Chapter 7
Catalina
The Sig's magazine snaps home in Fabio's hand, and the sound bounces off the damp walls like a verdict.
Fabio racks the slide, and the sound is vicious, final.
He sets the Sig on the rusted metal table and reaches into the duffel bag for the spare magazines.
He moves with the terrifying efficiency of a man who learned the grammar of bloodshed before he learned anything else.
The sterile white wash from the internal generator carves harsh shadows across his shoulders.
Tension wires the line of his throat down into his shoulders.
He lines up three spare magazines next to a combat knife that belongs in a jungle warzone, not a decommissioned prohibition tunnel under the Chicago River.
Does he expect a strike team or a zombie apocalypse? With a Costa, the line is practically nonexistent.
He thinks he can just grunt, lay out an armory, and expect me to sit quietly in the corner like a good little rescued princess. Please. I learned to read armed, paranoid men across a dinner table before I learned to read poetry. Brooding mafia giants don't intimidate me.
Except this one does.
Not because of the guns. Because of what he said before he started unpacking them.
He promised to stand against his own blood to put a wall between me and the bullet meant for my head.
. He rejected the tactical reality of the fake Bellanti broadcast. He chose a defector over his own family's potential strike force.
That kind of loyalty doesn't exist in my world. In the Bellanti machine, loyalty is a currency you spend until you run out, and then you get put in the ground.
My stomach twists into a tight, hard knot.
The encrypted burner phone sits on the far edge of the table, screen blank.
The broadcast is still in there. A digital death sentence.
The whole point of the broadcast was a bullet in my head the second it crossed his screen.
They never planned for him to clock the timestamp anomaly the way he did.
They didn't expect him to go to war for me.
"You need to conserve your ammo," I say.
My voice sounds too loud in the freezing air. The space heater hums in the corner, fighting a losing battle against the chill seeping through the stone.
Fabio doesn't look up. He picks up a tactical shotgun and checks the chamber. "I have enough ammo to bury anyone who comes through that iron door. Three times over."
"They won't just send a first wave." I cross my arms over my chest, digging my nails into the sleeves of my sweater to stop my hands from shaking.
" If they pushed that broadcast out, they're covering their tracks.
They want you to execute me. But if you don't, they'll send a retrieval team to finish the job and frame it as a rescue mission gone wrong. The Bellantis never leave loose ends."
He sets the shotgun down. He finally turns his head. His dark eyes lock onto mine, and whatever defense I had left collapses in on itself.
"Let them try." His voice drops into something low and lethal.
The scent of him reaches me a half-second after his voice. Motor oil and sun-warmed metal cut through the river damp.
"You're not listening to me." I step forward, dropping my arms. The need to make him understand overrides my instinct to stay out of his reach.
"You are acting like this is a standard turf dispute.
This isn't a dispute. This is a scorched-earth order.
They will send the elite hitters. The ones who don't exist on any payroll.
The ones who burn buildings to the ground just to make sure the target inside is dead. "
"Good." Fabio turns his body toward me. He closes the distance between us in two steps. "Saves me the trouble of hunting them down."
He's too big for this space. Every move he makes presses the walls closer. He stops a breath short of touching me, every line of him taut with restraint about to snap.
"You think you're invincible." I lift my chin and glare up at him. Defiance is the only shield I have left. "You think you can just stand in front of me and make the bullets bounce off."
"I think," he says softly, dangerously, "that no one touches what's mine. Not my blood. Not your family. Not God himself."
My throat tightens. The certainty in his tone is terrifying. It's the kind of promise that ruins a woman. It makes me want to lean into his chest and let the rest of the world fend for itself.
But I know what happens to women who trust the men in this life.
I step back. I put a foot of cold air between us.
"My family doesn't let things go." My voice drops to a whisper. The fight drains out of me, replaced by the chokehold of my last name. "They don't accept defection. They never have."
Fabio tracks my movement. He doesn't pursue me. He stands still. He watches me like a predator clocking the sudden shift in his companion's behavior.
"They bleed just like anyone else."
