Chapter 6 - THE CALL FROM THE BOY WHO REFUSED TO BE AFRAID
I don't remember reaching Noah's room.
One second I was in the foyer.
The next I was gripping the windowsill hard enough to split a fingernail.
Rain blew through the open window.
The backyard beyond it was empty.
My mother stood near Noah's bed, shaking.
“He was here.”
Dominic's voice became terrifyingly calm.
“When did you last see him?”
“Maybe two minutes ago.”
“Door?”
“I went into the bathroom. I heard something at the window.”
Marco leaned outside.
“Drainpipe.”
Dominic turned.
“Lock the estate.”
Marco's face was gray.
“Already done.”
“Dogs.”
“Moving.”
“Every camera.”
“On it.”
I grabbed Dominic's arm.
“You promised he was safe.”
He looked at me.
I had never seen fear in Dominic Caruso's face before.
Not real fear.
Now I did.
“Elena—”
“You promised.”
“I know.”
“If anything happens to him—”
“I know.”
He didn't tell me to calm down.
Didn't tell me he would handle it.
He simply ran.
The next twelve minutes lasted several years.
Security searched the grounds.
Noah's bedroom camera had been disabled for exactly six minutes.
A maintenance gate at the rear of the property had opened using a valid security credential.
Marco's.
Again, cloned.
A dark utility vehicle appeared on a nearby traffic camera.
No plate visible.
Dominic called people whose names I had never heard and spoke in a voice that made me understand why grown men feared him.
I sat at the kitchen table gripping Noah's glove.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
Dominic reached for it.
I slapped his hand away.
“Hello?”
Breathing.
Small.
Fast.
“Mom?”
My knees nearly gave out.
“Noah.”
Dominic froze.
“Baby, where are you?”
“I don't know.”
His whisper was almost impossible to hear.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Can anyone hear you?”
“I don't think so.”
Dominic moved toward me.
I put the phone on speaker.
“Noah,” he said softly. “It's Dad.”
Silence.
That silence nearly broke Dominic.
“I'm sorry,” Noah whispered.
“For what?”
“I climbed out.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
Noah had not been dragged through the bedroom window.
He had climbed.
“Why?”
“A man told me Grandma fell.”
My mother covered her mouth.
“He was outside?”
“He said she fell by the garden wall. He said you sent him.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“How did you get a phone?”
“I took it.”
Despite everything, Marco looked impressed.
“From who?” I asked.
“The man driving.”
Dominic leaned closer.
“What do you see outside?”
“Trees.”
“What kind?”
“I don't know.”
“Road?”
“Little one.”
“Any signs?”
“I can't see.”
A man's voice shouted somewhere near Noah.
He gasped.
“Mom.”
“Hide the phone.”
“I have to go.”
“Noah, listen to me.”
“I know.”
His voice trembled.
“Our rule.”
Every family has strange survival habits.
Ours had more than most.
When Noah was five, Dominic created a code for emergencies.
If someone ever claimed Mom or Dad had sent them, that person needed to know the answer to a ridiculous question.
What color is Mom's baseball glove?
I did not own a baseball glove.
The correct answer was purple.
“Did he know the answer?” Dominic asked.
“No.”
“Good boy.”
“But I went anyway because he said Grandma was bleeding.”
My heart broke.
Of course he had.
Eight years old.
Trying to help.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you too.”
The call ended.
Marco immediately took the phone number to his team.
Dominic stood completely still.
“You taught him well,” I whispered.
His eyes met mine.
“We taught him.”
I looked away.
This was not the moment for us.
Twenty minutes later the stolen phone pinged near an industrial stretch beside the Chicago River.
The vehicle was moving.
Then the signal stopped.
Dominic wanted me to stay behind.
I refused.
Agent Walsh arrived before we left.
That surprised both of us.
“You called federal agents?” Dominic demanded.
Marco answered.
“I did.”
Dominic looked ready to kill him.
I stepped between them.
“Good.”
“Elena.”
“No private war.”
His jaw flexed.
“They took our son.”
“And that is exactly why this does not become your father's version of justice.”
He stared at me.
For several seconds, I wasn't sure which Dominic would answer.
