Chapter 5 - The Coma Ward
The world stopped spinning. The air left my lungs in a violent rush.
"Paralyzed?" I choked out, grabbing the back of the sofa to keep from collapsing. "What do you mean paralyzed? I buried him, Luca. I saw his body in the casket!"
"You saw a closed casket, Caroline," Luca corrected gently, stepping forward to catch my arm before I fell. "Dr. Aris told you the autopsy left him disfigured, didn't he?"
My mind raced back eight years to the worst week of my life. Dr. Aris, wearing his pristine white coat, his face a mask of false sympathy, telling me that the aggressive resuscitation efforts and the subsequent autopsy had severely damaged Thomas's body. He had strongly advised a closed casket for my own mental well-being. I was a grieving, terrified twenty-nine-year-old widow with a ten-year-old child. I had listened to the doctor.
"Oh my God," I sobbed, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "I buried an empty box."
Luca guided me to the sofa, sitting beside me. He didn't try to comfort me with platitudes; he offered the only thing he had: the truth.
"Marco Bellini didn't want to kill Thomas," Luca explained, his voice thick with suppressed rage. "He wanted to use him. He knew my father was terrified of Teresa's firstborn. If Marco killed Thomas, the leverage was gone. But if he kept Thomas alive and hidden, he could blackmail my father forever."
"Where is he?" I demanded, grabbing Luca’s shirt, my tears blinding me. "If he didn't die... where has he been for eight years?"
Luca looked down at my hands clutching his shirt, then up at my face. "Dr. Aris kept him in a medically induced coma at a private, off-the-books clinic owned by the Bellini family in the suburbs. They fed him through a tube, Caroline. They kept him as a living bargaining chip."
I felt physically sick. My husband, the kind, gentle man who had taught Emma how to ride a bike, had been lying in a sterile room, trapped in a nightmare, while I scrubbed floors to pay the debt his captors invented to torture me.
"Is he still there?" I whispered.
"I don't know," Luca admitted. "When I broke off the engagement tonight, Vanessa called her father. The Bellinis know I'm coming for them. If they realize Dr. Aris talked, they will move Thomas, or worse, they will finally kill him to destroy the evidence."
"We have to go get him," I said, standing up. The grief was instantly replaced by a fierce, protective adrenaline. "Right now."
Luca stood up, shaking his head. "No. I am going to get him. You are staying here, where it is safe."
"He is my husband!" I yelled, uncaring if I woke Emma or my mother. "I have mourned him for eight years, Luca! I am not sitting in a fancy hotel room while you go play hero! If he wakes up, if he is terrified, he needs to see my face, not the mafia boss he never knew!"
Luca stared at me. He saw the fire in my eyes—a mother and a wife who had been pushed past her breaking point.
"It's a heavily guarded facility, Caroline," Luca warned softly. "There will be gunfire. It is not a place for a civilian."
"I haven't been a civilian since I married into your bloodline," I fired back.
Luca’s jaw tightened. A small, almost imperceptible smile of respect touched his lips.
"Fine," Luca said. "But you do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you. If I say get down, you get down."
"Deal."
Ten minutes later, I was strapped into the passenger seat of a black, armored SUV. Luca was driving, his face illuminated by the harsh glow of the dashboard. Behind us, three identical SUVs followed, filled with heavily armed men loyal only to Luca.
We sped through the empty streets of Chicago, heading toward the affluent northern suburbs.
"What about Vanessa?" I asked, breaking the tense silence.
"She is currently locked in her father's estate," Luca said coldly. "She thinks she is untouchable because she is a Bellini. She doesn't realize that by tomorrow morning, the Bellini name will mean nothing in this city."
We pulled into a quiet, heavily wooded road. Hidden behind a line of tall pine trees was a nondescript, single-story brick building. It looked like an upscale dental office, completely unremarkable.
"That's it," Luca said, killing the headlights.
He put the SUV in park and turned to me. He reached under his seat and pulled out a heavy, Kevlar tactical vest.
"Put this on," he ordered.
I didn't argue. I slipped it over my head, tightening the straps.
