Chapter 2 - THE DEAD MAN WHO REFUSED TO DIE
“Now watch how a Duca finishes what his family started.”
Lorenzo’s words came out cold enough to frost the underground walls.
Then his knees buckled.
I caught him before his skull struck the steel console.
“Absolutely not.”
Blood soaked through the towel I had pressed against his side.
His skin had become clammy. His breathing was shallow. The vicious clarity that had flashed through his eyes after hearing Gianna’s voice was already being swallowed by shock.
Lorenzo tried to push himself upright.
“Phone.”
“You need a surgeon.”
“I need Marco.”
“You need to stay conscious.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Mara.”
I froze.
Until that moment, Lorenzo Duca had always called me Mrs. Ellis.
Never Mara.
Apparently nearly bleeding to death had improved his manners.
“Yes, that is my name.”
“Phone.”
“No.”
Emma stood beside us in her muddy pink nightdress, Barnaby tucked tightly beneath one arm.
She looked between Lorenzo and me.
“Is the giant dying?”
My chest tightened.
“No, sweetheart.”
Lorenzo’s mouth moved faintly.
“Your mother is very bossy.”
Emma nodded seriously.
“She is.”
“Emma.”
“What?”
Lorenzo almost smiled.
Then his head rolled against my shoulder.
I slapped his cheek gently.
“Stay with me.”
His eyes opened again.
“Don’t hit.”
“You have two bullets in you.”
“Still rude.”
Good.
Sarcasm meant consciousness.
I looked around the bunker.
The hidden room was larger than I had understood during those first frantic seconds. Beyond the surveillance console stood three reinforced doors.
One marked ARCHIVE.
One marked GENERATOR.
The third carried a faded red cross.
I nearly cried.
“Emma, stay right beside me.”
“Okay.”
I dragged Lorenzo toward the medical door.
It opened into a compact emergency treatment room.
His father had built a bunker prepared for war.
Oxygen.
Sterile dressings.
IV supplies.
Old surgical lamps.
A medical refrigerator, long upgraded with newer equipment by someone who apparently knew this room still existed.
There was no miracle blood supply waiting for us.
No underground operating theater that could safely repair gunshot wounds.
But there was enough to buy time.
That was all I needed.
I had completed three and a half years of trauma nursing school before Daniel died.
Another six months and I would have graduated.
Instead, the crash took my husband, our savings disappeared under medical and funeral debt, and I became a maid in the very estate where Daniel had once worked maintenance contracts.
I had spent three years believing everything I learned in nursing school belonged to another woman’s life.
Tonight it came back.
Pressure.
Airway.
Breathing.
Circulation.
Keep him warm.
Do not remove what I could not control.
Lorenzo had one wound high along his left flank and another lower near his hip.
The upper wound worried me most.
I packed it with clotting gauze from the trauma cabinet, replaced the soaked towel, and secured pressure as best I could.
He cursed.
“Good,” I said.
His eyes opened.
“What?”
“If you can complain, you’re still with me.”
Emma climbed onto a low metal stool.
She opened her toy medical kit again.
“Do you need another Band-Aid?”
“No, baby.”
Lorenzo whispered:
“Maybe later.”
I stared at him.
He looked almost offended.
“What?”
“You are encouraging her.”
“She saved my face.”
“The bullet wound is the concern.”
Emma frowned.
“She only has bear ones.”
Lorenzo looked at me.
“Apparently we work with available resources.”
I laughed despite terror.
Then a crash sounded above us.
The shed.
Men were tearing through it.
Emma flinched.
I pulled her close.
A boot hammered against the floorboards.
“They know blood ends there,” Lorenzo whispered.
“Can they find entrance?”
“Eventually.”
“How long?”
“No idea.”
Wonderful.
I searched the treatment room.
On one wall, behind a clear plastic shield, was an old red telephone.
Lorenzo saw it.
His expression changed.
“My father’s emergency line.”
“Does it work?”
“It shouldn’t.”
I lifted receiver.
A dial tone answered.
Lorenzo almost laughed.
“Of course the paranoid bastard maintained it.”
“Who can we call?”
He hesitated.
That hesitation told me more than any answer.
