Chapter 5 - NO MORE PRETENDING
Mara blamed herself.
Adriano recognized it because he had spent half his life doing the same thing.
“Sophie was involved because of me.”
“No.”
“She was babysitting my child.”
“Victor chose her.”
“Because of me.”
Adriano stepped closer.
“Then blame Victor.”
Mara’s eyes burned.
“That easy?”
“No.”
His voice softened.
“But more accurate.”
They had twenty hours.
Victor demanded the drive at an abandoned freight terminal on the Chicago River.
Adriano wanted Mara nowhere near it.
Mara disagreed.
Loudly.
“Absolutely not.”
“You’ve used that phrase a lot since meeting me.”
“Because you keep proposing stupid things.”
“I’m proposing that I go.”
“I’m proposing that you remain alive.”
“Sophie is seventeen.”
“And Luca is six.”
Mara stopped.
“That’s low.”
“That’s reality.”
She walked away.
Adriano caught her wrist.
Mara looked down.
He immediately released it.
“I’m sorry.”
“For which part?”
“Touching you without asking.”
She stared at him.
A strange tenderness passed between them.
It frightened Mara more than anger.
“You’re not what I expected.”
“That’s rarely a compliment.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Good.”
But she smiled.
Adriano smiled back.
The moment lasted too long.
Mara broke eye contact.
“You need a better plan.”
They created one together.
Daniel’s drive contained financial accounts Victor desperately needed erased.
Adriano duplicated the drive but embedded a tracker.
Meanwhile, Mara found something everyone else had overlooked.
Daniel had labeled certain transactions with chess moves.
Mara remembered teaching him chess.
“He wasn’t identifying money,” she said. “He was identifying locations.”
The final notation translated to an old warehouse on South Morgan Street.
Adriano’s team searched property records.
Victor owned it through a shell corporation.
They raided it six hours before the scheduled exchange.
Empty.
But they found photographs.
Dozens.
Mara.
Luca.
Adriano.
Sophie.
Isabella.
And Daniel.
On one wall was a map of Adriano’s entire organization.
Mara stared at the center.
A photograph of Adriano had been crossed out.
“He planned to kill you.”
“For years.”
Then Mara noticed something.
“Why isn’t your mother crossed out?”
Adriano turned.
Isabella’s photograph remained untouched.
He understood immediately.
“She isn’t his prisoner.”
The hostage video had been staged.
But Sophie’s fear had been real.
Adriano punched the wall.
“My mother is working with him.”
Mara grabbed his arm.
“You don’t know that.”
“Stop defending her.”
“I’m defending evidence.”
“She disappeared for twelve years and appears the moment Daniel’s drive surfaces.”
“Yes.”
“She leads us into an ambush.”
“Yes.”
“Then Victor somehow kidnaps her?”
Mara had no answer.
Adriano looked devastated beneath the fury.
That night, Mara found him alone on the terrace.
Chicago glittered beyond the windows.
She stood beside him.
“My father used to disappear for weeks,” Adriano said.
Mara waited.
“My mother would tell me he was traveling. Later I understood what he was doing.”
“What?”
“Hurting people.”
He looked at the city.
“I promised myself I would never become him.”
“Did you?”
Adriano smiled without humor.
“Depends who you ask.”
“I’m asking you.”
He looked at her.
“I’ve done things you wouldn’t forgive.”
“Then don’t ask me to.”
That answer surprised him.
Mara continued.
“But whatever you did yesterday doesn’t decide what you do tomorrow.”
Adriano studied her.
“You always talk like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like somebody’s grandmother trapped inside a thirty-year-old woman.”
Mara laughed.
It escaped before she could stop it.
Adriano laughed too.
Then silence returned.
Their hands rested inches apart on the railing.
He moved closer.
Slowly.
Giving her time to retreat.
She didn’t.
“Mara.”
“What?”
“This would be a terrible idea.”
“Probably.”
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
“You have a gift for agreeing with me at inconvenient times.”
“Adriano?”
“Yes?”
“Stop talking.”
He kissed her.
Softly.
Nothing like the dangerous man everyone feared.
Mara’s fingers touched his jaw.
Then she stepped back.
Both were breathing differently.
“That was stupid,” she whispered.
“Extremely.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“All right.”
She frowned.
“You agreed too quickly.”
“You told me not to.”
“I know what I said.”
Adriano’s phone rang.
Mara muttered something unrepeatable.
He answered.
His face changed.
“We found Sophie.”
They rushed downstairs.
Sophie had been dumped beside a hospital emergency entrance.
Alive.
Terrified.
But unharmed.
When Mara reached her bedside, Sophie grabbed her.
“She helped me.”
“Who?”
“The older woman.”
“Isabella?”
Sophie nodded.
“She pretended to work with Victor so she could get me out.”
Adriano closed his eyes.
His mother had not betrayed him.
Sophie pulled something from beneath her blanket.
A folded note.
“For him.”
Adriano opened it.
Victor knows the drive is copied. He isn’t coming for the files anymore. He’s coming for Luca.
Mara’s blood froze.
Her phone rang.
The housekeeper’s number.
She answered.
Screaming filled the line.
Then a man spoke.
“Mrs. Bellucci?”
Victor.
Mara stopped breathing.
“You should have stayed home tonight.”
Behind his voice came a familiar sound.
Luca crying.
“Mom?”
Mara’s knees buckled.
May you like
Victor laughed.
“Now,” he said, “we finally have something worth trading.”
