Chapter 5 - The Broken Vault
“Grab her—gently!” Lucas yelled, his voice cracking with an emotion Victor had never heard from him before. “Don't you dare hurt her! Bring her to me!”
Victor looked bewildered, but he moved swiftly, cutting off the alley exit and catching the terrified little girl before she could scramble over a chain-link fence.
“Let me go! Bad men! Let me go!” Mia screamed, kicking furiously at Victor’s shins.
“Victor, put her down!” Lucas barked, limping forward. He knelt in the slush until his eyes were level with the little girl's.
Up close, the resemblance hit him like a physical blow. The soft arch of her eyebrows. The tiny cleft in her chin. The exact, unmistakable shade of hazel-green eyes that he had kissed every morning for four years.
“Mia,” Lucas said softly, forcing every ounce of terror and authority out of his voice. He held his hands up, open and empty. “Look at me. Nobody is going to hurt you. I promise.”
Mia stopped thrashing, though her chest heaved with frightened sobs. “You have bad friends.”
“They’re just loud,” Lucas whispered gently. He slowly raised one hand, his fingers shaking, and lightly touched the platinum lily pendant resting against her collarbone. The metal was cold against his fingertips. “Mia... where did you get this necklace?”
“It’s mine,” she whimpered, pulling back protectively. “Mommy gave it to me before she fell asleep.”
“Before she fell asleep?” Lucas’s heart hammered so hard against his ribs it felt bruised. “Where is your mommy, Mia?”
“In the quiet house under the hill,” Mia said, her lower lip trembling. “Auntie Clara said Mommy had to go to heaven because the sickness took her lungs. Then Auntie Clara got sick too, and the men with the tattoos came to our apartment looking for papers. I hid in the laundry chute. I ran away.”
Lucas felt the world tilting beneath his boots.
Isabella had died six years ago in an explosion and fire in Westchester. The coroner had signed off on the dental records. The city had issued the death certificate. He had buried those ashes in the Moretti family crypt.
Yet this child was no more than five years old.
She knew how to treat an asthma attack with military precision. She wore the pendant that should have melted in the heat of a four-thousand-degree inferno. And she had the eyes of a woman he had mourned in blood for two thousand days.
“Boss,” Victor said, his voice unusually sharp, almost anxious. “We can’t stay on the street. Santoro remnants, rival factions... this could be an undercover setup. Let me hand the kid to Social Services or the precinct—”
“Shut your mouth, Victor,” Lucas said without looking back.
Victor blinked, a flicker of something dark passing through his expression. “Lucas, be rational. You’re not thinking clearly after the attack. The kid probably stole that pendant from a pawnshop.”
Lucas stood up, scooped the little girl into his arms along with her beaten-up backpack, and wrapped his warm cashmere coat around her shivering body. She was so light. She felt like a bird.
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“Clear my private floor at the penthouse,” Lucas ordered his men. “Call Dr. Evans. Tell him to bring a full pediatric kit and DNA swabs. If anyone breathes a word of this child’s existence to the Commission, I will peel their skin off while they watch.”
***
