Chapter 5 - The Man Who Couldn't Find His WifeBy sunrise, Chicago had become a city of closed doors and whispered names.
The Bellandi family had sealed its warehouses, canceled public appearances, and moved its senior members between secure locations. Police cruisers crowded the roads around the industrial district. Rival organizations issued carefully worded denials through intermediaries who had spent their entire lives lying with straight faces.
Dominic ignored all of them.
He stood in the operations room at the estate, wearing the same bloodstained shirt he had worn the previous evening. A map of the city covered one wall. Photographs of vehicles, suspects, and security footage filled the screens.
In the center of the table sat Elena's wedding ring.
He had ordered his men to search forty-six locations, then expanded the search to every address connected to Elena's family, friends, former classmates, and professional contacts. He had called people whose names he had not spoken in years. He had sent men to private airports, hotels, hospitals, and train stations.
He had found nothing.
At 7:13 a.m., Matteo entered carrying two coffees and a tablet.
“You look terrible.”
Dominic didn't look up.
“Report.”
“The station footage confirms she boarded a train. We have a possible departure time, but the cameras don't show where she went after the transfer.”
“Passenger records?”
“No useful match under her full name.”
“Her maiden name?”
“Checked.”
“Aliases?”
“We're working on them.”
Dominic finally lifted his eyes.
“How long does it take to find one woman in a country full of cameras?”
Matteo placed a coffee beside him.
“Longer when the woman has spent twelve years learning how not to be found.”
Dominic said nothing.
That was the problem.
Elena had been beside him during enough security briefings to understand how investigations worked. She knew which questions to ask, which officers were careless, and which assumptions could lead a search in the wrong direction.
She knew that his men would look for a frightened woman who had been taken against her will.
They would check hospitals, abandoned buildings, and locations favored by rival families.
They would not necessarily consider a woman who had planned her departure carefully and wanted no one to find her.
She had used everything he had taught her.
And he had given her plenty to learn.
“Did you speak to Rosa again?” Matteo asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“She says Elena seemed calm.”
Matteo pulled out a chair.
“Did you ask what they talked about?”
“She said Elena told the guards not to disturb me.”
Matteo looked at the wedding ring.
“Maybe that's the part you should be listening to.”
Dominic's jaw tightened.
“I heard her.”
“No. You heard the words. You haven't understood them.”
For a moment, Dominic looked ready to throw him out.
Then the anger faded, leaving something far more uncomfortable behind.
“I thought she would wait,” he admitted.
Matteo didn't respond.
“I thought she'd stay angry for a day, perhaps two. Then she'd call me, and we'd talk.”
“Why would she call you?”
The question was so simple that Dominic felt as though he had been struck.
He looked away.
“Because she's my wife.”
Matteo leaned forward.
“That's a title, Dominic. Not a guarantee.”
Dominic picked up the coffee but didn't drink.
For years, he had believed that Elena's loyalty was the one fixed point in his life. Everything else changed. Captains betrayed him. Allies demanded money. Enemies disappeared and returned wearing different names. Even family members sometimes chose power over blood.
Elena had never done that.
She had stayed when he had nothing to offer her except danger.
Somewhere inside him, he had turned that loyalty into an expectation.
He had mistaken her refusal to abandon him for an inability to do so.
“Get out,” he said quietly.
Matteo stood.
“Dominic.”
“I said get out.”
His brother paused at the door.
“You can order me out of the room. You can't order her to come back.”
Then he left.
Dominic remained alone with the ring.
At 8:02 a.m., an investigator called from the train station.
“We found the taxi.”
Dominic straightened.
“Where?”
“The driver remembers taking a woman matching Elena's description from the station to a residential street north of Milwaukee. She paid in cash.”
“Address?”
The investigator gave it to him.
Dominic grabbed his coat.
“Send two men to observe the location. Nobody approaches her unless I authorize it.”
“Understood.”
“Do not frighten her. Do not follow her inside. Do not speak to anyone at the house.”
He ended the call and stared at the map.
Milwaukee.
Not one of the Bellandi family's regular territory routes. Not an address that appeared in their security files. Not a place he would have expected Elena to choose.
He knew the city, of course. He had conducted business there several times, but he had never taken Elena. She had once joked that she wanted to visit Milwaukee just to see whether a city could possibly contain more breweries than Chicago.
He had promised to take her.
Then he had forgotten.
He couldn't remember what had been happening that week.
Another emergency, another argument, another phone call from someone who believed his problems mattered more than the woman waiting at home.
He had forgotten a weekend.
Then a birthday.
Then an anniversary dinner.
