Chapter 5 - A Nurse’s Instinct
The sun was just beginning to cast a dirty orange glow over the frozen skyline of Chicago when Luca escorted Nina out through the hospital’s secure loading dock. Snow continued to fall, burying the tire tracks of the ambulances and dusting the hood of the black sedan.
“You cannot go back to your apartment above the Belmont laundromat,” Luca stated, opening the passenger door for her. This time, there was no hesitation; Nina climbed inside, completely drained of energy, her scrub jacket still smelling of saline and iodine.
“My mother lives in Rockford,” Nina murmured, leaning her head back against the headrest. “If Silvio’s loyalists realize that he’s been captured, will they target her?”
“Dino dispatched a security detail to your mother’s house twenty minutes ago,” Luca answered, sliding behind the wheel and starting the engine with a quiet purr. “She has two unmarked security vehicles parked outside her residence. If a single stranger steps onto her driveway, they will be intercepted. You have my word on that.”
Nina looked at him, studying the sharp contours of his profile. “How many men in your syndicate were loyal to Silvio?”
“Too many,” Luca admitted candidly. “Silvio ran the street crews on the South Side and handled the distribution networks. For six years, while I was consolidating our legitimate shipping and real estate enterprises, Silvio was building a rogue faction using pharmaceutical kickbacks and blackmail. He convinced half the capos that I had gone soft because I refused to traffic in synthetic narcotics.”
“He was using Apex Health to funnel dirty money,” Nina noted, pulling Julian’s binder onto her lap again. “Look at these shipping manifests from three months ago. Silvio was diverting massive shipments of hospital-grade fentanyl and cardiac toxins through St. Gabriel’s regional distribution warehouse near the railyards.”
Luca tapped the steering wheel, his expression darkening. “That railyard warehouse is registered under my name. If federal agents raided that facility tomorrow, I would be indicted for interstate drug trafficking and murder, while Silvio would have stepped in as the uncontested head of the family.”
“A complete setup,” Nina said, shaking her head in disgust. “He was planning to eliminate Tommy, pin the boy’s death on hospital negligence, frame you with the drug cache, and seize full control of the Chicago outfit.”
Suddenly, the encrypted satellite phone mounted on the dashboard lit up with an incoming alert. Luca tapped the speakerphone button.
“Speak,” Luca commanded.
Dino’s voice came through, strained and accompanied by the distant sound of blaring horns. “Boss, we have a major breach. Two unmarked black SUVs just ambushed the convoy two blocks south of the river warehouse. They didn’t come to rescue Silvio—they came to silence him! They opened fire with fully automatic weapons! Vance is dead. Silvio took two rounds to the chest before my boys could extract him!”
Luca’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “Who hit you, Dino?”
“It was Marco Valenti’s crew!” Dino barked over the sound of screeching tires. “Silvio wasn’t working alone, Luca! He made a backroom alliance with the Valenti family from Detroit! They’re moving on the city right now. They know Tommy survived, and they know you have Julian’s original ledger!”
“Where are you taking Silvio?” Luca demanded.
“He won’t last twenty minutes, boss,” Dino replied grimly. “He’s bleeding out from a tension pneumothorax. If he dies before he gives us the passcodes to the Valenti offshore accounts, we lose every piece of financial leverage we have to shut this down!”
Luca glanced sideways at Nina.
May you like
Nina knew that look. It was the look every trauma surgeon gave her when an unsalvageable patient rolled through the emergency bay doors with five minutes left to live.
“Don’t look at me like that, Luca,” Nina sighed, sitting upright and rubbing her tired eyes. “Tell Dino to divert to your secondary safehouse. Grab a chest tube kit, a scalpel, and three units of O-negative blood from the private trunk cache. If that treacherous old snake has to confess before he dies, I’m the only one who can keep him conscious long enough to talk.”