A man with hundreds of employees and armed loyalists did not know which one he could trust.
“Not your sister,” I said.
His eyes hardened.
“Helpful.”
“Not Marco.”
“Obviously.”
“Who?”
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
“Dr. Nora Vance.”
“Doctor?”
“Trauma surgeon.”
“Family?”
“No.”
“Owned by you?”
His eyes opened.
“I don’t own people.”
I gave him a look.
Even half dead, he understood.
“Fair.”
“Does Gianna know her?”
“Yes.”
“Then no.”
“Mara, we cannot stay underground while I bleed into my trousers.”
Also fair.
He thought harder.
Then:
“Father Callahan.”
I stared.
“A priest?”
“He has keys to the old river chapel.”
“How does that help?”
“The bunker has another exit.”
I looked toward the corridor.
“Where?”
“My father told me it connected to the carriage house.”
“You just said you didn’t know bunker existed.”
“He talked when drunk.”
“Excellent estate planning.”
Lorenzo almost smiled.
“Call Callahan.”
I dialed.
A sleepy voice answered.
“Saint Gabriel’s rectory.”
“Father Callahan?”
“Yes?”
I looked at Lorenzo.
He nodded.
“This is Mara Ellis from the Duca estate.”
Silence.
Then:
“Is Lorenzo alive?”
I went cold.
“How did you know to ask that?”
The priest breathed.
“Because Gianna called me twenty minutes ago to discuss funeral arrangements.”
I looked at Lorenzo.
His expression became stone.
Father Callahan continued.
“She said her brother was killed by Chicago men.”
“He isn’t.”
“Thank God.”
“We need a doctor and a safe exit.”
“Where are you?”
“Under the gardening shed.”
A long pause.
“So Salvatore really built it.”
“Yes.”
“Listen carefully. There should be a passage behind the archive wall. It runs to the old chapel maintenance tunnel.”
“How do you know?”
“Your husband showed me once.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
“Daniel?”
“Yes.”
My dead husband.
The man whose car had gone through a guardrail three years earlier.
Father Callahan’s voice sharpened.
“Mara?”
“I’m here.”
“Daniel found that bunker four months before he died.”
My hands began shaking.
Lorenzo watched my face.
“What?”
he whispered.
I put the call on speaker.
Father Callahan continued.
“Daniel told me he had found something beneath the estate that frightened him.”
“What?”
“He wouldn’t say over the phone.”
“He left a sealed envelope with me.”
My entire body went cold.
“You’ve had something from my husband for three years?”
“I was instructed to give it only if you ever mentioned the bunker.”
“Why?”
“He said anyone who knew too early might die.”
Tears burned my eyes.
Above us, another heavy crash shook dust from the ceiling.
Lorenzo pushed himself upright.
“Father.”
“Lorenzo?”
“Yes.”
“You sound terrible.”
“I’ve been better.”
“Can you reach the chapel passage?”
“We’ll find it.”
“I’ll call an ambulance through a physician I trust.”
“No police yet.”
I looked at Lorenzo sharply.
He saw.
Then closed his eyes.
“Correction.”
He breathed.
“Police through Callahan.”
I stared.
He hated every syllable.
Good.
Father Callahan said:
“I know one detective who owes the Church more honesty than the Ducas.”
“Fine.”
Then I said:
“Father.”
“Yes?”
“Daniel’s envelope.”
“Safe.”
“What does it say?”
“I never opened it.”
Good.
“Bring it.”
“I will.”
The line went dead.
I turned toward Lorenzo.
“My husband knew your bunker.”
“I didn’t.”
“He died.”
“I know.”
“Three years ago.”
“Yes.”
“You told me it was a road accident.”
“That’s what investigators concluded.”
“Your family investigates itself.”
His face tightened.
“That is changing.”
“It better.”
Emma tugged my sleeve.
“Mommy?”
I looked down.
She held Barnaby to her chest.
“I don’t like the booms.”
I crouched despite blood on my hands.
“I know.”
“Are bad men upstairs?”
“Yes.”
Truth scaled to age.
“Are they coming down?”
“We’re leaving before they can.”
She nodded solemnly.
“Okay.”
