Chapter 2 - The House on West Addison
A violent autumn storm had broken over Lake Michigan by the time the black armored Cadillac rolled through the wrought-iron gates of the Moretti compound. Rain lashed against the reinforced glass in violent sheets, the heavy windshield wipers sweeping back and forth with a rhythmic, mechanical thud.
Sal sat behind the wheel, his posture as ramrod-straight as it had been thirty years ago. His knuckles were loose and steady on the leather steering wheel. Luca occupied the front passenger seat, staring straight ahead into the blinding downpour, his phone dark in his lap. He hadn’t spoken a single word since they left the driveway.
Emma sat in the back, her fingers tangled in the hem of her simple wool coat. Every nerve in her body was screaming. She was a housekeeper from a working-class neighborhood in Bridgeport; she lived with her younger brother, paid her rent on time, and spent her weekends couponing for groceries. Now, she was sitting in the back of an armored tank owned by one of the most feared men in the Midwest, speeding through the Chicago night toward a scandal that could trigger an all-out syndicate war.
“Sal,” Luca said quietly, breaking the forty-minute silence as they turned off the highway onto Belmont Avenue.
“Yes, Boss?”
“Did the boy look healthy?”
Sal paused, his eyes flicking up to the rearview mirror before returning to the flooded asphalt. “He looked well-fed, Luca. But he had that look kids get when they’re kept inside too much. Big eyes. Pale around the ears. He was wearing clean clothes, but the house... the house was shuttered up tight. Heavy blinds. No toys in the yard.”
Luca’s jaw clenched. “And Vanessa? How did she touch him?”
The question was heavy with something raw, something that pierced through Luca’s usual armor of cold command.
“She didn't hug him back,” Sal said honestly. “She pushed him by the shoulders back inside the door. She looked around like she thought the neighbors were tracking her with binoculars. She stayed inside maybe twenty minutes. When she came back out, she was wiping her hands with a wet wipe.”
A bitter, quiet breath escaped Luca’s lips. He reached into his coat pocket, his fingers brushing against the red mitten he had tucked away.
Ten minutes later, the Cadillac slowed to a crawl.
West Addison in this sector was a forgotten corridor of bungalows built during the post-war boom, their postage-stamp lawns separated by rusted chain-link fences. Huge, overgrown willow trees wept over the cracked sidewalks, their branches whipping violently in the gale-force winds.
“That’s it,” Sal said, easing the sedan against the curb beneath the flickering yellow glow of a dying streetlamp. “Number 412. The green one.”
The house was almost entirely dark, save for a dim, amber light spilling through a single basement window well. The front porch steps were crooked, the roof sagging slightly over the stoop.
“Turn off the engine,” Luca instructed.
The car fell silent, save for the violent drum of raindrops battering the roof.
Luca turned around in his seat to look at Emma. In the dim amber glow from the streetlamp, his sharp cheekbones and the faint scar across his left temple looked carved from granite. Yet, when his eyes met hers, there was no cruelty in them.
“You’re frightened,” he said. It wasn’t an accusation; it was an observation.
“A little, Mr. Moretti,” Emma admitted honestly.
“You don’t have to come inside. You can wait here with the doors locked. If anything looks wrong, Sal has a panic switch on the dash that alerts my perimeter detail.”
Emma looked from Luca toward the bleak, dark house through the rain-streaked window. She thought about a five-year-old boy sitting in gray flannel pajamas in a house with shuttered windows, waiting for a mother who wiped her hands after touching him.
“I’ll come with you,” Emma said softly. “If there’s a child in there... he might need to see a woman who isn't screaming at him.”
Luca stared at her for a long second, something shifting in the depths of his dark eyes. Then he nodded once. “Stay directly behind me.”
The three of them stepped out into the lashing storm. Sal carried a heavy, waterproof tactical flashlight, while Luca took the lead, his coat collar turned up against the cold spray. They walked up the broken concrete path, the dead leaves sticking to the soles of their shoes.
Luca stepped onto the wooden porch. The boards groaned under his weight. He didn't knock with a syndicate enforcer’s kick; instead, he raised three knuckles and tapped firmly against the frosted glass of the inner door.
Silence hung for several seconds, broken only by the whistling wind beneath the eaves.
Then, the soft shuffle of slippers approached the door. A chain rattled. A brass deadbolt clicked open.
The door pulled back four inches, stopped by an old security chain. Through the gap, an older woman with wild, graying curls and thick spectacles peered out into the darkness, clutching a faded quilted bathrobe around her throat.
“Who is it?” she demanded, her voice shaking with immediate terror. “The pharmacy doesn't deliver this late! Go away or I’m calling the police!”
Luca stepped into the beam of porch light, his posture upright and motionless.
“Elena,” he said calmly.
The woman froze. Her jaw dropped, and the color drained completely from her wrinkled face, leaving her a sickly shade of parchment.
“L... Luca?” she choked out.
“Undo the chain, Elena,” Luca said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, gentle quiet. “Or I will pull this frame out of the brickwork.”
Trembling so violently that the metal clattered three times against the casing, the woman fumbled with the latch. The chain fell with a heavy thud.
The door swung inward.
Luca stepped inside, his polished boots leaving wet prints across the faded floral linoleum. Emma and Sal followed, immediately closing the heavy wooden door against the howling storm.
The air inside smelled of stale tea, camphor, and boiled potatoes. The furnishings were straight out of 1985—a fraying floral sofa covered in clear plastic runners, a console television humming with low static in the corner, and walls lined with cheap plastic religious icons.
Elena backed away toward the kitchen archway, her hands pressed flat against her chest as if trying to hold her heart inside her ribs. “How did you find this place? Vanessa swore... she swore on her mother’s grave you didn't know.”
“Vanessa tells a lot of stories,” Luca said, his eyes scanning the narrow hallway that led toward the bedrooms. “Where is he?”
Before Elena could answer, a small creak echoed from the top of the short staircase.
Emma looked up.
Standing at the landing, clinging to the wooden banister with both hands, was a little boy. He couldn't have been more than four or five years old. He wore oversized blue cotton pajamas with cartoon fire trucks on them. His hair was thick, dark, and fell into his eyes in unruly curls—almost identical to the hair Luca Moretti had in that 1992 photograph Sal had kept inside his cardboard box.
The boy rubbed one sleepy eye with the back of his fist, clutching a battered stuffed bear with missing ears.
He looked down at the strangers in the hallway, his gaze bypassing Luca, bypassing Sal, until his big, dark brown eyes locked straight onto Emma.
“Did you bring the medicine?” the boy asked in a piping, innocent voice. “Nana’s hands hurt, and Mommy said she wasn't coming back until Sunday.”
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Luca turned his head slowly, looking up the staircase at the boy. The breath left his lungs in a single, shuddering exhale.
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