Chapter 4 - THE BABY THEY TOOK TO START A WAR
Lucia had been missing seventeen minutes when Anna collapsed.
Dr. Hayes caught her before she hit the floor.
“Get her back in bed.”
“I need my baby!”
“We’re going to find her,” I said.
Anna turned on me.
“You don’t know that.”
Her voice broke.
“You don’t know Matteo.”
I knelt in front of her.
“No.”
I looked directly into her eyes.
“But he doesn’t know me as well as he thinks.”
Marco interrupted.
“We found camera footage.”
Security video showed a masked man entering through a service corridor using a valid access code.
No forced entry.
No alarm.
Someone inside had helped.
The man left carrying Lucia inside a medical bag.
My stomach turned.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Matteo Morelli’s voice filled the room.
“Elias.”
I looked toward Anna.
Her face went white.
“Where is the baby?”
He laughed softly.
“Straight to business.”
“Matteo.”
“Lucia is alive.”
Anna began crying.
“What do you want?”
“A trade.”
I already knew.
“Anna.”
“Yes.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“No.”
Silence.
Then Matteo said:
“You really want your brother’s daughter growing up without a mother?”
I stared toward the window.
“What guarantee do I have?”
“You don’t.”
“At least you’re honest.”
He laughed.
“I always liked that about you.”
“Where?”
“Midnight tomorrow.”
He named an abandoned freight terminal near Cicero.
Then his tone changed.
“And Elias?”
“Yes?”
“Bring Anna alone.”
“Impossible.”
“Then bring whoever you want.”
A pause.
“They’ll just die with you.”
The line went dead.
Anna looked at me.
“I’m going.”
“No.”
“She’s my child.”
“And you can barely stand.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
Her eyes filled with rage.
“You don’t get to decide.”
The words hit harder than they should have.
She was right.
I had spent my entire life deciding for everyone.
Employees.
Enemies.
Family.
Women.
Power had trained me to mistake control for protection.
I took a breath.
“Then we decide together.”
Anna stared.
That answer surprised her.
It surprised me too.
We reviewed everything.
The call.
The terminal.
Luca’s files.
The stolen access code.
Then Agent Reeves arrived.
I almost threw him out.
Instead, I let him speak.
“We can use the exchange to get Lucia back and arrest Matteo.”
Anna looked toward him.
“And if something goes wrong?”
Reeves answered honestly.
“It may.”
She closed her eyes.
I respected him for not lying.
Then he placed another photograph on the table.
Security footage from outside my estate.
A sedan had followed the kidnapper.
Registered to Vincent Caruso.
I looked toward Reeves.
“You think Vincent took her?”
“No.”
He pointed.
“The driver wasn’t Vincent.”
I leaned closer.
The image was blurry.
But the profile was unmistakable.
Marco.
I looked across the room.
My security chief had disappeared twenty minutes earlier.
His phone was off.
And the man I had just started believing might be innocent was now following the vehicle carrying Lucia.
Then Reeves said:
“Elias, we traced the M.D. payments.”
I looked up.
“They weren’t going to Marco DeLuca.”
“Who?”
He slid a file toward me.
MARCUS DRAKE.
My late father’s former accountant.
A man I had personally ordered killed eleven years ago.
Except the account activity continued last month.
May you like
Marcus Drake was alive.
And he had been hiding behind my own organization for more than a decade.
