on charges of aiding and abetting organized crime!”
Luca’s heart stopped. “Where is Isabella?”
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“They took her, Boss!” Marco gasped, coughing blood. “Black Suburbans with federal plates! Marcus Sterling is personally on scene! He’s taking her to the old naval armory on Navy Pier! He said… he said if you don't bring the drive within two hours, Isabella will suffer a ‘medical termination’ in federal custody!”
***
