Chapter 6 - NO MORE ORDERS
The ransom message included a photograph of a brass key on the seat beside Clara.
Not the bank key Victor later gave me.
A different one.
Small.
Modern.
Stamped with the letters GV.
Geneva.
Whoever had staged the photograph wanted me to believe the key opened something connected to the false account.
Mateo zoomed in.
"That is a luggage key."
"You sure?"
"My ex-wife had the same set."
"Useful marriage."
"For exactly this moment."
He rotated the image.
A tiny manufacturer's logo appeared near the base.
Domestic brand.
Twenty-dollar lock.
Not a Swiss bank key.
"They are improvising," I said.
"Good."
"Why good?"
"Because panic makes rich criminals shop at hardware stores."
Despite everything, I laughed once.
The sound felt wrong.
Then I realized Clara would have laughed too.
Mateo's face became serious.
"If they think the account is real, they will need you alive long enough to unlock it."
"Meaning Clara stays alive too."
"For now."
I focused on those two words.
For now.
We had a window.
I called one man outside the normal chain of command.
Father Gabriel Mancini.
He was not a priest anymore, though everyone still called him Father.
He had been my father's closest friend before leaving Chicago.
We had not spoken in nine years.
He answered with a tired voice.
"Dominic."
"How did you know it was me?"
"You only call when someone is dead or about to be."
Fair.
"Did my father ever mention a Geneva account?"
Silence.
"No."
"A trust?"
Longer silence.
"Why are you asking?"
"Clara found something."
His tone changed immediately.
"Is she safe?"
The fact he asked about Clara before asking about me told me they had spoken.
"You knew she was investigating."
"She called me two months ago."
I closed my eyes.
Another person Clara trusted before me.
"What did she ask?"
"Whether your father ever regretted the life."
"And?"
"Every day near the end."
I looked out at the city.
"Why did no one tell me?"
Gabriel's answer was immediate.
"Because you had already decided what story you wanted."
That sentence stayed with me.
I had decided my father died a powerful man who wanted me to inherit everything.
Carlo had fed that story.
My mother had protected it.
I had worshiped it.
Maybe the truth had always been available to anyone willing to look.
"Did he plan to leave Chicago?"
"Yes."
"With my mother?"
"With you."
My throat tightened.
"Where?"
"California."
I almost laughed.
My father hated California.
"Why?"
"Because he thought distance was the only thing that could save you from Carlo."
The line went quiet.
"Dominic, if Clara found whatever your father hid, do not repeat his mistake."
"Which mistake?"
"Trying to handle family betrayal inside the family."
The warning was still in my head when Serena called with the location of Carlo's funeral home.
The old Dominic would have gone alone.
Not because it was smart.
Because I had built my identity around being the most dangerous man in every room.
A demand like that would have felt personal.
An insult.
A challenge.
That night, staring at a photograph of Clara unconscious beside a gun, I understood how useful my pride had always been to my enemies.
I handed the phone to Mateo.
"Trace it."
"Already started."
"Do not tell anyone else."
"Agreed."
I looked around the loading dock.
Hospital workers stared at us from behind carts and doors.
Sirens approached from outside.
Police would arrive soon.
Too many questions.
Too many cameras.
Too many opportunities for Carlo to learn our next move.
"We leave through the west garage."
Mateo nodded.
"And the Geneva key?"
"There is no key."
"They do not know that."
"Then we make one."
We reached a black SUV in the garage.
Mateo drove.
I sat in the passenger seat with Clara's envelope open across my knees.
The false account numbers were beautifully constructed.
Even the bank branch code matched a real private bank in Geneva.
Clara had planned for scrutiny.
She had planned for thieves.
She had planned for me to fail her.
That part would stay with me forever.
Mateo's laptop chimed.
"The text bounced through three servers."
"Location?"
"Last physical relay near Cicero."
"That is useless."
"Not completely."
He turned the screen toward me at a red light.
"The image metadata was stripped, but the ambulance plate was registered to a subcontractor."
"Which one?"
"Midwest Critical Transport."
I knew the company.
One of Victor's shell companies had tried to buy it the previous year.
The purchase had failed.
Or I had been told it failed.
"Address?"
"Warehouse on Pulaski."
"Go."
My phone rang.
Serena again.
I answered without speaking.
"I found something."
"Say it."
"Carlo uses an old funeral home in Cicero for meetings he does not want connected to the family."
I stared at Mateo.
"Address."
She gave it to me.
Mateo entered it into the navigation system.
