Chapter 4 - The Safehouse in Little Italy
Four miles away, in the damp, drafty basement of a red-brick row house off Taylor Street, Isabella Mercer leaned heavily against the edge of a chipped porcelain sink. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps, her fingers digging into the cold ceramic until her knuckles turned translucent white.
A sharp, tearing cramp rippled across her lower belly, doubling her over. She clamped her teeth down on her lower lip to keep from screaming, tasting copper as her teeth broke the skin.
""Breathe, Bella. Just breathe,"" she whispered to the empty room, her voice sounding like a stranger’s in the dark.
The basement belonged to her late grandmother. It had been empty for three years, smelling of dried basil, masonry dust, and damp laundry. When she slipped away from the pharmacy on Clark Street, she had deliberately abandoned her cell phone in the backseat of a city bus, knowing Dante’s surveillance grid would trace it within minutes. She had taken three different cash cabs, ducking through alleyways until she reached the only place in the city where nobody knew she was Isabella Caruso.
Here, she was just little Bella Mercer, the quiet girl who used to braid palms for Palm Sunday at Holy Family Church.
She reached beneath her coat and pressed her palm against the tight mound of her stomach. The baby had been kicking frantically an hour ago, but now there was only a dull, sluggish flutter.
""Stay with me, little one,"" Isabella sobbed, resting her forehead against the damp plaster wall. ""Just hold on until morning. Mommy will find a clinic. We just have to get far enough away from him.""
She remembered Dante’s face as she walked out into the rain—the sudden, terrifying crack in his armor when he saw the medical envelope. For a split second, she had almost dropped her suitcase and fallen into his arms. She had wanted him to wrap his coat around her, carry her up those grand marble stairs, and tell her that the world could burn before he ever let anyone hurt her.
“You would throw away eighty million dollars because she misunderstood something?”
Vanessa’s parting words rang in her ears like a death knell. In Dante’s world, everything was a transaction. Love was an alliance; children were heirs to balance sheets; women were ornaments to be protected like vault gold, not partners to be trusted with the truth. If Dante had an agreement with the Hales, he had kept it from her because he didn't think she was strong enough—or high-born enough—to handle the reality of his business.
Another contraction seized her, sharper this time, radiating into her lower back. A warm trickle ran down the inside of her thigh.
Isabella looked down in horror. Dark crimson spots were soaking through the hem of her cream-colored knit dress, blooming against the cracked linoleum floor.
""No... no, please, God, no,"" she prayed, falling to her knees, her hands frantic as she tried to stem the flow. The bleeding had started. The placental abruption Dr. Chen had warned her about was happening right here in the cold dust of an abandoned basement.
She couldn't wait until morning. She couldn't run anymore. If she stayed in this basement to spite Dante Caruso’s pride, her baby would die in the dark.
Dragging herself across the floor, she reached her small suitcase. She pulled out her grandmother’s old rotary landline phone from a storage box beneath the stairs, blowing dust off the rusted jack, and plugged it into the wall socket.
She picked up the receiver. A faint dial tone hummed in her ear.
She didn't know Dante’s encrypted cell phone number by heart—he changed it every month for security. But she knew the dispatch line for the Caruso central garage. She had called it dozens of times to order cars for charity galas and grocery runs.
With shaking, blood-stained fingers, Isabella dialed the seven digits.
The phone rang twice.
A rough, exhausted voice picked up on the third ring: ""Caruso Transport, state your clearance.""
May you like
""Lorenzo..."" Isabella choked out, her vision blurring as black spots danced across her eyes. ""Tell Dante... our baby... the basement on Taylor Street...""
The receiver slipped from her numb fingers, hitting the floor with a hollow clatter as darkness swallowed her whole.
