Chapter 2 - The Maid Who Stole a Mafia Boss
At 4:36 a.m., I returned to the operating room.
The hallway was empty.
Dante had stationed guards near the elevators and the east stairwell, but no one watched the laundry passage. That was the advantage of being a maid.
Men with guns watched doors.
They did not watch cleaning carts.
I pushed an empty linen cart toward the operating room, my heart beating hard enough to make my ribs ache. Inside the cart, beneath several clean sheets, I had hidden warming packs, bottled water, an oxygen mask, and a spare set of gray scrubs.
It was not much.
But it was all I had.
The security code still worked.
The door clicked open.
Lorenzo lay exactly where I had left him.
The room was colder now. The edges of the metal table looked frosted. I moved quickly, pulling back the sheet.
His eyes were closed.
His skin was pale.
For one terrible moment, I thought I had imagined everything.
Then his fingers twitched.
“Lorenzo,” I whispered.
His eyes opened slowly.
This time, he looked more aware.
“Bell.”
“You remember me.”
“I remember…” He coughed weakly. “You talk too much.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Then I covered my mouth.
“You almost died,” I whispered.
“Apparently, I’m difficult to kill.”
His voice was weak, but the familiar dry edge was there.
I had heard stories about Lorenzo Moretti my entire life. Everyone in Chicago knew his name. They knew he controlled the city’s hidden economy, that politicians attended his private dinners, that rival crews vanished after crossing him.
But I knew another version of him.
The man who remembered every employee’s name.
The man who paid for the cook’s son to attend college.
The man who had quietly placed an envelope of money in my locker after learning my father’s debt collectors had threatened my mother.
The man who had told me I deserved to take up space.
“Can you sit up?” I asked.
He tried.
Pain crossed his face so sharply that I nearly told him to stop.
But he forced himself upright.
His chest was wrapped tightly beneath the bloodstained bandages. There were two bullet wounds near his ribs. The toxin had slowed his heart until the doctors believed it had stopped, but the cold had also preserved him long enough for his body to fight back.
At least, that was what I hoped.
“We need to leave,” I said.
Lorenzo looked around the room. “Where is Dante?”
“Upstairs. Planning your funeral. Or your war. I’m not sure.”
His expression darkened.
“Who else knows?”
“No one.”
“Good.”
I helped him into the gray scrubs. His hands were unsteady, but he refused to lean on me until his knees nearly buckled.
“Please,” I said, catching him. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
His eyes met mine.
For a moment, something changed in his expression.
Not softness.
Lorenzo Moretti was not a soft man.
But trust, perhaps.
“Put me in the cart,” he said.
“What?”
“The linen cart.”
“It’s too small.”
“You said no one watches cleaning carts.”
I stared at him.
Even half-dead, he was listening.
We folded blankets around him and covered him with fresh sheets. His body barely fit inside, but he managed not to make a sound. I pushed the cart out of the operating room just as footsteps approached from the far corridor.
Dr. Caldwell appeared around the corner.
His eyes widened when he saw me.
“You again.”
I lowered my head. “Taking linens to the wash.”
“At this hour?”
“Yes, doctor.”
He stepped closer.
My hands tightened around the cart handle.
Caldwell looked at the sheets. Then he looked toward the operating room.
“Did you go inside?”
“No.”
“You have no authorization.”
“I’m sorry.”
He reached toward the top sheet.
Before his hand could touch it, an alarm began blaring from the east wing.
Caldwell spun around.
A guard shouted, “Someone breached the gate!”
The doctor ran toward the noise.
I did not wait.
I pushed the cart through the service hallway, past the storage rooms, past the emergency generator, and toward the old freight elevator that led to the estate’s rear garage.
The elevator doors opened with a groan.
Inside, Lorenzo whispered, “Stop.”
I froze.
“What is it?”
“The garage is not safe.”
“How do you know?”
“Because there are cameras.”
My pulse raced.
“There are cameras everywhere.”
“Not everywhere.”
He lifted one weak hand and pointed toward a narrow access door near the elevator shaft.
“That leads to the old tunnel.”
I had worked at the Moretti estate for three years and never knew the tunnel existed.
Of course I had not.
No one told the maid where the escape routes were.
The door was locked with a fingerprint scanner.
Lorenzo tried to raise his hand, but he was too weak.
I took his fingers gently and pressed his thumb to the glass.
The scanner flashed red.
Again.
Red.
“Your hand is cold,” I whispered.
Lorenzo gave a faint, humorless smile. “That has been mentioned.”
I rubbed his hand between mine, trying to bring warmth back into it.
The scanner blinked.
Green.
The door opened.
Beyond it was a narrow concrete passage, dark except for old emergency lights. The air smelled of damp stone and oil.
Lorenzo climbed out of the cart, one arm around my shoulder.
“Where does it go?” I asked.
“To the river.”
“That is not helpful.”
“It’s not supposed to be.”
We moved through the tunnel slowly.
Every few steps, Lorenzo had to stop. His breathing became rougher, and blood began to darken the bandage beneath his scrubs.
“You need a real doctor,” I said.
“I need a doctor who doesn’t work for whoever poisoned me.”
“Then who do we trust?”
He looked at me.
The question hung between us.
Then he said quietly, “Right now? You.”
I did not know why that hurt.
Maybe because nobody had trusted me with anything important before.
Maybe because I was terrified I would fail him.
Or maybe because Lorenzo Moretti—the man every armed soldier in Chicago feared—was leaning against me in a dark tunnel, trusting a woman everyone else ignored.
By the time we reached the river exit, dawn was beginning to color the sky gray.
A black boat waited beneath the bridge.
A man stood beside it.
Tall. Broad. Armed.
Lorenzo’s body went rigid.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
He did not answer.
The man stepped forward.
Then he smiled.
May you like
“Boss,” he said. “You really should have stayed dead.”
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