No tears.
That frightened me more.
Three-year-olds should not become good at accepting danger.
I stood.
“Lorenzo, passage.”
He pointed toward archive.
We entered.
Rows of red binders covered steel shelving. Old ledgers. Photographs. Magnetic tapes.
Family secrets preserved beneath garden soil.
At the rear wall stood a portrait of Lorenzo’s father, Salvatore Duca.
Of course.
Even underground, patriarchs required decoration.
Lorenzo touched the frame.
Nothing.
“Move it.”
I helped.
Behind it was a narrow steel door.
Emma whispered:
“Secret door.”
“Yes.”
“Cool.”
Not the word I would choose.
Lorenzo keyed an old mechanical code into the lock from memory.
“Your father told you?”
“Numbers from our mother’s birthday.”
The door clicked.
A damp stone tunnel stretched into darkness.
We began moving.
Slowly.
Lorenzo leaned heavily against me.
Emma held my coat.
Thirty yards.
Fifty.
Behind us, faintly, metal screamed.
The men had found something.
“Faster,” Lorenzo whispered.
“You collapse, we go nowhere.”
He obeyed.
Another novelty.
Halfway through tunnel, he stopped.
“What?”
He pointed toward wall.
An inset steel cabinet.
The label read:
ELLIS, DANIEL — 2021
My breath disappeared.
Not a general archive.
My husband’s name.
My Lorenzo? No.
Daniel Ellis.
Three years dead.
His file was hidden inside a bunker Lorenzo claimed not to know existed.
I reached toward cabinet.
Lorenzo caught my wrist.
Not forcefully.
“Not now.”
I glared.
“That is my husband.”
“And my blood pressure is probably incompatible with standing.”
I hated him.
He was right.
Again.
“Later.”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
He looked directly into my eyes.
“I promise.”
I believed him before I wanted to.
We continued.
At the end of the tunnel, another hatch opened beneath the abandoned river chapel two hundred yards beyond estate wall.
Father Callahan waited.
So did an ambulance.
One detective.
No Duca men.
Good.
Paramedics took Lorenzo.
As they lifted him onto stretcher, Emma climbed beside wheel.
“Wait.”
One medic smiled.
“What is it?”
She carefully removed another yellow bear Band-Aid from her toy kit.
Lorenzo opened one eye.
Emma stuck it on the back of his hand.
“For the other owie.”
The paramedic laughed softly.
Lorenzo did not.
His eyes filled.
“Thank you, little one.”
Then he looked at me.
“Mara.”
“What?”
“Do not go back to estate.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Stay with Callahan.”
“For how long?”
“Until we know.”
“No.”
His brow tightened.
“No?”
“I am not letting you decide where Emma and I live because someone shot you.”
His eyes closed.
Even on stretcher, he looked exhausted by me.
“Fine.”
“Ask.”
He exhaled.
“Would you stay somewhere secure until we understand who killed your husband and who is currently searching for me?”
That was different.
“Yes.”
The ambulance doors closed.
Before they did, Lorenzo said:
“Daniel’s cabinet stays sealed until you’re there.”
I nodded.
The doors shut.
Sirens did not start immediately.
The ambulance left quietly with police escort.
Father Callahan placed his coat around Emma.
She yawned.
Three years old.
Midnight.
Mud on dress.
A mafia boss’s blood on one sleeve.
No child deserved this.
Then my phone buzzed.
A news alert.
BREAKING: DUCA FAMILY CONFIRMS LORENZO DUCA KILLED IN APPARENT CHICAGO SYNDICATE ATTACK
Below it was a photograph of Gianna Duca outside the mansion.
Black coat.
Tears.
Hand over heart.
The caption called her:
The grieving sister and presumptive successor to Duca Holdings.
Emma looked at screen.
“That lady sad?”
I stared at Gianna’s perfect mourning face.
“No, sweetheart.”
“What is she?”
I pulled my daughter close.
“Dangerous.”
And across the city, Donna Gianna Duca was preparing to inherit an empire before her brother’s blood had even dried.
She had one problem.
May you like
Lorenzo was alive.
And buried beneath the estate was a steel cabinet carrying my dead husband’s name.
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