Chapter 8 - THE WAR CAME HOME
Elena DeLuca had been kidnapped once before.
She was sixteen.
I was eighteen.
Two drunk idiots connected to a minor crew in Queens shoved her into a van because they believed holding Antonio DeLuca's daughter would make them rich.
Elena broke one man's nose with her forehead, jumped from the moving vehicle at a traffic light, stole a taxi, and returned home before my father even knew she was missing.
She spent the next week complaining because he'd grounded her for "recklessness."
So when Marco told me Enzo Bellucci had taken my sister, my first thought was not that Elena was helpless.
My first thought was that Enzo had no idea what he'd kidnapped.
"Where was security?" I asked.
"Hotel garage."
"How?"
"Bellucci men created a fire alarm. Elena refused evacuation through the lobby because Sophia's belongings were still upstairs. She used the private elevator."
"And?"
"Security feed shows her entering the garage with two of ours."
"What happened to them?"
"One unconscious. One shot."
Sophia covered her mouth.
"Elena?"
"Gone."
"Vehicle?"
"Delivery truck."
I looked toward Vittorio, now sitting handcuffed beside a police cruiser while paramedics wrapped his arm.
"You knew?"
He smiled.
I walked toward him.
A trooper stepped between us.
"Sir—"
"I'm not going to touch him."
Yet.
Vittorio leaned back.
"Children should learn not to disobey their fathers."
"Elena isn't your child."
"No."
He looked at Sophia.
"But mine is."
Sophia stepped closer.
"Where did Enzo take her?"
Vittorio ignored her.
"Father."
He smiled.
There it was again.
The old mechanism.
Make her ask.
Make her need.
Make every answer conditional.
Sophia noticed too.
Her expression changed.
She stepped back.
"Never mind."
Vittorio frowned.
"I asked once."
"Sophia."
She turned away.
His voice sharpened.
"Sophia!"
She didn't look back.
Watching her deny him attention affected him more than a bullet had.
Good.
We flew back to New York before dawn.
Lucia and Isabella remained under federal protection in Vermont.
Dominic came with us.
During the flight, Sophia barely slept.
Neither did I.
At 4:40 a.m., a message arrived on my phone.
A video.
Elena sat tied to a chair inside what looked like an industrial building.
Blood marked one side of her forehead.
She was awake.
Enzo stood behind her.
"Good morning, brother-in-law."
Elena rolled her eyes.
"He's been practicing that line for twenty minutes."
Enzo slapped the back of her chair.
"Quiet."
"You're making kidnapping embarrassingly theatrical."
I almost smiled.
Enzo leaned toward the camera.
"Bring Sophia to Pier 19 at seven. Alone."
Sophia watched beside me.
Enzo continued.
"No police. No Marco. No soldiers. She signs what I give her, Elena walks."
Elena looked directly into the camera.
"Matteo, if you send Sophia, I will haunt you."
Enzo grabbed her hair.
She winced but refused to cry out.
My vision narrowed.
"Seven," Enzo said. "Or your sister becomes the last DeLuca casualty of the war."
Video ended.
Sophia immediately said, "I'll go."
"No."
"Don't start."
"He's not getting you."
"Elena is there because of me."
"Elena is there because Enzo kidnapped her."
"If I hadn't—"
"No."
Sophia looked at me.
I continued.
"Your father trained you to accept responsibility for other people's cruelty. Stop doing his work for him."
She went silent.
Dominic looked at me with something almost like approval.
I ignored him.
Marco studied the video frame by frame.
"Pier 19 is probably fake."
"Why?"
"No gull sounds. No river horns. Look at the window behind Elena."
He enlarged the image.
A reflection.
Red letters.
Only part visible.
...NDERSON COLD STOR...
I knew it.
"Henderson Cold Storage."
Marco nodded.
"Brooklyn waterfront. Closed eight years."
Enzo had chosen one of Vittorio's abandoned properties.
Predictable.
We arrived at six-thirty.
Sophia came.
Not because I wanted her there.
Because when I told her to remain home, she stared at me until I remembered she wasn't one of my soldiers.
We compromised.
She stayed in the command vehicle with Dominic and two agents from a federal organized crime task force that had gotten involved after reviewing the Saint Michael's files.
Inside the warehouse, Enzo had twelve men.
We had surveillance.
Two exits.
Roof access.
Heat signatures.
And Elena.
At 6:58, Enzo called.
"Where are you?"
"Pier 19."
"Liar."
He laughed.
"You always were smarter than my father said."
"That's not difficult."
"Bring Sophia inside."
"Show me Elena."
A camera feed came on.
Elena was still alive.
She had apparently spent the last two hours irritating her captors because one man had taped her mouth.
She looked furious.
"Release her."
"Signature first."
"On what?"
"Documents."
"What documents?"
"You know exactly what."
"Humor me."
Enzo cursed.
"The Carbone trust."
"You're not a beneficiary."
"I should have been."
There it was.
Entitlement.
The Bellucci family disease.
"My grandfather built this family," Enzo said. "My father expanded it. And everything goes to Sophia because some dead old man put her name on paper before I was born?"
