She Took Her Sister’s Blind Date To Help Her Escape — Then The Mafia Boss Across The Table Revealed He Had Been Waiting For Her Name For Years.

PART 5

Nothing.

The sounds in the tunnel grew louder. “Is there another exit?” Nikolai asked her.

She closed her eyes, seeing the original survey — three pages, faded black ink, a margin note by an engineer in 1911.

*Emergency ventilation access.*

“Maintenance shaft in the eastern wall.”

“How wide?”

“Eighteen inches at the narrowest.”

Marcus looked at Preston, who was considerably wider than eighteen inches.

“He’ll fit,” Vivienne said. “He just won’t enjoy it.”

They found the panel behind a shelving unit. She struck the painted-over latch until it broke, revealing a tight, black passage full of a century of stale air.

“You go first,” Nikolai said.

“Why me?”

“You know where it ends.”

She took off her coat and handed it to him. Their fingers touched — less than a second, felt like longer.

She crawled headfirst into the dark. Brick scraped her elbows. Dust filled her throat. Behind her, someone hit the tunnel door. She kept moving. The survey promised the passage widened after twenty-eight feet, and she trusted the dead engineer who’d drawn it more than anyone still living.

At twenty-eight feet, the pressure released into a small chamber with an iron ladder. She climbed twelve rungs and forced open a swollen wooden hatch, dust falling into her hair as she emerged into a restaurant storage room.

Nikolai followed. Then Marcus. Then Preston.

The traitor didn’t come through. She didn’t ask what had happened behind them.

She crossed an empty commercial kitchen — stainless counters gleaming under emergency lights, the smell of grease and industrial cleaner — and found the service exit on the east wall. Cold night air rushed in.

They cleared the alley seconds before Salvato’s men reached the underground command center.

For the first time in hours, Vivienne saw open sky.

Preston sat against a brick wall, wrists secured, while Marcus called for vehicles. Nikolai stood beside her.

“You saved six lives,” he said.

“Five.”

He looked at her. She nodded toward Preston.

“I’m withholding judgment on his.”

Something almost like a laugh escaped Nikolai and disappeared just as fast.

She leaned against the wall, exhausted. “Delphine came back.”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t erase what she did.”

“No.”

“But it changes the last decision she made.”

“You’re trying to understand her,” he said.

“I’m trying to understand the truth. Comfort isn’t the same thing.”

“No,” he said. “It rarely is.”

The vehicles arrived eleven minutes later. As she got into the car, Nikolai draped her coat back over her shoulders — no ceremony to it.

“You remembered,” she said.

“I remember useful things.”

“So do I.”

Their eyes held. Something had shifted between them in the tunnel. Neither of them named it yet.

—

By dawn, Preston’s records were headed to federal investigators — money laundering, bribery, extortion, a plan to seize control of shipping and construction companies across Chicago. Adrian Salvato had spent years building influence through people who thought they were partners until the moment they became liabilities.

Preston agreed to cooperate — not from a sudden conscience, but because prison had become the safest option left to him.

Nikolai’s injured men survived: a broken arm, two sets of stitches. The restaurant could be repaired. The traitor was turned over with recordings proving his role in the attack.

Vivienne listened as Nikolai accounted for every person, every file, every scrap of damage. He didn’t celebrate. He didn’t threaten revenge. He arranged medical care, legal transfers, protection for the staff sent home early.

“You’re resolving this through federal charges,” she said. They sat across from each other in a secure office above a printing company in Pilsen. He’d shed his jacket. For the first time, he looked tired.

“Salvato expects violence,” he said. “Violence gives him martyrs, loyal families, reasons to keep going. Financial records give him court dates.”

“That sounds almost responsible.”

“Don’t damage my reputation.”

She drank the terrible coffee someone had handed her. “What happens to Delphine?”

“Detained when my people secured the building.”