THE ECHO OF LORENZO

I sat in the leather back seat beside Vincent, clutching my hands together so tightly my knuckles turned white. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.

Vincent sat beside me, calm and motionless, racking the slide of a sleek black firearm before slipping it into his shoulder holster. Beside us sat two additional Viscari security SUVs, forming an impenetrable armored wall around our vehicle.

“Two minutes out, Boss,” Marco called out from the front passenger seat, checking the live GPS tracking feed of Matthew’s phone. “Moretti’s sedans are parked near the school’s athletic field.”

“If they’ve laid a hand on him, Marco,” Vincent said quietly, “none of them leave that block alive.”

When our convoy screeched to a halt outside the high school gates, the scene was already plunging into chaos.

Across the rainy street near the gymnasium entrance, my seventeen-year-old brother, Matthew, was being backed against a chain-link fence by three men in heavy leather jackets. Matthew was clutching his chest, coughing violently, his blue asthma inhaler lying shattered on the wet pavement where one of the men had kicked it.

Paulie Moretti—a sneering, ruthless lieutenant with slicked-back hair—was grabbing Matthew by the collar of his denim jacket, trying to drag him toward an idling black sedan.

“Get your hands off my brother!” I screamed, throwing the SUV door open before Marco could even stop me.

“Lucy, stay inside!” Vincent barked, surging out of the vehicle right behind me.

I sprinted across the wet asphalt, ignoring the cold rain stinging my face, my eyes fixed entirely on my shivering, wheezing brother.

“Matthew!” I screamed.

Paulie Moretti turned his head, a grotesque, victorious smile spreading across his face when he saw me running toward them. “Well, well... look what we have here. The long-lost Viscari princess herself—”

Before Paulie could finish his sentence, Vincent materialized beside me like a dark shadow.

Without uttering a single word, Vincent grabbed Paulie by his throat, slamming his head violently against the iron fence post with a sickening CRACK.

Paulie groaned, dropping to his knees, his nose gushing blood onto the wet pavement.

The other two Moretti goons drew their handguns, but before they could raise their sights, Marco and four Viscari guards surged forward, disarming both men with brutal, practiced efficiency, forcing them face-first onto the muddy grass in steel handcuffs.

I dropped to my knees beside Matthew, pulling his shivering, gasping body into my arms.

“Matthew! Matthew, look at me!” I sobbed, pulling a spare, working inhaler from my handbag—a spare I always carried everywhere I went. I pressed the mouthpiece to his lips. “Inhale, baby! Inhale!”

Matthew took two deep, raspy breaths of the aerosol medication, his chest expanding, his frantic wheezing slowly subsiding into steady, tearful breaths.

“Lucy...” Matthew gasped out, clutching my coat, his eyes wide with horror as he looked at the armed men and the bleeding mobster on the ground. “Who... who are these people?! What’s going on?!”

I held my brother tightly against my chest, weeping with overwhelming relief, looking up through the rain.

Vincent stood over us, holding a black wool trench coat, his face set in solid, unyielding iron. He stepped forward, draping the heavy coat over both Matthew and me, shielding us from the rain.

He looked down at Paulie Moretti, who was coughing up blood on the pavement.

“Tell Paulie’s father,” Vincent spoke, his voice dropping into a low, predatory growl that made the air freeze, “that if a single Moretti soldier steps within five blocks of my niece and nephew again, I will personally wipe the Moretti name from the history of Chicago.”