Chapter 7 - Midnight at the Bakery
Dante read the note once.
Then he read it again.
His face became so still that I knew he was furious.
"No," he said.
I stared at him.
"No what?"
"You're not going."
"My sister is there."
"Which is exactly why you cannot walk into whatever Bellini prepared."
"He asked for me and the ledger."
"He asked for leverage."
"Her inhaler is on the bed."
My voice broke on the last word.
Dante's expression changed.
I hated that he looked at me like that.
Like I was already breaking.
"She can go hours without it," I said quickly. "Usually. But if she's frightened, if she's cold, if she starts wheezing—"
"We'll get her back."
"How?"
"My people will locate her."
"Before midnight?"
He didn't answer fast enough.
I grabbed the note from the bed.
"Then I'm going."
"Nerissa."
"You told me I get to decide what happens with my mother's evidence."
"Not when the decision is walking into a kidnapping exchange."
"Then what did you mean? I get choices only when you approve of them?"
His jaw tightened.
"That's not fair."
"Neither is my sister being used because your family protected monsters for twelve years."
The words hit him.
I regretted them immediately.
Not because they were entirely false.
Because I had aimed them to hurt.
Dante looked away.
"You're right about one thing," he said quietly. "My family failed yours. I won't let that failure cost Sasha her life."
"Then help me. Don't lock me in a room."
He looked back at me.
For several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then he nodded.
"We do it together."
The old bakery mentioned in the note was not my workplace.
It was a boarded-up building on the South Side that had belonged to Elena's uncle decades earlier.
Adrian recognized the address the moment Marco found it.
"Elena worked there as a teenager," he said. "Before college."
That made the location personal.
Bellini wanted us to know he had studied every part of her life.
Dante's team made a copy of the ledger.
I carried the copy.
The original went into a secure case with federal agents contacted through an attorney Dante trusted.
That was not the only surprise.
Detective Raymond Cole had vanished from his home two hours earlier.
His department-issued car was found near O'Hare.
Bellini was pulling every loose thread toward himself.
At 11:48 p.m., Dante and I sat in a black sedan half a block from the abandoned bakery.
Snow had started falling.
Not much.
Just enough to soften the streetlights.
I stared at the building.
Its old painted sign was barely visible above the plywood windows.
VANE'S BREAD & SWEETS.
My mother's family name.
My hands shook.
Dante noticed.
"We can stop."
"No."
"Marco's team can go in first."
"And if Bellini sees them?"
"Then we adjust."
I looked at him.
"You really believe you can control everything."
"No."
That answer surprised me.
He looked through the windshield.
"I believe preparation gives fear something useful to do."
I remembered the ballroom.
The terrifying calm.
Maybe calm was not the absence of fear for him.
Maybe it was what he built on top of it.
"Are you afraid now?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Of Bellini?"
His gaze moved to me.
"Of losing you before I know what this could become."
My chest hurt.
"Dante."
"Bad timing. I know."
"Terrible timing."
"Still true."
I reached across the console and took his hand.
"Then don't lose me."
His fingers closed around mine.
"That's the plan."
At midnight, my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
"Nerissa."
Victor Bellini's voice was smooth.
Almost friendly.
"You have the ledger?"
"I have it. Where is Sasha?"
"Inside."
"I want to hear her."
A pause.
Then my sister's voice.
"Nerissa?"
She sounded breathless.
"Sasha, are you hurt?"
"No. But I need—"
The phone moved away.
Bellini returned.
"Bring the ledger through the front door. Alone."
"No."
Silence.
"Excuse me?"
"Dante comes with me."
Dante's eyes snapped to mine.
That was not what we had discussed.
"You don't set terms," Bellini said.
"Then keep waiting."
I hung up.
Dante stared at me.
"That was reckless."
"Did it work?"
The phone rang again.
He looked at it.
"I hate that it worked."
Bellini's voice was colder this time.
"Both of you. No one else."
"Fine."
We entered the bakery at 12:06.
The place smelled of dust, old flour, and damp wood.
A single work light hung over the center of the room.
Sasha sat tied to a chair beneath it.
Lena stood behind her.
And Carlo DeLuca was tied to another chair near the wall, blood dried along his temple.
So Lena had not helped him escape.
She had delivered him.
Victor Bellini stood beside an old steel prep table.
He looked exactly as he had in the ballroom.
Silver at the temples.
Expensive suit.
Calm eyes.
No visible weapon.
That made him more frightening.
"Nerissa," he said. "You look like Elena."
I wanted to tear his face apart.
Instead, I held up the leather ledger.
"Let Sasha go."
"First the book."
"First her inhaler."
Bellini smiled.
"You inherited your mother's stubbornness too."
"And you inherited nothing because nobody wanted you."
Dante looked sideways at me.
Bellini's smile vanished.
Good.
I had learned something from Dante.
Calm could be a weapon.
"Give her the inhaler," Bellini told Lena.
Lena reached into her pocket.
Her hand shook.
She placed it against Sasha's lips.
Sasha inhaled twice.
Color slowly returned to her face.
I could breathe again.
"Now," Bellini said. "The ledger."
I placed it on the steel table but kept my hand on it.
