Chapter 4 - The Flight to Geneva Lake
The heavy armored Suburban cut through the thick fog of the Wisconsin border at two o'clock in the morning.
Rain lashed against the blacked-out glass in sheets, blurring the dark silhouettes of the pine trees lining Highway 120. In the front seat, two of Vincent’s younger soldiers—Tony and Frank—sat in tense, unbroken silence, their eyes constantly checking the side mirrors while an encrypted police scanner chattered softly on the dashboard console.
In the back row, I sat squeezed between Isabella and Ellie. Both girls were wrapped in heavy wool blankets, their heads resting against my thighs. Ellie had finally surrendered to exhaustion, her breath coming in slow, rhythmic hitches, her arm still draped protectively over her gray stuffed rabbit.
Isabella was wide awake.
She was staring out the tinted window at the dark highway, her pale reflection illuminated occasionally by the red glow of the tail lights ahead. In her lap, she held the white swan music box, her fingers tracing the smooth porcelain feathers over and over again like a rosary.
"Isabella?" I whispered, leaning down so the men in the front seat wouldn't hear me over the hum of the tires. "Are you cold, sweetie?"
She didn't turn her head, but her hand slid away from the music box and reached out, her tiny, ice-cold fingers hooking into the sleeve of my cardigan. She pulled it gently, twice.
I shifted closer, wrapping my arm around her tiny shoulders, pulling her against my side alongside Ellie. She rested her head against my collarbone, letting out a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to release eleven months of compressed terror.
"It’s okay," I murmured into her soft dark hair. "We’re going somewhere safe. Your dad is taking care of everything."
"He isn't going to come back," Isabella whispered.
The sound of her voice was so quiet, so delicate, that for a second I thought I had imagined it over the roar of the rain against the roof. I went completely still.
"What did you say, sweetie?" I whispered back, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Isabella lifted her head, looking up at me with eyes that possessed an eerie, ancient understanding far beyond her seven years.
"The bad man in Brooklyn," Isabella whispered, her voice raspier now, like dry leaves scraping across pavement from disuse. "He has more guns than my daddy. That’s why Mommy was trying to run away. She wasn't going to Chicago that day. She was taking me to the airport."
My throat closed up. "Your mother was leaving?"
Isabella nodded slowly. "She told Dominic that if he didn't help us leave, she would tell my daddy about the money he took. But Dominic called the old man in Brooklyn instead. I heard him on the phone in the pantry... he told him that Mommy was a loose thread."
A cold, sickening horror bloomed behind my chest. Sofia hadn't just discovered a financial fraud—she had tried to use it as leverage to escape Vincent’s violence, only to fall directly into a trap set by the very man she trusted to buy her freedom.
"Did your father know she was leaving?" I asked, my voice barely audible.
"No," Isabella shook her head. "Mommy said Daddy would kill everyone if he knew. She said... she said the family business eats everyone eventually."
Before I could digest the weight of her words, the Suburban suddenly swerved hard to the left, the tires shrieking against the wet asphalt as Tony slammed his foot onto the brake pedal.
I grabbed both girls, throwing my body over them as we slid sideways across the dual lanes, the heavy luggage in the trunk slamming against the interior plastic lining.
"What the hell is that?!" Frank yelled from the passenger seat, unholstering his Glock 19 in a single, fluid motion.
Fifty yards ahead, blocking both lanes of the narrow two-lane highway, a commercial flatbed tow truck lay sideways across the road, its yellow hazard lights flashing rhythmically through the thick fog.
"Back up! Back up right now, Tony!" Frank screamed.
Tony threw the heavy SUV into reverse, stomping on the accelerator. The engine roared, the tires spinning wildly on the wet road—but behind us, a dark gray pickup truck swung out from the tree line, its high beams flipping on, blinding us completely as it closed the gap from the rear.
We were boxed in.
"Get down!" I shrieked, pressing Isabella and Ellie flat against the floorboards beneath the heavy wool blankets, covering their bodies with my own.
The first shot shattered the rear windshield in a spiderweb cascade of tempered glass.
The sound was deafening inside the enclosed cabin—a sharp, metallic crack followed by the punch of Kevlar body panels absorbing high-caliber rounds. Frank leaned out his passenger window, firing four rapid shots toward the pickup truck behind us, the bright muzzle flashes illuminating the interior of our car in strobing bursts of orange light.
"They aren't trying to disable us! They're shooting to kill!" Tony yelled, his hands frantically working the steering wheel as he tried to ram the Suburban’s reinforced rear bumper into the pickup’s front grill.
"It's Valenti’s crew! They knew the safehouse route!" Frank swore, reloading his magazine with a loud clack. "Clara! Stay on the floor! Don't move no matter what happens!"
The heavy SUV slammed into the pickup truck with a brutal, bone-jarring impact. Metal crumpled, glass exploded, and the smell of hot oil and burned rubber filled the cabin. The Suburban shuddered, mounted the muddy shoulder of the road, and rolled down a shallow embankment, crashing through the dense pine underbrush before slamming sideways against a massive oak tree.
Then, absolute silence.
The engine sputtered once and died. The only sound left was the steady, heavy patter of rain falling through the shattered windows and the hiss of steam escaping from the crushed radiator.
"Tony?" Frank grunted from the front seat, his head resting against the deployed, deflated airbag, a thick stream of dark blood pouring from a gash on his temple.
Tony didn't answer. His head was slumped at an unnatural angle against the driver’s side door, his eyes staring blankly at the ruined dashboard.
"Clara..." Frank choked out, turning his bloody face toward the back seat, his hand weakly holding his sidearm over the console. "Take... take the girls... run into the woods... Mateo’s cabin is two miles north... follow the ridge..."
"Frank, oh God, Frank," I sobbed, struggling to pull myself up through the twisted metal and shattered glass.
Footsteps crunching over wet gravel were approaching from the highway above. Men's voices, sharp and rough, barked orders through the rain.
"Check the wreck! Don't leave any of them breathing! The Don wants the kid’s body confirmed!"
Frank shoved his spare magazine into my coat pocket, his hand slick with his own blood. "GO!" he hissed, turning his body toward the shattered front windshield, raising his weapon with a final, desperate burst of strength.
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I didn't think. I didn't breathe.
I grabbed Isabella with my right arm and Ellie with my left, hauling both little girls out through the blown-out rear hatch of the Suburban, diving straight into the black, freezing darkness of the Wisconsin woods just as the sound of gunfire erupted behind us once more.
