Chapter 14 - Lake Geneva
The midnight meeting at the Drake was a trap.
We went to Wisconsin instead.
Roman expected emotion to pull Dante toward his father and me toward Isabella.
He expected us to move openly, quickly, and separately.
So we moved together and in the opposite direction.
Mara sent two cars toward downtown Chicago carrying decoy phones.
The fake ring's tracker traveled in one.
My cloned phone traveled in the other.
Roman's surveillance would show movement toward the hotel.
Meanwhile, Dante, Vanessa, and I crossed the state line in an unmarked SUV with no connected electronics.
Mara stayed behind to handle the board and federal contacts.
She hated being left out of danger but loved being left with documents.
The rehabilitation facility near Lake Geneva sat behind a stone wall and a gate marked AURELIA RECOVERY FOUNDATION.
The property looked expensive and peaceful.
That made me distrust it immediately.
We arrived after dark.
Only three windows were lit.
Dante's advance team had reported no visible guards and fewer cars than a functioning medical facility should have.
"They moved him," Dante said.
"Maybe," I answered.
He looked at me.
"You are doing that on purpose now."
"Doing what?"
"Saying maybe every time I decide something."
"It is cheaper than trusting the wrong certainty."
He almost smiled.
The moment passed.
Vanessa sat behind us wearing jeans, a borrowed coat, and no makeup.
Without the red dress and diamonds, she looked younger and harder at the same time.
"There is a side entrance near the kitchen," she said.
Dante looked at her.
"How do you know?"
"Roman brought me here once."
I turned.
"Why?"
"He said he wanted to show me a company he was buying."
"Did you see patients?"
"One."
She swallowed.
"An older man in a wheelchair."
Dante's face changed.
"When?"
"Eight months ago."
"Did he look like the man on the call?"
Vanessa closed her eyes for a second.
"Yes."
Dante looked away.
"Why did you not tell me before?"
"Because I did not know he was your father."
"You knew Roman kept someone here."
"I thought he was a patient."
Dante's frustration flashed.
I touched his arm once.
He stopped.
"Do not turn Roman's lies into her guilt."
Dante looked at my hand, then at Vanessa.
"You're right."
Vanessa seemed more startled by the apology than the anger.
We approached the side entrance on foot.
The kitchen door was unlocked.
That was worse than locked.
Inside, stainless steel counters gleamed under emergency lights.
No food.
No dirty dishes.
No staff.
The facility had been cleaned out.
Dante's men cleared the first floor.
Empty offices.
Empty therapy rooms.
Empty patient suites.
In one hallway, framed photographs showed smiling elderly residents beside gardens and therapy dogs.
Every photograph had been removed from the frames.
Only the printed captions remained.
Someone had erased faces but forgotten names.
Vanessa stopped at one.
MICHAEL V. - SPRING GARDEN PROGRAM.
Dante touched the frame.
His hand shook once.
Then he pulled it away.
A sound came from behind a nearby door.
Metal against tile.
Everyone froze.
One of Dante's men opened it.
An elderly nurse stood inside a supply closet holding a mop handle like a spear.
She swung before anyone spoke.
Dante caught the handle.
"We're not with Roman."
"That's what his people say."
She tried to pull it back.
Vanessa stepped forward.
"Nora?"
The nurse stopped.
"Miss Lane?"
"You remember me."
"Hard not to."
Nora looked at Dante.
Then at me.
Her eyes widened.
"Mrs. Castellano."
"Moretti."
"Good."
She lowered the mop.
"About time."
Dante stepped closer.
"Where is Michael Vale?"
Nora studied his face.
"You are the son."
"Yes."
"He said you would come."
"Where is he?"
"Moved yesterday morning."
"Where?"
"They did not tell us."
Dante looked toward the empty hallway.
"Who moved him?"
"Mr. Castellano's private team."
"Roman?"
"He came personally."
Nora's mouth tightened.
"First time in months."
"Was Isabella with him?"
"A woman in black arrived later."
"Did she leave?"
"Not through the front."
Vanessa looked at me.
Nora continued.
"Michael fought them."
Dante's face changed.
"He can walk?"
"Some days."
"The wheelchair is partly for the cameras."
"Mr. Castellano wanted him to look more helpless than he was."
I felt a chill.
Roman curated captivity the same way he curated parties.
Every image had an audience.
"Did Michael leave anything?" I asked.
Nora looked at me carefully.
"He left a message for Evelyn."
"What message?"
"He said to ask her about the blue candle."
I stared at her.
A memory surfaced slowly.
My tenth birthday.
A chocolate cake in my father's dining room.
Ten white candles and one blue candle in the center.