Luca grabbed a suppressed submachine gun from the center console. "Stay behind me. Silvio will have your back."
We stepped out into the cool night air. The woods were dead silent.
Luca raised a hand, signaling his men. They moved with terrifying, practiced precision, fanning out around the building.
Silvio, Luca's towering head of security, stepped up beside me. "Stick close, Mrs. Hayes."
Luca didn't bother knocking. He didn't try to pick the lock.
He raised his weapon and blew the electronic keypad off the heavy glass door with a three-round burst.
The glass shattered. Alarms immediately began blaring, a shrill, piercing siren that echoed through the woods.
We rushed inside.
The clinic was pristine, sterile, and blindingly white. Two armed guards burst from a side hallway, raising their pistols.
Luca and his men fired first. The suppressed weapons made a deadly, thwip-thwip-thwip sound. Both guards collapsed to the linoleum floor before they could even pull their triggers.
I squeezed my eyes shut, pressing my hands over my ears, terrified by the sudden violence.
"Move!" Luca yelled over the alarm, grabbing my arm and pulling me down the corridor.
We checked door after door. Most were empty observation rooms.
At the end of the hall was a heavy steel security door, different from the rest.
"Blow the hinges," Luca ordered.
Silvio stepped forward with a specialized breaching shotgun. Two deafening blasts tore the metal hinges apart. Luca kicked the door inward.
We rushed into the room.
It was a sterile ICU setup. Heart monitors beeped frantically. IV bags hung from metal poles.
Lying in the center of the room, on a narrow hospital bed, was a man.
He was dangerously thin, his face pale and sunken, covered in a scruffy beard. A ventilator tube was taped to his mouth, breathing for him.
I stumbled forward, my legs feeling like jelly.
I walked to the side of the bed. I looked down at the face I hadn't seen in eight years. He looked older, ravaged by time and muscle atrophy, but I knew those cheekbones. I knew the slight crook in his nose.
"Thomas," I sobbed, collapsing against the metal bedrail. "Oh my God, Thomas."
I grabbed his frail, cold hand, pressing it against my tear-soaked cheek.
Luca stepped up beside me. He looked down at the man in the bed—his older brother, the lost son of Teresa Moretti. The resemblance between them was undeniable, even through the ravages of the coma.
"We found him," Luca whispered, his voice thick with emotion. "Silvio, get the medics in here. We need to transport him now."
Silvio keyed his radio. "Med team, move in. Room seven."
I leaned over, brushing the hair from Thomas's forehead. "I'm here, baby," I cried softly. "I'm taking you home. Emma is so big now. You have to wake up and see her."
Suddenly, the heavy steel door we had just breached slammed shut.
The electronic deadbolt clicked, locking us inside.
The blaring alarm in the hallway abruptly cut off, plunging the clinic into an eerie silence.
Luca spun around, raising his weapon toward the door.
"Silvio!" Luca yelled, pulling the handle. It didn't budge. "We're locked in!"
A small speaker mounted in the corner of the ceiling crackled to life.
"Hello, Luca."
The voice was smooth, cultured, and dripping with arrogance.
Marco Bellini. Vanessa's father.
"You really thought Dr. Aris would give you the location of my clinic without calling me first?" Marco Bellini's voice echoed in the small room.
Luca’s eyes narrowed into slits of pure fury. "Open this door, Marco, or I will burn your entire empire to ash."
Marco chuckled darkly over the speaker.
"You don't have an empire anymore, Luca," Marco said. "While you were out playing hero in the woods... my men paid a visit to your estate."
My blood ran completely cold.
"What did you do?" Luca demanded, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper.
"I took back what belongs to me," Marco said softly. "I have your mother, Luca. I have Teresa. And I have the maid's daughter."
I screamed, dropping to my knees. "Emma! No!"
"If you want to see them alive again," Marco continued smoothly, "you will leave Thomas exactly where he is. You will walk out of that clinic, surrender your weapons, and hand over the deeds to the Moretti casinos."
The speaker clicked off.
Luca stared at the steel door, the realization hitting him with the force of a freight train.
May you like
He had found his brother.
But he had lost his mother and my daughter to get him.
