Chapter 13
“Faces lie, Luca,” she sobbed against his skin, half-laughing, half-crying. “Hands don't. And my hands… they don't let people die.”
Outside, the first wail of distant police sirens cut through the Chicago rain.
Luca held her face between his palms, wiping a smudge of plaster dust from her cheek with his thumb. His hazel eyes were blazing with a certainty that had never existed in him before.
“They’re going to end this tonight,” he whispered. “All of it. Valenti. The war. The whole rotten empire. I’m done living in the dark, Nina. I’m done.”
Six months later, the spring sun was warm over the marina at Belmont Harbor.
The lake was a dazzling expanse of sapphire blue, dotted with white sailboats catching the crisp April breeze. Along the paved promenade, runners, dog-walkers, and families in light jackets strolled beneath the newly budding willows.
On a wooden bench overlooking the water sat Nina Kowalski.
She wore clean navy scrubs, a light windbreaker, and sunglasses pushed up into her hair. In her lap was a paper bag from an artisanal bakery on Grand Avenue, containing two fresh, perfectly crisp cannoli.
A pair of polished leather loafers stepped onto the pavement beside the bench.
Nina looked up.
Luca Moretti sat down beside her.
He wasn't wearing an overcoat. He wore a simple navy sweater with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows, revealing the clean, white surgical scar running along his left forearm—a scar that Nina had personally debrided and sutured in a private surgical clinic thirty minutes before the federal raid on Marco Valenti’s compound had concluded the Chicago mob war forever.
There were no black Suburbans parked along the curb.
There was no Gus lurking by the bicycle racks. Gus had taken an early retirement to an olive grove in southern Arizona, funded by a severance package that could have stabilized a small island nation.
Luca reached into his pocket and pulled out two cold bottles of fresh orange juice.
He twisted the cap off the first one, handed it to her, and then opened his own.
His hands were perfectly, absolutely steady.
“You’re late,” Nina said, taking the juice.
“Traffic on Lake Shore Drive,” he replied smoothly. “Some idiot in a sports car tried to cut off a CTA bus. The bus driver didn't yield.”
“Good. My father always said bus drivers have the right of way by divine decree.”