My father had told me the blue one was for a wish I should never say aloud.
I had blown it out last.
Every birthday after that, there had been one blue candle.
Even after my mother died.
Even at my eighteenth birthday.
Roman stopped the tradition after we married because he called it childish.
"Where is the candle now?"
Dante asked.
"I do not know."
Then I remembered my father's study at Astor Street.
A silver candlestick sat on the mantel.
One blue wax stub had remained inside it for years.
"The house."
"Roman controls the house," Dante said.
"Not everything inside it."
Nora led us down a service corridor.
"There is another thing."
She opened a locked medication room.
Inside, one cabinet still contained files.
Michael Vale's chart was missing.
But the pharmacy delivery log remained.
His medications had been ordered under a code.
MV-0317.
The delivery address changed that morning.
SAINT AURELIA ARCHIVE, CHICAGO.
Dante stared at it.
"Archive?"
Nora shook her head.
"There is no medical archive in Chicago."
Vanessa took out a paper map.
"Saint Aurelia Church."
She pointed to the Near West Side.
"Roman's grandfather donated money to restore it."
I had been there once for a family memorial Mass.
The church had a sealed basement full of old records and crypts.
"That is where they took him."
Dante was already moving.
Nora grabbed his sleeve.
"Wait."
She looked at me.
"Michael said Roman would expect you to find the pharmacy log."
"Then why leave it?"
"Because he said the trap was not at Saint Aurelia."
"Where is it?"
Nora's eyes moved toward the floor.
"Here."
The lights went out.
A mechanical lock slammed over the kitchen exits.
Dante swore.
Red emergency lights came on.
A recorded message played over the facility speakers.
Roman's voice.
"You never could resist rescuing people, Vale."
Vanessa looked at me.
"He knew."
"He hoped."
The difference mattered.
Dante's security radio crackled.
"Movement outside."
Then gunfire erupted near the front gate.
Roman's voice continued overhead.
"Midnight was an invitation."
"Wisconsin was the consequence."
A chemical smell entered the hallway.
Nora covered her mouth.
"Laundry sterilizer."
Dante looked at the vents.
"What is it?"
"Peracetic acid vapor."
"Dangerous?"
"Enough."
My eyes began to sting.
Vanessa pulled her coat over her nose.
"Exit?"
Nora pointed down the service hall.
"Laundry loading tunnel."
We ran.
The vapor thickened behind us.
At the laundry room, a steel shutter covered the loading door.
Dante's man tried the control panel.
Dead.
Nora pointed at a floor drain.
"Maintenance crawlspace."
"How big?"
"Big enough if you hate yourself."
We lifted the grate.
The tunnel beneath was barely three feet high.
Dante looked at me.
"You first."
"Why?"
"Because if it collapses, I want to know you are ahead of me."
It was the closest thing to tenderness he had allowed himself.
I climbed in.
The concrete scraped my knees.
Vanessa followed.
Dante came behind her.
Nora and two guards entered last.
We crawled thirty yards through darkness while the facility alarms screamed above us.
At the far end, a rusted grate opened onto a drainage ditch beyond the wall.
Cold air hit my face.
We pulled ourselves out one by one.
The front of the facility glowed red from emergency lights.
Two black vehicles were burning near the gate.
Dante's security team had disabled them.
No one had been killed.
For once, Roman's trap had failed without taking blood.
Then Vanessa found something caught on the inside of the grate.
A strip of white cloth.
She held it up.
Black letters were written in marker.
BLUE CANDLE.
On the reverse side were four words.
NOT THE HOUSE.
I stared at them.
"Then what?"
Dante looked toward the dark lake beyond the trees.
Nora spoke quietly.
"Michael used to ask for birthday cake every October seventeenth."
"He said he was celebrating someone who did not know he was alive."
My birthday.
Dante looked at me.
"Your father gave Michael a way to contact you."
I remembered the blue candle again.
Not on the mantel.
Not at the house.
At my wedding.
My father had arranged a small private cake for me in the bridal room because the wedding date fell near my birthday.
Roman complained and had it removed.
The blue candle had been placed inside a silver box with my mother's jewelry.
A box Roman later moved into the vault at the Drake Hotel.
I looked at Dante.
"Roman told us to meet him at the Drake because he thinks the clue is there."
Vanessa went pale.
"And we sent two decoy cars straight to him."
My clean phone began ringing.
Mara.
I answered.
She did not say hello.
"Evelyn, the hotel is on lockdown."
"Why?"
"One of our decoy drivers is missing."
"The other?"
"Found unconscious in the parking garage."
"Roman?"
Mara's voice tightened.
"He is not at the hotel."
"Then who is?"
A pause.
May you like
"Luca."
