Chapter 4 - The Truce of Cobalt and Steel
The tension in the basement was thick enough to cut with a palette knife.
Above them, the sirens of Philadelphia police cruisers began to wail in the distance, their high-pitched screams echoing down Market Street.
"The cops are two minutes out," one of Vincent’s security men called down from the top of the stairs. "Vincent, we need to clear the sector before federal optics get involved."
Vincent didn't look back. He kept his eyes fixed on Claire. "My SUV is in the rear alley. The alley is clear. You come with me, or you stay here and let the police impound your studio as a crime scene. If the city takes this building, my uncle’s lawyers will have a court order to demolish it by morning."
Claire looked at Leo. The older man slowly lowered his weapon, though his thumb remained on the hammer safety.
"He's right, Claire," Leo said reluctantly. "If the feds lock down this studio, Dominic will use his connections in the District Attorney’s office to seize every canvas inside as evidence. We'll never see that portrait again."
Claire turned back to the stairs. She ran up to the ruined gallery, stepping over broken glass and fallen plaster. She rushed to the easel where the six-foot portrait of Lucia DeLuca still stood untouched by the bullets.
With quick, practiced movements, she used her scalpel to cut the linen canvas cleanly from its heavy wooden stretcher frame. She rolled the canvas tightly, paint side facing outward to prevent cracking, and wrapped it in a thick layer of protective oilcloth from her workbench.
She ran back down to the basement, holding the rolled canvas against her chest like a newborn child.
"Let's go," she said.
Five minutes later, a heavy, bulletproof black Cadillac Escalade was roaring down the Interstate 95 North, slicing through the midnight rain at ninety miles an hour.
Vincent sat in the rear captain’s chair across from Claire and Leo. He had pulled a clean black leather jacket over his ruined, paint-stained shirt. A medical kit lay open on the seat beside him; he was casually wrapping a roll of white gauze around a shallow graze wound on his left forearm, not even wincing as he pulled the bandage tight.
Claire sat across from him, holding her grandfather’s letter in one hand and the rolled canvas in the other.
"Where are we going?" Vincent asked, pulling a silver flask from his coat and taking a short drink before offering it to Claire.
"Pocono Mountains," Claire said, ignoring the flask. "Bay 4, Row 12. A private storage facility near Jim Thorpe."
Vincent turned his head to stare at Leo. "What’s in Bay 4, Vance?"
"I don't know," Leo admitted, leaning back against the leather seat. "Arthur Whitmore never told me the exact contents. All I know is that the night your mother disappeared, she left two iron trunks with your grandfather before she headed for the airport."
Vincent’s hands stilled on his bandage. "Two trunks?"
"One contained her personal journals and original family photographs," Leo said softy. "The other contained the master ledgers of the DeLuca syndicate from 1985 to 1998."
Vincent closed his eyes for a long, heavy second. When he opened them again, the cold, calculating mob boss was entirely gone. In his place was a thirty-four-year-old man who had spent nearly three decades living in a house built on lies.
"My uncle told me she took five million dollars from the family vault and ran off to Europe with a lover," Vincent whispered, his voice trembling slightly. "He told me she abandoned me because she didn't want the life of a mobster’s wife."
"Dominic lied to you, Vincent," Claire said gently, her initial rage toward him softening into something deeper, something painfully empathetic. "She didn't abandon you. She was trying to build a life where you didn't have to carry a gun."
Vincent looked down at his own hands—hands that were currently stained with blue paint and fresh blood.
He slowly reached out, his long fingers carefully touching the oilcloth wrapping the rolled canvas resting in Claire’s lap.
"She sat in your grandfather's shop for three weeks?" Vincent asked quietly.
"Yes," Claire said. "In the corner by the north window. My grandfather wrote in his diary that she used to drink Earl Grey tea with two spoonfuls of honey while she watched the rain on Market Street."
A faint, ghostly shadow of a smile touched the corner of Vincent’s mouth—the first real, human emotion Claire had seen on his face since he had walked into her shop that morning.
"She always took two spoonfuls of honey," Vincent murmured.
Suddenly, the driver of the Escalade slammed his foot on the brakes.
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The heavy vehicle violently swerved, its tires screaming against the wet asphalt as a massive commercial car-hauler truck pulled across all three lanes of the highway ahead, blocking the mountain pass entirely.
"Hostile vehicles closing from behind!" the driver shouted, pulling a submachine gun from beneath the center console. "Two dark sedans! They’re boxing us in!"
