Chapter 1
My name is Vincent Moretti, and in Chicago, people usually text that phone for one of three reasons: money, protection, or fear. Nobody used it for anything innocent, and certainly nobody misspelled panic the way a frightened child did.
hes beating my mama please help
For one second, I assumed it was a setup.
I was sitting in the back office of the Black Harbor Club, a jazz bar along the Chicago River that looked respectable from the street and became something else entirely beyond the locked hallway behind the kitchen. Smoke floated beneath the ceiling while my second-in-command, Nico DeLuca, explained a problem at one of our Cicero warehouses.
Then my phone buzzed again.
im hiding in the closet
I stopped listening to Nico.
A third message appeared before I could respond.
he said if she calls 911 hell kill her
Something inside my chest went cold.
“What happened?” Nico asked.
I stared at those words and suddenly saw a room I had spent years trying to forget. Cracked plaster, a broken lamp, and my little sister crouched beneath a kitchen table with her hands pressed over her ears while screaming filled the house.
I forced the memory away.
What’s your address? I typed.
The typing bubbles appeared, vanished, then appeared again.
I dont know exactly. 418 south mason. green house. please come fast
Nico leaned closer. “Boss?”
I was already standing and pulling on my coat. “Get the car.”
“For what?”
My phone vibrated again.
I think he has a gun now
That was enough.
“Now, Nico.”
He followed me out, his irritation changing into suspicion. “South Mason is near Frankie’s route. This could be bait. Let me send a crew ahead.”
“No crew.”
“Then scouts.”
“No.”
We stepped through the back door into the wet Chicago night, where the wind off the river cut through my coat. Nico hurried after me toward the black Escalade.
“You’re leaving a meeting because of a random text?”
I opened the driver’s door myself.
“I’m leaving because a little girl thinks a stranger is the only person who might come.”
Nico went silent.
I sat behind the wheel, but before starting the engine, I sent one more message.
What’s your name?
The response came almost immediately.
lily
Then another.
mamas not moving now
My hand tightened around the phone.
Nico saw my face. “Vincent?”
Before I could answer, one final message appeared.
hes coming to the closet
And for the first time that night, I understood we might already be too late.
The heavy tires of the Escalade bit hard into the slush-covered asphalt as I threw the vehicle into reverse, spinning out of the Black Harbor Club's service alley with enough torque to fling dirty gray spray across the brick wall. The dashboard clock glowed an accusatory 11:48 p.m. South Mason Street sat deep in a fading, working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side—a labyrinth of modest, weather-beaten homes, flickering sodium streetlamps, and alleys where shadows stretched long and menacing.
Nico hammered commands into his burner phone, routing local units and checking street grids, but I didn't care about our scouts or our backup. My foot jammed the accelerator down until the supercharged V8 engine roared like a caged animal, shoving us through red traffic lights and around slow-moving delivery trucks. My mind raced back twenty years to a night just like this one, when my father’s drunken fists had crashed against our kitchen drywall while my mother wept in silence. I had sworn on my sister’s grave that no child in this city would ever feel that helpless if I had the breath to stop it.
“Vincent, look out!” Nico shouted, bracing his hands against the dashboard as I whipped the heavy SUV around a sharp icy corner, tires howling against the curb.
There it was. Number 418 South Mason. A faded green two-story clapboard house with peeling paint and a single dim porch light cutting through the swirling snow. No cars were parked in the patchy gravel driveway, but the front door stood slightly ajar, a dark jagged gap opening into the suffocating quiet of the midnight house.
I cut the engine a house-length away, letting the Escalade coast silently into the shadows beneath an overgrown oak tree.
“Stay in the car, Nico,” I commanded, my hand dropping instinctively to the matte-black Sig Sauer resting in my shoulder holster.
“Boss, that’s suicide,” Nico hissed, grabbing the handle of his own door. “If this is a trap set by Frankie or the North Side crew—!”
“Then I’ll walk into it alone,” I interrupted, my voice dropping into a razor-sharp register that brooked zero argument. “You wait three minutes. If I don't text, you burn this block down.”
Before he could answer, I shoved my door open, slipped out into the biting midnight air, and sprinted across the frozen lawn toward the green house. The wind whipped my wool coat around my knees, carrying the faint, unmistakable metallic scent of fresh blood and burnt tobacco.
The front door yielded instantly to a hard shove of my shoulder, swinging wide into a dimly lit living room that looked like a war zone. Glass from a shattered end table littered the faded floral carpet. A floor lamp lay twisted on its side, its bulb dark. Splintered wooden frames hung crookedly from the walls, and a heavy, oppressive silence hung in the air—the kind of silence that precedes absolute tragedy.
“Police! Nobody move!” I shouted out of reflex, though my heart hammered against my ribs with sickening dread.
No answer.
I stepped past an overturned armchair, my boots crunching softly on broken ceramic. Down the narrow hallway toward the back bedrooms, a thin line of yellow light spilled out from beneath a cracked door. I drew the Sig Sauer, disengaging the safety with a sharp, familiar click, and moved forward with the lethal, silent grace of a predator hunting in the dark.
As I approached the master bedroom, the horrifying reality came into sharp focus. A woman lay sprawled awkwardly across the hardwood floor near the foot of a queen-sized bed. Her dark hair was matted with blood, her face bruised a deep, sickening purple, and her limbs bent at unnatural, lifeless angles. A pool of dark red soaked into the wooden planks beneath her head.
“Mamma…”
The whisper was barely audible. It came from a small, dark wooden wardrobe built into the corner of the room, its louvered doors pushed open just a fraction of an inch.
My breath caught in my throat. I holstered my weapon instantly, dropping down onto my knees so I wouldn't loom like a monster over the terrified child. I crawled slowly across the blood-stained floor toward the wardrobe, keeping my movements slow and deliberate.
“Lily?” I murmured, my voice as soft and gentle as I could possibly make it. “Lily, sweet girl... it’s Vincent. You can come out now. You’re safe.”
A small, trembling eye appeared in the crack of the door, staring out at me with wide, unblinking terror. Then, with a soft, heartbroken sob, the wardrobe door pushed open wide, and a seven-year-old girl in oversized pink pajamas tumbled out into my arms, burying her face into my chest and weeping with a desperate, soul-crushing agony that tore the last remaining pieces of my heart apart.
I wrapped my arms securely around her tiny, trembling frame, pressing her face against my shoulder to shield her eyes from the horrors of the room. But as I held her close, the front floorboards of the hallway suddenly creaked behind us.
May you like
Heavy, uneven footsteps approached. A raspy, drunken voice echoed from the doorway, thick with malice and cheap whiskey.
“Well, well... looks like the little rat found herself a new daddy to die with.”
