Chapter 3 - The Sanctuary in Oak Park
At three o'clock in the morning, Matteo handed me a thin white folder inside the back of my tinted SUV, parked two blocks away from a quiet, tree-lined street in Oak Park, Illinois.
"The cab dropped her off at a two-story craftsman house on Maple Street," Matteo explained, handing me a printout of a property deed. "The house is registered under a modest LLC owned by Nia’s maiden name, Reyes. She’s been living here for three and a half years. She works as an independent graphic designer from home."
I stared at the black-and-white satellite photo of the modest house. It had a wraparound porch, a small garden in the front, and a wooden swing set in the backyard.
"And the children?" I asked, my voice barely a breath.
"Registered as Mateo Reyes and Leo Reyes," Matteo said gently. "Born four years ago at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chicago. The father’s name on the birth certificates..." Matteo hesitated.
"Say it," I commanded.
"The father's name is listed as Father Unknown."
A sharp, agonizing pain pierced my chest. Father Unknown. My boys—my own flesh and blood—had lived four years on this earth with my name erased from their existence because I was too stupid, too arrogant, and too blind to protect their mother.
"What about Marcus Vance?" I asked, forcing my voice to stabilize.
Matteo’s expression grew dark. He pulled out a tablet and swiped to a bank transfer record. "You were right to be suspicious, Boss. Four years ago, three days before you signed your divorce papers with Nia, a wire transfer of five hundred thousand dollars was executed from an offshore account in the Cayman Islands."
"Who owned the account?"
"Evelyn’s father," Matteo revealed, looking me dead in the eye. "Arthur Shaw."
The world seemed to stop moving.
Arthur Shaw—the powerful political figure whose backing had helped solidify my control over the city's commercial docks. The man whose daughter I had married three months after my divorce.
"Arthur Shaw paid Marcus Vance half a million dollars to bribe Dr. Harrison," Matteo continued, his voice heavy with grim certainty. "They fabricated Nia’s medical reports. They forged the fertility tests. They made you believe she was sterile so you would leave her and marry Evelyn, uniting the Moretti family with the Shaw political empire."
I sat in the dark interior of the SUV, surrounded by the quiet hum of the engine, feeling an absolute, terrifying vacuum open up inside my soul.
My whole second life—my second marriage, my business alliances, my years of silent grieving—had been built on a foundation of deliberate, calculated evil. They hadn't just lied to me. They had stolen my wife, my sons, and four years of my children's lives.
"Boss?" Matteo asked quietly. "What do you want to do with Vance and Shaw?"
May you like
I looked out the window toward the distant glow of the streetlights on Maple Street.
"We take care of my blood first," I said softly. "Then... we tear their world apart."