Eleven minutes from the ambulance company's warehouse.
"Why should I trust you?"
Serena went quiet.
"You should not."
That was the first honest thing she had said to me in months.
"Then why are you helping?"
"Because Clara did something I did not deserve."
"What?"
"She believed I could still choose differently."
I looked out at the city sliding past us.
"Do not make her regret it."
"I already have."
Her voice cracked.
"Dom, there is something else."
"What?"
"Carlo did not order the crash."
I turned toward Mateo.
"Who did?"
"I do not know."
"Then why say that?"
"Because I heard Carlo screaming at Lorenzo afterward."
"About what?"
"He said Lorenzo moved too early."
That fit.
Carlo wanted information.
Lorenzo wanted blood.
Partners with different objectives.
"Where is Lorenzo now?"
"No idea."
"Find him."
"I am trying."
I hung up.
Mateo glanced at me.
"You believe her?"
"I believe parts of what she says are useful."
"That is not the same thing."
"No."
We turned onto Pulaski.
The transport warehouse was dark except for one loading bay.
Mateo slowed.
"Too easy."
"Exactly."
We drove past.
Two blocks later, I saw a black sedan parked beside a closed bakery.
Rico sat behind the wheel.
Mateo saw him too.
"That is Carlo's man."
"Follow him."
Rico pulled away five minutes later.
We stayed three cars back.
He drove west.
Not toward the warehouse.
Toward Cicero.
The funeral home sat on a dead residential street behind an iron fence.
No sign.
No hearse.
Just a two-story brick building with frosted windows.
Rico entered through the rear.
Mateo parked around the corner.
"We need backup."
"From who?"
He did not answer.
That was the problem.
We no longer knew which men belonged to us.
I checked my weapon.
"Two people are harder to betray than twenty."
"Two people are also easier to kill."
"You can wait in the car."
Mateo gave me a look.
"I have known you too long to miss the first intelligent decision you have made all year."
We entered through a side window.
The building smelled like dust and old flowers.
A hallway led toward a chapel.
Voices came from behind a closed door.
Carlo.
Rico.
And a third man.
Lorenzo Moretti.
I moved closer.
"The account is fake," Lorenzo said.
My heart stopped.
Carlo answered.
"You do not know that."
"Rossi disappeared. Clara was taken. Dominic is not stupid enough to believe a handwritten note."
"He believed Serena for a year."
The men laughed.
My hand tightened around the gun.
Mateo touched my arm.
Wait.
Carlo continued.
"Once Dominic tries to access Geneva, we take the credentials and finish this."
"And the wife?"
"Useful until she talks."
Lorenzo scoffed.
"She almost died once tonight."
Carlo's voice turned cold.
"That was your mistake."
Silence.
"I told you to scare her."
"She had evidence."
"And now Dominic has questions."
I felt something inside me settle.
The kind of calm that came before violence.
Then Lorenzo said the one thing that kept me from kicking down the door.
"What about Victor?"
Carlo laughed.
"Victor is exactly where I need him."
"He helped Clara."
"He thinks he did."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning every document Clara found passed through Victor first."
Mateo and I looked at each other.
Carlo continued.
"She never found the real accounts."
My stomach tightened.
"She found what I wanted her to find."
The whole investigation had been guided.
The photographs.
The payments.
The false clues.
Maybe even Elena.
Then a phone rang inside the room.
Carlo answered.
"Yes?"
A pause.
His tone changed.
"What do you mean she is awake?"
I stopped breathing.
"Do not move her again."
Another pause.
"No."
Carlo's voice sharpened.
"I am coming there myself."
He ended the call.
Chairs scraped.
Mateo pulled me into a side room.
We waited while Carlo, Lorenzo, and Rico hurried toward the rear exit.
The door closed behind them.
I looked at Mateo.
"We follow Carlo."
"And Lorenzo?"
"Let him think he is still useful."
Mateo nodded.
Then we heard a weak sound from the chapel.
A cough.
We entered.
A man was tied to a chair behind the altar.
His face was swollen.
Blood stained his shirt.
Victor Bellini looked up at me through one half-open eye.
"Dominic."
I moved toward him.
"You have terrible timing."
He tried to laugh.
It turned into a cough.
"So does your wife."
I cut the ropes.
"Where is Clara?"
Victor leaned close enough that I could smell blood on his breath.
"Not where Carlo thinks."
I stared at him.
"Explain."
Victor smiled weakly.
May you like
"Clara planned for this too."
