Chapter 13 - The City Turns Against Them
By 4:10 a.m., Gabriel Romano's face was on every television in Chicago.
Mia's appeared beside his.
The story changed depending on the channel.
One called Gabriel a businessman under investigation.
Another called him the architect of a family conspiracy.
A third showed footage of Mia entering the Lakeshore Mutual building and described her as the accountant who may have altered financial records after Daniel Romano's death.
Mia watched from the back room of the clinic.
"That video is real."
Marco nodded.
"Which makes the lie stronger."
"They do not have footage of me leaving."
"Because Adrian opened the vault exit."
Adrian stood near the door.
Mia looked at him.
"Convenient for them."
"I did not give the footage to the press."
"You have developed a reliability problem."
Gabriel muted the television.
"Argue later."
Hannah sat beside Leo's portable crib.
Emma Mercer slept in the next room after finally speaking to her father by secure phone.
Price had taped two of Gabriel's fingers after the pier fight.
Sterling remained outside with his men because Hannah refused to let him near Leo.
Nobody objected.
Marco spread a city map across a table.
"Federal agents will hit every known Romano property."
Gabriel nodded.
"Good."
Mia looked at him.
"You keep saying that about objectively terrible things."
"Because Vittorio will assume the same."
"Explain."
"He needs me angry and cornered."
Gabriel looked at the map.
"He expects me to retreat to family-controlled ground."
Marco understood.
"So we go somewhere public."
"Exactly."
Hannah stood.
"I am not taking Leo into public."
"You are not."
Gabriel looked at Marco.
"Move Hannah, Leo, Emma, and Price separately."
"Where?"
Mia answered before Gabriel could.
"A convent."
Everyone looked at her.
She shrugged carefully.
"My aunt spent thirty years at Saint Agnes."
Gabriel stared.
"Your family becomes more surprising every hour."
"My father taught me lock picks and my aunt became a nun."
"Balanced household."
Hannah almost smiled.
The convent sat beyond the western suburbs and had no connection to the Romano family.
Mia's aunt had died three years earlier, but the sisters still remembered her.
More importantly, they remembered Mia.
Marco arranged the move without electronic communication.
Gabriel stayed behind with Mia and Adrian.
Sterling entered after Hannah left.
"You have a federal problem."
Gabriel looked at him.
"Insightful."
"I can get you out of Illinois."
"No."
"Canada?"
"No."
"You understand warrants become inconvenient when served."
Mia looked at Sterling.
"Running would confirm Vittorio's story."
"Getting arrested may confirm it faster."
Gabriel sat across from the ledger.
"We need the immutable security logs."
Marco had left them a floor plan of Romano Holdings headquarters.
The data vault sat three floors underground.
Access required two executive credentials and a rotating physical key.
Vittorio controlled all three.
Mia studied the diagram.
"There is always a maintenance route."
Adrian shook his head.
"Not into that vault."
"You built it?"
"I wrote the legal standards."
"Then you do not know."
Sterling laughed.
"I really do like her."
Gabriel ignored him.
Mia pointed to the cooling system.
"Server rooms require temperature control."
"Yes."
"Air has to enter."
"Through ducts too small for a person."
"I do not need a person."
Gabriel looked at her.
"What do you need?"
"A cable."
Adrian frowned.
Mia explained.
"If the immutable logs are truly off the corporate network, they may still expose a service port to the environmental monitoring cabinet."
Sterling stared at her.
"You are an accountant."
"People keep saying that like accountants do not spend their lives breaking bad systems without touching them."
Gabriel looked at the floor plan.
"Can you get the logs through a service port?"
"Maybe."
"That is not confidence."
"It is accounting."
"Meaning?"
"I do not promise numbers before I see them."
The clinic lights flickered.
Everyone froze.
Marco was gone.
Only two trusted guards remained outside.
One opened the door.
"Power failure on the block."
Mia looked at the clock.