He had not forgotten the dates. He had simply convinced himself that Elena would understand.
She always did.
Until she didn't.
At 9:17 a.m., the investigator called back.
“The house belongs to a woman named Sofia Russo. She's a former university friend of Mrs. Bellandi. No known criminal connections. No family ties to the organizations we're investigating.”
Dominic sat down slowly.
Sofia.
He remembered the name.
Elena had spoken about her years ago, before the marriage had consumed most of her time. She had once asked whether Sofia could spend a weekend at the estate. Dominic had refused because he had been preparing for a meeting with a rival family.
Elena had told him it was only two days.
He had told her that two days could get a man killed.
She had never asked again.
Now she had gone to the one person in her life who had existed before him.
“Is Elena inside?” he asked.
“We have no visual confirmation. Our men are observing from a public street.”
“Then continue observing.”
“Boss, should we—”
“No.”
The investigator stopped.
Dominic lowered his voice.
“If she wants to leave, let her leave. If she goes somewhere else, report it. Nobody follows her close enough for her to notice.”
“Yes, Boss.”
When the call ended, Dominic stared at his reflection in the black computer screen.
He had ordered forty-six men to find a woman who did not want to be found.
Now he had a possible location and no right to approach it.
He could send an army to Milwaukee. He could surround Sofia's house, block every street, and force Elena to look at him.
But what would he say when she opened the door?
I told you to leave, and now I'm angry that you did.
He could already imagine her expression.
That quiet disappointment had always been more dangerous than shouting.
He looked at the clock.
Then he opened the messaging application and typed a message.
I know I told you to leave. I didn't mean it. Please answer me.
He stared at the words for a long time.
They were true, but they were not enough.
He deleted them.
He tried again.
Are you safe? That's all I need to know.
He sent it.
No delivery confirmation appeared.
Elena had switched off her phone.
Dominic leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
For the first time in years, he could do nothing to shorten the distance between himself and the person he loved.
A notification appeared on the screen.
The intelligence team had completed its preliminary report on Francesca.
Dominic opened the file.
Her professional history looked impeccable. University degrees, medical certifications, charitable work, glowing recommendations, and a private practice serving executives, public figures, and families who valued discretion.
Her father had died when she was nineteen.
Her mother had died three years later.
Her younger brother, Luca, had been reported missing after a violent incident involving a criminal organization in Chicago.
Dominic stopped reading.
He recognized the date.
Twelve years earlier, a convoy belonging to the Bellandi family had been attacked by men working for a rival faction. Dominic had ordered a retaliation that resulted in several deaths. One of the men killed had been identified as Luca Vale.
At the time, Luca had been described as an armed associate of the rival faction.
The report offered no evidence that he had worked directly for Dominic's uncle.
But Dominic remembered the incident. It had been one of the first times he had ordered violence without personally verifying every detail.
He had believed the information his advisers provided.
He had never questioned it.
He continued reading.
Francesca had spent years working with victims of violence, specializing in trauma and grief. Her later career had brought her into contact with people connected to several prominent families.
Three months before she began treating Dominic, she had received a large donation for her clinic from a private foundation registered overseas.
The foundation's directors could not be verified.
Dominic read the final page twice.
Then he called the investigator.
“Who referred Francesca to me?”
“Captain Enzo Marra, Boss.”
Dominic went still.
Enzo was the captain who had disappeared during the attacks.
The same man who had helped coordinate security rotations.
The same man who had insisted that Dominic needed professional help after the assassination attempt.
“Find Enzo,” Dominic ordered.
“We're looking.”
“Find him before anyone else does.”
He ended the call.
For the first time since Elena had left, Dominic felt the shape of the conspiracy emerging from the darkness.
Francesca might have entered his life for a reason.
Enzo might have helped her.
And someone with knowledge of his inner circle had been preparing to strike for months.
But as Dominic studied the photograph attached to Francesca's report, his attention caught on something small.
A faded image from an old charity event.
Francesca stood beside a silver-haired man wearing a dark suit.
Dominic enlarged the photograph.
He knew that face.
He had seen it in a family portrait that had been removed from the Bellandi mansion after a bitter war.
It belonged to Vittorio Bellandi.
His uncle.
The man everyone had believed dead.
Dominic slowly lowered the tablet.
Across the city, an attack had cost him men, warehouses, and control of his own streets.
Across the state, the woman he loved was hiding from him.
And in the middle of everything stood a therapist who had never told him the truth about her family.
Dominic looked at the wedding ring again.
May you like
“God help you,” he whispered.
He wasn't sure which woman he was speaking to.
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