"Tell me what happened to my mother."
"This is not a negotiation."
"Then you don't get the book."
Bellini's eyes hardened.
"I can kill your sister."
"And then I'll burn it."
That was a bluff.
He didn't know.
Dante stood half a step behind me, silent.
For once, he was letting me control the room.
Bellini glanced at him.
"You let a bakery girl speak for you now?"
Dante's voice was flat.
"She doesn't speak for me. She speaks for herself. Try listening."
Bellini looked back at me.
"Your mother was brilliant. Annoyingly so. She discovered transfers that should have been invisible. Carlo panicked."
Carlo lifted his head.
"Don't put this all on me."
Bellini ignored him.
"Elena threatened to go public. Salvatore hesitated because exposure would have destroyed half his empire. Carlo wanted her frightened."
My fingers curled around the ledger.
"And you?"
"I wanted the problem solved."
"You killed her."
Bellini tilted his head.
"The car crash should have killed her."
My heart stopped.
"Should have?"
Dante's posture changed.
Bellini realized he had my full attention.
He enjoyed that.
"She survived the impact. Broken arm. Internal bleeding. Conscious enough to tell the paramedic her name."
I could not feel my hands.
"What happened?"
"Raymond Cole redirected the ambulance."
Dante's voice cut through the room.
"Where?"
Bellini smiled.
"A private clinic that no longer exists."
I stared at him.
"Did you see her?"
"Yes."
"Was she awake?"
A pause.
He wanted to hurt me.
I knew that now.
"Yes."
My eyes filled.
"What did she say?"
Bellini's expression shifted.
For the first time, something like irritation appeared.
"She said you would find it."
"Find what?"
"The truth."
My mother had been dying and still believed in me.
I swallowed the scream inside my throat.
"Then she was right."
I pushed the ledger across the table.
Bellini reached for it.
"Let Sasha go."
"Lena."
Lena cut the rope around Sasha's wrists.
Sasha stood unsteadily.
"Walk to me," I said.
She took one step.
Then another.
Bellini opened the ledger.
His eyes moved across the first page.
Stopped.
He looked up.
"This is a copy."
Everything happened at once.
Lena grabbed Sasha.
Dante lunged toward Bellini.
Carlo tipped his chair sideways into Lena's legs.
Sasha fell free.
A gun appeared in Bellini's hand.
The first shot shattered a light.
Darkness exploded across the room.
I dropped to the floor and crawled toward Sasha's voice.
"Nerissa!"
"I'm here!"
Another shot.
Men shouted outside.
Dante yelled my name.
Then I heard Adrian.
"Sasha!"
Adrian?
He was supposed to be at the mansion.
A side door crashed open.
Emergency lights flashed red.
For one instant I saw everything.
Dante wrestling Bellini near the steel table.
Marco's men entering.
Lena on the floor.
Sasha crawling toward me.
And Adrian standing in the doorway with a security guard behind him.
"Dad?" Sasha cried.
Bellini tore free of Dante and raised the gun.
Not at Dante.
At Sasha.
Adrian moved before anyone else.
The gun fired.
He collapsed.
"No!"
Sasha screamed.
Dante hit Bellini hard enough to send the gun skidding beneath an oven.
Marco's men swarmed him.
But Bellini kicked open a rear service door and disappeared into the alley before they could close around him.
I reached Adrian.
Blood spread across his shirt near his shoulder.
"Stay with me," I said.
He looked at Sasha.
"Are you okay?"
She dropped beside him sobbing.
"You idiot. Why did you come?"
He tried to smile.
"Apparently disappearing is no longer my best skill."
Sasha laughed through tears.
Sirens approached.
Real ones this time.
Federal agents and paramedics flooded the building.
Dante came to me.
There was blood at the corner of his mouth, but he was standing.
I grabbed his face.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Don't lie."
"Split lip. That's all."
I pulled him against me.
He held me so tightly I could barely breathe.
"I thought—" he started.
"I know."
"I heard the shot."
"I know."
He buried his face against my hair.
Across the room, agents handcuffed Lena.
Carlo was cut free.
Sasha climbed into the ambulance beside Adrian.
Bellini had escaped.
But he had left something behind.
His phone.
An agent picked it up from the floor and sealed it in an evidence bag.
Two minutes later, the agent returned.
"Mr. DeLuca?"
Dante looked up.
"We found an active message thread. Bellini was communicating with Detective Cole during the exchange."
"Can you trace him?"
"Maybe. But there's something else."
The agent looked at me.
"Bellini sent Cole one message twelve minutes ago."
"What did it say?" I asked.
The agent read from a photograph of the screen.
"If I don't leave with the real ledger, take the bakery girl alive. She knows the access phrase."
I stared at him.
"What access phrase?"
Nobody answered.
Then I remembered a sentence my mother used every night when Sasha and I were children.
Not a prayer.
Not exactly.
A strange little rhyme I had never heard anywhere else.
When winter closes every door,
Count the lights along the shore.
Seven dark and seven bright,
Home is where you name the night.
My skin went cold.
Dante saw it.
"You know something."
May you like
I looked at him.
"I think my mother left one more secret inside my head."