"You don't understand the psychology." I shake my head, wrapping my arms around myself again.
The chill of the speakeasy suddenly feels like ice against my skin.
"It's not just about the intel I possess.
It's about the principle. A Bellanti woman doesn't leave the compound unless she's marrying into an alliance or going into a mausoleum. Those are the only two exits."
He watches my face. He catalogs the tremor in my voice that I'm trying desperately to hide.
"You found a third," he says.
"I'm trying to find a third." I correct him. "But the precedent is not in my favor."
Neither of us speaks for a long beat. The rushing sound of the Chicago River vibrates faintly through the stone wall behind me. Millions of gallons of freezing water push relentlessly forward. It sounds like the pressure inside my own head.
I walk over to the small cot against the wall. I sit down on the edge. The mattress sags under my weight.
I need him to understand the stakes. Not the tactical stakes. The emotional ones. He thinks he's fighting mobsters. He's actually fighting men who erase their own footprints.
"My Aunt Maria." The name slips out of my mouth before I can stop it.
Fabio shifts his stance. He doesn't interrupt. He doesn't offer empty platitudes. He gives me the silence I need to pull the memory out of the dark vault in my mind.
"She was my father's youngest sister." I stare at the rusted metal table leg. "She wasn't involved in the business. She hated the violence. She spent most of her time in the gardens at the compound, reading books and pretending she lived somewhere else."
I swallow hard. The memory of wet earth and crushed mint pushes through the dampness of the tunnel.
"I was six years old." I rub my palms against my denim-clad thighs.
"Maria used to sneak me down to the wrought-iron gates at the edge of the property.
We'd sit in the grass and watch the cars drive past on the main road, and she'd whisper the names of all the places she wanted to take me.
Paris. Rome. A little beach town in Mexico where no one wore suits and no one carried guns. "
Fabio remains motionless. His eyes are fixed on me. The stillness is a hush around us.
"She fell in love with a civilian." I laugh, but the sound comes out brittle and broken. "An art teacher. Someone disconnected from our world. She knew my father would never allow it. She knew the uncles would kill the man just for looking at her. So, she made a plan."
The space heater clicks, the heating element glowing bright orange.
"She packed a single bag." I look up at my own duffel bag sitting near the door.
The visual parallel is a physical weight on my chest. "She left the compound in the middle of the night.
She disabled the security cameras on the east wing.
She paid off a guard she had known since childhood.
She did everything you're supposed to do. "
Fabio's hands curl into fists at his sides.
"She came into my room before she left." I close my eyes.
Maria's face flashes vividly behind my eyelids.
Soft brown eyes. Smudged mascara that I didn't have a word for yet.
A trembling smile I only understood years later.
"She kissed my forehead. She promised me a postcard from a beach in Mexico. She told me to be brave."
I open my eyes. Fabio is standing in the same spot. He hasn't blinked. He is absorbing the story with the solemn reverence of a man receiving a confession.
"She made it three miles." The words taste like ash. "Three miles."
My hands grip the edge of the cot. The rough fabric digs into my palms.
"My father found out about the bribed guard ten minutes after she cleared the gates. They deployed the retrieval teams. They caught her at a gas station on the edge of the city. She was waiting for the art teacher to pick her up."
I stop talking. The silence is deafening.
"What did they do?" Fabio's voice is low. It carries a terrifying edge.
"They didn't bring her back to the compound." I force the words out through a tight throat. "They executed her in the parking lot of that gas station. Then they tracked down the art teacher and burned his apartment building to the ground with him inside."
Fabio's jaw ticks. The muscles in his arms bunch under his shirt.
"They brought back her necklace." A tear escapes my right eye.
I swipe it away furiously. Crying is a weakness.
"My father threw it on the dining room table the next morning during breakfast. He didn't say a word.
He just left it there next to the coffee pot.
A silver locket covered in dried blood."
The memory is so sharp it cuts me. The smell of bacon and eggs mixed with the metallic tang of blood. The terrifying silence of the family sitting around the long mahogany table. No one asked where Maria was. No one cried. No one mourned.