The old woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her fingers moved again, and this time I wished with everything in me that I hadn’t understood a single sign.
“Sir,” I whispered, “your mother says her brakes didn’t fail.”
The entire room went quiet.
“She says someone cut them.”
Luca slowly turned toward Vanessa. But before he could speak, his mother reached out and grabbed my hand one final time, and spelled seven more words that I will carry for the rest of my life.
Because she wasn’t telling me who had sabotaged the car.
She was telling me who had been sitting in the passenger seat.
And when I whispered that person’s name aloud, Luca Moretti — the man nothing in Chicago could frighten — reached for his phone with a shaking hand.