4:23 a.m.
Too convenient.
"Backup generator?"
The guard shook his head.
"Not starting."
Gabriel stood.
"Everyone moves."
Adrian looked toward the window.
"Federal agents?"
"Could be."
Sterling checked his phone.
"No signal."
Mia looked at Gabriel.
"Jammer."
A loudspeaker outside came alive.
"Gabriel Romano, this is the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
Sterling sighed.
"Well, that answers one question."
Mia looked at Gabriel.
"Do we surrender?"
Adrian answered immediately.
"Not with Vittorio controlling the evidence packet."
Gabriel looked through a narrow window.
Black vehicles surrounded the block.
Agents moved behind them.
"Running makes us fugitives."
Mia nodded.
"Staying makes us defendants."
Sterling looked toward the basement.
"There is a church tunnel."
Gabriel stared at him.
"You remember quickly."
"I value exits."
Adrian looked at Gabriel.
"If you leave now, they will freeze every account and classify your movement as flight."
Gabriel's expression remained calm.
"If I stay, Vittorio has five hours before any judge lets us challenge the evidence."
Mia checked the news feed still cached on the television.
A new banner appeared when the signal briefly returned.
BREAKING: FEDERAL AUTHORITIES SEARCH FOR ROMANO ACCOUNTANT MIA CARVER.
Her photograph filled the screen.
Mia laughed once.
"My mother would have hated this picture."
Gabriel looked at her.
"Your mother?"
"Died when I was in college."
He nodded.
"I am sorry."
"Thank you."
The loudspeaker repeated the order to surrender.
Sterling headed toward the basement.
"Decide fast."
Mia looked at Gabriel.
"I can surrender alone."
His face changed instantly.
"No."
"They want the financial witness."
"No."
"If I go out, you get time."
"Mia."
"I am not Leo."
The sentence silenced him.
Mia continued.
"You cannot put everyone behind your back."
Gabriel stepped closer.
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
He looked at her injuries.
"But I can refuse to hand a wounded woman to investigators carrying evidence built by the man who tried to kill her."
Mia held his gaze.
"That is not rational."
"I contain multitudes."
Despite everything, she smiled.
A window shattered in the front room.
A flash device rolled across the floor.
Gabriel kicked it behind a steel cabinet.
The blast shook the walls.
Sterling shouted from the basement.
"Now would be excellent."
They ran.
The tunnel opened beneath the church sacristy next door.
A priest stood there holding a broom.
He stared at Gabriel, Mia, Adrian, and Sterling emerging from beneath the floor.
"I am going to assume confession will take too long."
Gabriel almost laughed.
"Probably."
The priest pointed toward a side door.
"Alley."
They escaped in a bakery van Sterling had positioned earlier.
Ten minutes later, federal agents entered the clinic.
They found no fugitives.
They did find something Vittorio had arranged.
A black flash drive beneath Mia's abandoned chair.
It contained a spreadsheet showing payments from Gabriel to Damian Sterling.
It also contained a draft email from Mia to Daniel dated two days before his death.
The email read:
I corrected the authorization chain as requested, and Gabriel will never know.
Mia stared at the leaked evidence on a news site forty minutes later.
"I never wrote that."
Gabriel looked at the screen.
"I know."
"Can you prove it?"
"Can you?"
Mia's face tightened.
"Maybe."
Adrian looked at her.
"How?"
"Corporate email archives preserve message IDs even after deletion."
"Vittorio controls the archive."
"Not the recipient side."
Gabriel understood.
"Daniel's devices."
Mia nodded.
Hannah called through the secure line.
"Daniel's old phone is in my storage unit."
Everyone looked at the speaker.
Mia felt hope for the first time in an hour.
Then Hannah continued.
"But there is a problem."
Gabriel's stomach tightened.
"What?"
"The storage company just emailed me."
Her voice shook.
May you like
"Someone opened the unit twenty minutes ago."
