Chapter 18 - The Safe in Pilsen
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On Friday afternoon—the day after a warm, unforgettable Thanksgiving dinner in the penthouse where ten-year-old Chloe had proudly helped the hotel’s Michelin-starred pastry chef decorate pumpkin pies while Roman carved the turkey himself—Tessa drove down to her old neighborhood in Pilsen with Matteo and two security guards to sign the final insurance release papers on the gutted apartment building where Arthur Sterling’s arsonist had set the electrical fire a month ago.
Before the city demolition crew tore down the smoke-damaged brick three-flat on Monday morning, the fire marshal allowed Tessa twenty minutes to walk through the ground-floor basement storage lockers to see if any of her mother’s old family photo albums had survived inside the fireproof steel footlocker her father had bolted to the concrete floor ten years ago.
Roman was in a two-hour video conference at the hotel with the Monte Carlo casino architects, so Matteo accompanied her down the charred wooden basement stairs with a heavy crowbar and a flashlight.
In the corner of the soot-stained concrete cellar, beneath a pile of collapsed drywall that had actually insulated the corner from the worst of the flames, sat Frank Cole’s heavy green military footlocker.
Matteo snapped the heat-warped padlock off with the crowbar and lifted the steel lid.
Inside, wrapped in fire-resistant canvas tarps, her mother’s wedding album and Chloe’s baby pictures were completely intact!
Tessa knelt on the concrete floor, smiling through a wave of bittersweet relief as she lifted out the heavy leather photo albums and handed them to Matteo to carry up to the waiting SUV.
At the very bottom of the footlocker, beneath a false sheet-metal floor plate that had popped loose when the fire heat expanded the rivets, lay a long, flat velvet-lined mahogany case that Tessa had never seen in her entire life—alongside a sealed brown manila legal folder stamped with the gold crest of the COOK COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE — NOVEMBER 12, 2016.
Tessa paused alone in the quiet cellar corner as Matteo stepped out to the curb to load the photo albums into the trunk.
November 12, 2016.
Ten years ago.
Wait—November 12, 2016, was three days after her little sister Chloe was born! And it was the exact week her mother, Clara Cole, had supposedly died of postpartum hemorrhage at St. Luke’s Hospital!
Why would her father have a sealed Cook County Medical Examiner’s homicide file from the week Chloe was born hidden underneath a false steel plate in the basement?!
With her heart suddenly giving a cold, violent thump against her ribs, Tessa opened the mahogany velvet case first.
Inside wasn't an engineering tool.
Resting in the velvet cutout was a custom, match-grade stainless-steel Colt 1911 pistol with ivory grips inlaid with the silver crest of a crowned wolf—the exact personal family crest of Don Lorenzo Vane, Roman’s late father, who had been assassinated in his car on November 10, 2016, ten years ago!
Tessa’s breath froze in her throat.
Why on earth did her honest, quiet, rule-following city building-inspector father have Don Lorenzo Vane’s personal custom pistol hidden in a false bottom of his footlocker?!
With trembling fingers, Tessa tore open the sealed 2016 folder beside the gun.
Inside was NOT an autopsy report for her mother.
It was a change-of-identity decree signed by a federal Witness Protection judge in Seattle in 2002, a birth certificate from Mercy General Hospital dated November 9, 2016, and a ten-year-old letter written in her mother’s handwriting on the stationary of The Sovereign Hotel!
Tessa tilted her flashlight beam onto the birth certificate for Chloe Marie Cole—born November 9, 2016.
The mother’s name listed on the original hospital birth record wasn't Clara Cole.
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The mother’s name was Elena Vane—Don Lorenzo Vane’s thirty-eight-year-old second wife and Roman Vane’s stepmother, who Chicago newspapers had reported died alongside Don Lorenzo when their town car went into the Chicago River after a brake failure ten years ago!
And the father’s name on ten-year-old Chloe’s original birth record was Don Lorenzo Vane!
