Chapter 2 - The Shadows of Chicago
The fury inside Gabriel Costa did not erupt in shouts; it froze into a cold, lethal mass. He slammed the phone down onto its cradle, his knuckles turning white. The enormous study felt suddenly suffocating.
"Luca," Gabriel called out, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that made the security chief step into the room instantly. "My mother. Find out where she's moving her assets. If she thinks she can harbor my wife and children under my own nose, she's deeply mistaken."
"Boss," Luca began cautiously, "if Madame Isabella is involved, she wouldn't keep them in the city. The safehouses she controls are outside state lines—properties your father registered decades ago."
"Then mobilize every asset we have in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan," Gabriel ordered, buttoning his suit jacket over his chest. "I want every backroad watched, every rural airstrip monitored, and every motel clerk interrogated. I want my children back."
As Gabriel stepped out of the study, he glanced back at the master bedroom. The lingering scent of Bianca’s vanilla perfume made him violently sick to his stomach. He tore off the shirt, throwing it into the wastebasket as if it were contaminated. He had spent months chasing an illusion, trading his real, breathing family for a cheap thrill, and now the bill had come due with catastrophic interest.
By midnight, intelligence reports started rolling in. A private airstrip in northern Wisconsin had logged an unlisted twin-engine charter taking off at 4:00 AM on the morning of the birth, heading north toward the Canadian border.
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Gabriel didn't hesitate. He ordered his private jet prepped at O'Hare. He didn't care about jurisdiction, he didn't care about international borders, and he certainly didn't care about the cold war between the Chicago syndicates and the northern syndicates.
His wife had taken his children, and he was going to tear down any obstacle standing in his way to retrieve them.