"That's generally how inheritance works."
"She doesn't even understand the companies."
"Maybe that's because you spent twenty years preventing her from learning."
"She doesn't deserve it!"
His shout echoed through the warehouse.
Sophia heard it through my earpiece.
I knew because her breathing changed on the line.
Enzo continued.
"I ran businesses while she read novels. I dealt with unions, crews, police. I went to meetings. I took risks."
"You also kidnapped my sister."
"Because you wouldn't cooperate."
That logic sounded familiar.
The abuser's favorite equation.
You made me do it.
"Here's my counteroffer," I said. "Walk outside. Hands empty. Elena goes free. You get arrested instead of killed."
Enzo laughed.
"Arrested?"
"Your father already is."
Silence.
He hadn't known.
"You're lying."
"Shot him myself."
Another silence.
"He's alive."
Enzo exhaled.
"You should have killed him."
Interesting.
Not loyalty.
Competition.
I filed it away.
Then he said, "Sophia has fifteen minutes."
The call ended.
Marco approached.
"Roof team can enter."
"Risk to Elena?"
"Medium."
"Not good enough."
Sophia's voice came through my earpiece.
"I can get him outside."
"No."
"Matteo."
"No."
"You said I choose."
"Yes, and I choose whether to participate in terrible plans."
"I know Enzo."
"So do I."
"No. You know what he does when he's powerful."
Her voice became steady.
"I know what he does when he thinks he's being humiliated."
I stopped.
"What?"
"He'll come out if I tell him the papers are worthless."
"Are they?"
"No."
"Then?"
"Let me lie."
Five minutes later, Sophia called Enzo herself.
He answered immediately.
"Sister."
"You're too late."
"What?"
"I already signed control away."
I looked at Marco.
He raised an eyebrow.
Enzo laughed.
"No, you didn't."
"Last night."
"To whom?"
"Matteo."
Silence.
Perfect.
"Everything transferred to the DeLucas when we married."
"You stupid—"
"I told him about the trust."
"You're lying."
"I'm not."
She added one more thing.
"Mother is alive."
The line went dead.
Thirty seconds later, a side door flew open.
Enzo stormed outside.
Two men followed.
He was furious enough to forget caution.
Federal agents took the first guard.
Marco took the second.
I stepped from behind a container.
Enzo saw me.
He reached for his gun.
I aimed.
"Don't."
For several seconds, we faced each other.
Then he smiled.
"You think you've won."
"Not yet."
"She'll never stay with you."
"This isn't about keeping her."
"Everything is about keeping people."
"No."
That was the difference between us.
Maybe the difference between me and the man I could have become.
Behind him, roof agents entered the warehouse.
Within minutes, Elena was free.
Enzo heard the shouting.
His face changed.
He raised his gun.
Not at me.
Toward the command vehicle where he could see Sophia through the windshield.
I fired into his thigh.
He went down.
His gun slid across concrete.
Agents swarmed him.
Sophia ran from the vehicle.
I wanted to tell her to stop.
I didn't.
She crossed toward her brother.
Enzo lay on the ground, furious and bleeding.
"Look what you did," he hissed.
Sophia stopped several feet away.
That sentence.
The same one she'd probably heard all her life.
Look what you did.
She stared at him.
Then shook her head.
"No."
Enzo sneered.
"No what?"
"I didn't do this."
"You destroyed us."
"You kidnapped Elena."
"Because of you."
"You planted the gun."
"Because Father—"
"You hurt me."
He stopped.
Sophia's voice shook.
"For years you hurt me and then told me I caused it."
Enzo looked away.
"Look at me."
He did.
She said, "I believe myself now."
Not Matteo.
Not Lucia.
Not the FBI.
Myself.
Enzo finally looked afraid.
Sophia turned away.
Elena appeared from the warehouse wrapped in a blanket.
She saw me.
"What took you so long?"
I hugged her.
She tolerated it for exactly two seconds.
Then shoved me away.
"I'm filthy."
Sophia approached.
Elena opened her arms.
Sophia hesitated.
Elena said, "This one is optional."
Sophia smiled through tears.
Then hugged her.
Dawn broke over Brooklyn.
Vittorio arrested.
Enzo captured.
Lucia alive.
Isabella safe.
The trust protected.
For the first time, I thought the worst might actually be over.
Then Marco walked out of the warehouse carrying a laptop.
His expression told me otherwise.
"What?"
He opened a file.
Payments.
Photographs.
Names.
One stood above the rest.
A person Vittorio had been paying for seven years.
A person with access to my schedules, accounts and family.
Elena saw the screen.
Her face went white.
"No."
I stared at the name.
The Belluccis hadn't built their plan alone.
Someone inside my family had helped them create the war.
Someone I trusted enough to put beside me at every table.
Marco whispered, "Matteo..."
I couldn't answer.
Because the traitor was my father's younger brother.
My uncle.
Salvatore DeLuca.
May you like
And according to the final message on Enzo's laptop, he had already activated the last part of their plan.
If Vittorio falls, kill Matteo and make Sophia the widow before her twenty-first birthday.
