Page 105 of The Hidden Heir

“Yes. I was there.”

A closer look at the healing bruises on my face and the stitches above my eyebrow, and he can confirm. “Shit. Where did this happen? When? Did you file a report? I didn’t hear anything come through this precinct.”

“I didn’t file a report, Detective Reece. You know how we prefer to handle these issues in Chicago.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes at me. “Right, right. Then what are you doing here?”

“I need your help.”

Those are the four hardest words I’ve ever had to say in my life. If my father were to hear me say them, he’d probably disown me. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and we’re nowhere close to finding Valentina.

Reece is even more surprised by my request than by the news I just delivered.

“You spoke to my wife and tried to offer her an out,” I say.

“I was just doing my job, Mr. Petrucci. Given what she had already been through, the woman looked like she needed a break.”

It’s hard not to take any of this personally, but a law enforcement influence will come in handy later down the road—unlike my predecessors, however, and particularly for this situation, I need the influence to come about naturally in an almost organic fashion. It will also give me better access to Chicago PD’s resources in the future. What I’m about to do is a dangerous gamble, but the payoff is simply too enticing.

The fact that Reece seems to have a soft spot for my wife doesn’t exactly sit well with me, but given the circumstances, I need this motherfucker motivated.

“All I ever did was try to protect her,” I say. “Not knowing which of my enemies were coming after us, it was hard to adjust our defenses accordingly. She was never truly safe on her own.”

Reece sighs heavily. “To be fair, I kind of agree with you there. Who do you think has her and the boy then?”

“Oh, I already know.”

“Okay, tell. I’ll get a team together for a rapid response situation.”

I shake my head. “No, it has to be just you and me. It needs to stay that way for her safety.”

“I’m not sure that’s a smart approach,” the detective warns me.

“It might not look like it, but we’re dealing with Mauro Mancuso here.”

Reece’s jaw drops, but only for a moment. “I fucking knew it. That war’s been going on for decades, since long before you and your brother were even born.”

“Mancuso has several private properties in Chicago, all of them under different names, none immediately affiliated with him,” I say. “I need your resources to find their addresses and then a way to narrow the choices down to a possible single location. I think he’s keeping Valentina and Michael at one of those properties.”

“On one condition,” Reece says. I lift an eyebrow. “The minute we find them, I get to arrest Mancuso, and everyone involved. I call my people in, the whole kit and caboodle. No bloody vengeance and none of that mob crap you fellas like to deal in.”

I hesitate, mostly for dramatic effect. “Alright.”

Thirty minutes later, we have a viable address. My investigators have excellent resources, and I have plenty of funds to disperse in their direction, but there is no investigator more efficient than one with direct access to the government’s secure databases, which reach across branches and departments.

It would’ve taken me days to learn what Reece was able to provide in under an hour. My gamble is already paying off. Now, it’s time to set the hook.

“I’m driving,” Reece warns me as he grabs his key from a desk drawer.

“I’ll be right behind you,” I reply.

On the way out of his office, I send one last text. Solomon knows what he has to do next. If we play our cards right, everything gets sorted tonight. We fail, and I lose everything.

Failure is not an option.

We pull up outside a ranch house in Lincoln Park, close to the zoo. The moon is full, and there is only a handful of stars visible against a pitch-black canvas. Below, the city hums and twinkles, its lights spreading across the lake like scattered diamonds. It’s quiet, perhaps too quiet. The house is dark, though there is a brown sedan parked in the driveway.

“They’re either asleep or the car is a plant,” Reece tells me.