Chapter 6 - The Trap Sprung
(~1,860 words)
Ten minutes later, Victor stepped down the grand curved staircase, dismissing the port authority directors with a crisp nod. His gray eyes immediately swept the ballroom floor, searching for the midnight-blue dress that had captured his mind all evening.
He didn't see her.
His internal alarm went off instantly. His stride lengthened as he headed toward the quiet balcony near the courtyard.
As he rounded the corner, his blood ran cold.
Marco was lying on the marble floor, groaning weakly as two hotel paramedics knelt over him. A dropped glass of sparkling water was shattered beside him, along with a single platinum earring.
Victor dropped to one knee beside his head of security, grabbing Marco by his lapels.
“Where is she?” Victor barked, his voice laced with pure, lethal fury.
Marco blinked his unfocused eyes, struggling to speak through the electrical shock. “Boss… note… trap. Two guys… chloroform. They took her through the service elevator…”
Victor stood up slowly. The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees.
Leo and Julian rushed over, guns drawn beneath their jackets. “Boss, we locked down the front exits! They didn't pass the lobby!”
“They didn't go to the lobby,” Victor said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. “They went to the underground freight docks.”
Victor pulled his personal phone from his jacket, pressing a single speed-dial button.
“Track the signal on the gray diamond pendant,” Victor ordered into the receiver before the person on the other end even said hello.
A mechanical voice responded three seconds later: “Signal located. Moving south at forty miles per hour down Commercial Street. Target vehicle: Black Ford Transit van, license plate ending in 4-9-2.”
Victor pocketed the phone, his face carved out of stone. He turned to Leo. “Get the motorcade. We hunt.”
Dora regained consciousness to the sound of roaring engine noise and the harsh smell of gasoline fumes.
Her head throbbed violently, a blinding pain localized behind her temples. She tried to move her hands, but her wrists were bound tightly behind her back with thick plastic zip-ties. Her ankles were tied together with heavy rope.
She opened her eyes slowly. She was lying on the dirty metal floor of a moving delivery van.
Sitting on a crate opposite her was Marcus Moretti, casually flipping an open switchblade between his fingers. The steel blade caught the faint glow of the passing streetlights outside the van windows.
“Ah, the sleeping beauty awakes,” Moretti purred, leaning forward to pat her cheek mockingly.
Dora pulled her face away from his hand, her hazel eyes blazing with raw defiance despite her pounding headache.
“Touch me again and you won't like what happens,” she rasped, her throat dry.
Moretti laughed hysterically, slapping his knee. “Look at you! A week ago you were crying over spilled gin, and now you think you’re a mob boss’s wife! You really think Victor Romano cares about you, little girl?”
“He’s going to kill you, Marcus,” she said evenly.
Moretti’s laughter died instantly. He leaned down, bringing the cold flat edge of the switchblade right against her throat.
“Victor Romano is falling into a trap I’ve been preparing for three years,” Moretti whispered viciously. “He thinks he’s tracking the GPS chip inside that shiny diamond around your neck. He’s following us right now.”
Dora’s heart sank into her stomach. The gray diamond. Victor had put it on her himself—he had known it had a tracker, and Moretti had counted on it.
“Where are you taking us?” Dora asked, trying to keep her voice steady to gather information.
“An old abandoned iron foundry down by the Mystic River,” Moretti smiled darkly. “My guys have rigged the entire perimeter with C4 explosive. The moment Victor steps through that door to play the big hero, I’m blowing the whole place to hell. He dies, you die, and I inherit Boston.”
Dora stared at him in horror. She wasn't afraid for her own life—she had lived with nothing for thirty years. But the thought of Victor walking blindly into a fiery inferno just to save her tore through her soul.
I have to stop him, she thought frantically. I have to break the signal.
Dora shifted her body slowly, pressing her back against the metal wall of the van. She reached behind her back, her fingers frantically searching the delicate platinum chain around her neck.
Her fingers felt the small gray diamond pendant. She clamped her nails over the thin platinum link, twisting it with all her remaining strength. The delicate metal bit into her fingers, slicing her skin, but she ignored the pain.
Snap.
The chain broke. Dora held the small diamond hidden in her palm behind her back.
Moretti was looking out the rear window, watching for Victor’s headlights. “Five minutes to the foundry,” he called out to the driver.
Dora looked at the floor of the van. Near her tied feet sat an open toolbox filled with rusted iron clamps and grease rags.
Stealthily, Dora dropped the tracking diamond directly into a small steel grease canister lying on the floor, then kicked a heavy iron wrench over it with her tied boots. The thick metal and lead grease muffled the signal transmission instantly.
Thirty miles away, inside his speeding Bentley, Victor stared at his tablet screen as the glowing red dot suddenly flickered and vanished off the map near the docks.
“Signal lost, Boss,” Leo reported nervously from the driver's seat. “Did they find the tracker?”
Victor stared at the dark screen. He knew the pendant's design; it couldn't be easily destroyed. The only way the signal died was if Dora had broken it herself to warn him.
“She knows it’s a trap,” Victor whispered, a surge of awe and fierce pride washing over him. He looked out the window at the approaching dark silhouette of the Mystic River Ironworks. “She’s warning me.”
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He pulled a matte-black Sig Sauer 9mm pistol from his shoulder holster and racked the slide with a sharp, lethal metallic click.
“Drive straight into the perimeter,” Victor commanded. “We don't avoid the trap. We shatter it.”
