Chapter 2 - The Call in the Rain
At 1:16 a.m., the heavy brass-trimmed doors of Lucia’s Ristorante finally swung shut behind Bella as she stepped out into the damp, desolate alleyway. The city was weeping a cold, unrelenting autumn rain that slicked the asphalt and turned the streetlamps into blurry halos of amber and gray.
She pulled her thin wool coat tighter around her shoulders, shivering as a gust of wind whipped off Lake Michigan and cut straight through her clothes. She jammed her hands into her pockets, her fingers brushing against the rough fabric of her uniform, and started walking the four blocks toward the crosstown bus stop.
Her phone buzzed violently in her pocket.
She pulled it out, her stomach executing a sickening freefall as she saw the caller ID glowing on the cracked screen: ST. JUDE’S HOSPITAL.
Bella answered on the second ring, her breath catching in her throat. “Hello?”
“Ms. Rossi?” a brisk, professional voice asked.
“Yes! Yes, this is Isabella.”
“This is Dr. Patel. I’m calling from the intensive care unit. Your brother had another episode about twenty minutes ago.”
Bella stopped walking right on the wet pavement, a passing taxi splashing a wave of dirty puddle water against her boots, though she didn’t even feel it. “What happened? Is he breathing? Was it another collapse?”
“His blood pressure dropped suddenly, and his oxygen saturation levels plummeted,” Dr. Patel said, his tone measured but urgent. “We had to intervene immediately. We’ve stabilized him for the moment, but—well, you need to come in.”
“I’m coming right now. I’m leaving the restaurant—prices, buses, whatever it takes—I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Wait, Ms. Rossi,” Dr. Patel interjected before she could hang up. “There’s something else.”
Bella closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against a cold brick wall of a shuttered bakery. “What? What is it, Doctor? Is he getting worse?”
A heavy pause hung over the line, filled with the distant, mechanical beeps of hospital monitors. “We finally received the comprehensive panel results from the genetic specialist downtown.”
Bella’s breath hitched. “And?”
“We may finally know what’s wrong with Marco. It’s a rare congenital vascular disorder. It explains the chronic fatigue, the respiratory failures—everything.”
Relief so powerful and sudden washed over Bella that her knees nearly buckled. An answer. After two years of doctors shrugging, of misdiagnoses, of watching her little brother wither away in a sterile white room while she drowned in debt, they finally had a name for the enemy.
“Can you treat it?” Bella asked, her voice cracking with desperate hope.
“We believe so,” Dr. Patel said cautiously. “There is an experimental surgical intervention pioneered at Johns Hopkins, combined with targeted pharmaceutical therapy.”
Relief turned instantly to ice. Bella understood the unspoken language of American medicine all too well. “How expensive?”
“We’ll discuss the financial logistics and insurance authorizations when you arrive, Ms. Rossi. Please just get here.”
The line went dead.
Bella lowered the phone slowly, her hand trembling so violently she almost dropped it into the filthy gutter water. The hospital bills she was already drowning in were nothing compared to an experimental surgical intervention. It was an impossibility. A cruel joke played by a universe that enjoyed watching her squirm.
A sleek, black sedan pulled silently out of the shadows of the side street and glided toward the curb, stopping right beside her with barely a whisper of its engine.
Bella stiffened, her survival instincts flaring. She backed away toward the brick wall.
“Absolutely not,” she muttered aloud.
The rear tinted window descended smoothly with a soft mechanical hum. Vinnie Gallo was sitting inside in the dim light of the cabin, looking thoroughly unamused.
Bella crossed her arms defensively. “What?”
Vinnie frowned, resting his arm along the open window frame. “What do you mean, what?”
“I’m not getting into that car.”
“I didn’t ask you to get into the car, kid.”
“Good.”
“I just came to deliver something.” Vinnie reached into his breast pocket.
Bella’s eyes narrowed. “If that’s money from Moretti, tell him where he can shove it. I don’t take charity, and I certainly don’t take hush money from mobsters.”
