Chapter 3 - The Price of Blood
The rain started fifteen minutes after Luca left, slicking the pavement of the private roads winding through the elite wooded enclave of Lake Forest.
Inside the dining room, the atmosphere was suffocating. Matteo, Luca's second-in-command, had arrived with four heavily armed soldiers in tactical gear. He didn't say a word. He simply dragged a heavy mahogany chair to the center of the room, forced Vanessa into it, and zip-tied her wrists behind her back.
"Do you know who my father is, you filthy dog?" Vanessa screamed, thrashing against the plastic restraints. "Anthony Bellini will flay you alive!"
Matteo didn't blink. He calmly rested his hand on his sidearm. "Your father is currently surrounded in his penthouse by twenty of our men, Miss Bellini. If Sophie isn't breathing when Luca finds her, the Bellini bloodline ends tonight."
Teresa gasped softly beside me. I immediately knelt by her chair, gently rubbing her cold, trembling hands between my own.
"Breathe, Mrs. Moretti," I whispered, keeping my voice soft and steady despite the terror threatening to choke me. "Luca is going to bring her home. You know how strong he is."
Teresa looked at me, her brown eyes remarkably lucid behind a veil of pain. She moved her lips, struggling against the paralysis that had imprisoned her for over a year.
"T-tea..." she stammered, the syllable barely a draft of wind.
I frowned, leaning closer. "Tea? Are you thirsty?"
She shook her head with sudden, fierce determination. Her eyes darted toward Vanessa, then back to me. "No... tea... b-bad..."
Before I could decipher what she meant, Matteo’s radio crackled with heavy static, followed by the deafening sound of gunshots, screeching metal, and roaring engines transmitted over the tactical frequency.
Every guest in the room went dead silent.
*“—vehicle immobilized off Route 41!”* a voice shouted over the radio through bursts of white noise. *“Target vehicle spun out into the ditch! We have perimeter suppression! Luca is breaching!”*
The crackle of three distinct, muffled pistol shots followed.
*Pop. Pop. Pop.*
Vanessa let out a muffled whimper, her arrogance finally cracking into sheer panic. She knew what those three shots meant. In Luca Moretti’s world, three shots meant an execution. The kidnapper had paid his debt.
Silence hung on the radio line for ten agonizing seconds. Ten seconds where my heart completely stopped beating. I held Teresa’s hand so tightly our knuckles clicked. I closed my eyes and prayed to whatever angels guarded little girls in pink dresses.
Then, Luca’s deep, ragged voice cut through the static.
*“Matteo.”*
Matteo pressed his radio transmitter instantly. "Boss! Talk to me."
*“The driver is neutralized. Sophie is in my arms.”*
A collective breath left the room. Several older mafia capos visibly relaxed their shoulders, while a few women dabbed at their eyes with linen napkins. Teresa let out a ragged sob, her head dropping against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her frail shoulders, resting my cheek against her silver hair, hot tears of relief spilling down my own face.
*“Is she hurt?”* Matteo asked.
*“She’s wheezing heavily,”* Luca replied, his voice laced with an undercurrent of raw, fatherly panic that I had never heard in him before. *“She’s terrified. Her inhaler wasn't in her bag. She can barely draw breath. We’re ten minutes out from the local clinic, but the storm has washed out the lower turnoff—”*
Without thinking, I leaped to my feet and ripped the radio right out of Matteo’s hand.
"Hannah!" Matteo barked, reaching for it, but stopped when he saw the fire in my eyes.
"Mr. Moretti!" I yelled into the radio. "Listen to me! Do not drive through the lower turnoff!"
*“Hannah?”* Luca’s voice was instantly sharp, cutting through the storm noise.
"The blue inhaler—she doesn't have it, but you have your emergency road kit in the trunk of the Maserati, don't you?"
*“Yes. Standard trauma kit.”*
"There’s an epinephrine auto-injector in the side pocket! The pediatric dose is 0.15 milligrams! But if you don't want to use the needle, check Sophie’s jacket pocket—she always hides a spare blister pack of chewable bronchodilators in the seam of her teddy bear’s vest! She never goes anywhere without Barnaby!"
A pause stretched over the radio waves, heavy and frantic. I could hear the rain lashing against his car windows, hear the faint, agonizing sound of Sophie’s tiny gasps in the background.
*“I have the bear,”* Luca said, his voice cracking with emotion. *“I found the tablets. God... Hannah. I have them.”*
"Give her one with a small sip of water, tilt her chin up, and hold her upright against your chest," I instructed, my voice surprisingly steady despite my shaking knees. "Don't lay her flat. Keep talking to her about her mother’s garden. It calms her vagus nerve."
*“I’m bringing her home,”* Luca whispered, the radio crackling softly. *“Keep that monster in the chair until I arrive.”*
The radio went dead.
I handed it back to Matteo, whose stern, scarred face had shifted into an expression of profound respect. He gave me a slow, deliberate nod.
I turned around to face Vanessa.
She was glaring at me, but her venom had turned into the frantic desperation of a cornered rat.
"You think you’re a hero?" Vanessa sneered through chattering teeth. "You’re a servant. A twenty-dollar-an-hour nobody. When my father hears about this—"
"Shut your mouth," Teresa suddenly spoke.
The words were thick. The diction was clumsy and slurred, dragged out from the depths of a damaged nervous system. But they were unmistakable.
The entire room turned toward the wheelchair.
Teresa was sitting upright, her jaw set, her piercing gaze fixed dead on Vanessa.
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"Shut... up... murderer," Teresa dragged the words out, lifting her shaking right hand to point a crooked finger directly at the woman who had tried to rule her home.
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