The husband.
The mafia heir.
The frightened father.
Finally he nodded.
“Fine.”
The search converged on a disused boat storage property formerly owned by a Caruso subcontractor.
Federal vehicles blocked one end.
Chicago police blocked another.
Dominic and I were kept back.
He hated every second.
So did I.
Then a familiar SUV appeared from a side road.
Marco shouted.
The driver stopped abruptly.
Doors opened.
Security officers rushed forward.
And Noah climbed out.
Alive.
I ran.
He collided with me so hard we nearly fell.
His arms locked around my neck.
“Mom.”
I held his face.
Checked his eyes.
Arms.
Hands.
Everything.
Dominic dropped to his knees beside us.
Noah looked at him.
For one awful second I saw uncertainty.
Then Dominic whispered, “I'm sorry.”
Noah threw himself into his father's arms.
Dominic held him and finally cried.
Not quietly.
Not elegantly.
The most feared man in half the Chicago waterfront buried his face against his eight-year-old son's shoulder and broke apart.
The driver had abandoned the vehicle ten minutes earlier.
Noah had stayed hidden beneath a blanket.
“He said someone was coming,” Noah told Agent Walsh later.
“Who?”
“A woman.”
“What woman?”
“He called her S.”
Dominic and I exchanged a look.
Sloan.
“What else did he say?” Walsh asked.
Noah twisted his fingers.
“He was talking on the phone.”
“Do you remember anything?”
Noah nodded.
“He said, ‘She'll sign when she understands what losing him feels like.’”
I stopped breathing.
Walsh's face hardened.
“What else?”
“He said Mr. Rafael was mad.”
Dominic went still.
Noah continued.
“And he said the stadium was stupid.”
“The stadium?” I asked.
“He said they shouldn't have let cameras see them.”
Sloan.
Rafael.
Dominic.
I closed my eyes.
Then Noah said something else.
“Aunt Sloan was angry at Dad.”
Dominic looked at him.
“You've met Sloan?”
Noah frowned.
“At your office.”
My head turned slowly toward Dominic.
“When?”
Noah answered before he could.
“A bunch of times.”
The world narrowed.
Dominic looked sick.
“Elena.”
“You brought her around our son?”
“No.”
Noah tugged my sleeve.
“She was there when Dad wasn't.”
That was worse.
Dominic crouched.
“What did she do?”
“She asked me about Mom.”
“What about Mom?”
“If Mom kept papers at Grandma's house.”
Agent Walsh wrote something.
I stared at Dominic.
Sloan had not merely been kissing my husband.
She had been studying my family.
Noah suddenly remembered something else.
“She gave me a baseball card.”
“When?”
“Last month.”
“Where is it?”
“In my desk.”
We returned home under federal escort.
Inside Noah's desk drawer lay a protective plastic baseball-card case.
No card.
The case was empty.
Marco examined it.
Then cracked the backing open.
Inside was a paper-thin electronic device.
A tracker.
Dominic sat down heavily on the edge of Noah's bed.
“She used my son.”
I almost said what about me?
But the look on his face stopped me.
This was larger than our marriage now.
Much larger.
My phone buzzed.
A message from a number I recognized.
Mia.
CALL ME.
PRIVATE.
I stepped into the hallway.
“What?”
Her voice was strange.
“I found something while you were gone.”
“What?”
“You asked how long Dominic had been involved with Sloan.”
My stomach tightened.
“Mia, not now.”
“You need to see this now.”
She sent an image.
I opened it.
Dominic.
Sloan.
Outside a restaurant.
His hand at her waist.
Her mouth against his.
The photograph was dated six months earlier.
Not two months.
Six.
My throat closed.
“Mia…”
“There are more.”
“How many?”
“A lot.”
I looked into Noah's room.
Dominic was holding our son.
Crying into his hair.
Six months.
He had looked into my face twenty minutes ago and confessed to three kisses.
Even that confession had been a lie.
Then another photograph loaded.
This one wasn't taken outside a restaurant.
It was taken through the window of a hotel lobby.
Dominic and Sloan were entering an elevator together.
May you like
The timestamp read 11:42 p.m.
On our wedding anniversary.
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