Vinnie actually laughed—a dry, raspy sound that held no humor. “It isn’t money.”
“Then what is it?”
“Open it.” Vinnie tossed a small, thick envelope through the open window onto the damp hood of a parked car near her.
Bella hesitated, eyeing the envelope as if it might detonate. Reluctantly, she stepped forward, picked it up, and tore the flap open.
Inside was a single, heavy card stock business card. There was no company name printed on it. No corporate logo. No street address.
Only a single, ten-digit telephone number embossed in stark black ink.
And on the back, written in bold, slashing handwriting that matched the intensity of the man who had written it, were five words:
If you ever need something.
Bella stared at the card, a cold knot forming in her stomach. She looked up through the window at Vinnie. “Why?”
Vinnie’s smirk slowly disappeared, replaced by a strange, unreadable solemnity. He rested his hands on the steering wheel. “I’ve worked for Alessandro Moretti for fourteen years.”
“And?”
“I’ve seen rival lieutenants pull guns on him in public restaurants. I’ve seen federal agents try to lean on him.” Vinnie paused, holding her gaze. “I’ve never in my life seen anybody stop him with restaurant policy.”
Despite the crushing weight of the phone call she had just received, Bella nearly let out a hysterical laugh.
Vinnie’s eyes drifted downward, locking onto the white hospital visitor bracelet that was still clumsily taped around Bella’s wrist—a relic from her lunch break visit earlier that afternoon.
Vinnie’s expression softened ever so slightly. “Someone sick?”
Bella’s protective instincts flared instantly. She yanked her sleeve down over her wrist, hiding the band. “That is none of your business.”
“Fair enough,” Vinnie said softly, shifting the car into gear.
The sedan began to creep forward down the wet asphalt.
Bella clutched the business card in her fist, her mind racing back to Dr. Patel’s words, back to the impossible cost of a specialized surgery, back to the failing health of her brother. Before she could talk herself out of it, she called out into the rain.
“Vinnie!”
The brake lights flashed, and the car stopped. Vinnie looked back through the rear window.
“Tell Mr. Moretti something for me!” Bella shouted over the hiss of the rain.
“What?”
Bella held up the black business card, letting the rain mist over it. “Tell him I’m never calling this number!”
A slow, knowing smile touched Vinnie’s lips.
“That’s exactly what he said you’d say.”
The sedan accelerated smoothly, melting into the rainy Chicago night and leaving Bella standing alone on the dark sidewalk.
She looked down at the card one last time, sliding it into the deepest pocket of her coat just as her phone began to vibrate again.
Dr. Patel.
She swiped to answer immediately, breathless. “Dr. Patel?”
“Ms. Rossi, please—you need to get here as fast as you can.”
Bella’s heart stopped. The blood drained entirely from her face. “What happened? Is he—?”
“Marco is crashing. The second episode was worse than we thought. His heart rate is plummeting. We’re taking him into emergency trauma right now.”
The phone slipped slightly in her sweat-slicked palm. The rain seemed to disappear, replaced by a roaring silence in her ears.
“I’m on my way,” Bella choked out.
She started running down the wet pavement toward the hospital, her breath coming in ragged, freezing gasps.
Three blocks away, gliding anonymously through the rainy maze of downtown traffic, the black sedan’s dashboard screen lit up with an incoming call.
Alessandro Moretti answered instantly, his voice low and steady.
“Well?”
“She refused the money, boss,” Vinnie reported from the driver’s seat.
“I expected that.”
“And she tried to give the card back. Said she was never going to call it.”
A heavy, lingering silence stretched across the encrypted phone line for several seconds.
“She refused that too?” Alessandro asked, a dangerous edge returning to his tone.
“She yelled at me, threw the words back in my face, and kept the card anyway.”
May you like
Alessandro turned his head, staring silently through the rain-streaked window at the glittering, blurred lights of the Chicago skyline.
“Then she didn’t refuse it at all.”
