Chapter 6 - The Tenement Breach
The gray light of dawn began to bleed through the industrial smokestacks along Chelsea Creek.
Rain slicked the cracked asphalt of East Boston, reflecting the amber glare of sodium vapor streetlamps.
Mave rode shotgun in Dominic’s armored Mercedes as it tore down Meridian Street, the engine howling beneath its reinforced steel hood.
Behind them, two black Suburbans carrying six of Dominic’s most lethal enforcers followed in tight formation.
Mave’s fingers dug into the fabric of her faded navy smock, her breath shallow and sharp.
Her mind was fixed on the top floor of a four-story, brick-and-clapboard tenement building wedged between an auto body shop and an abandoned bakery.
Apartment 4B.
Inside that room lay her twenty-one-year-old sister, Clara, curled up beneath three wool blankets, fighting the fever of stage-three lymphoblastic leukemia.
Clara could barely walk ten feet to the bathroom without leaning on the wall.
If Marcus Vance’s cleaners breached that door, Clara wouldn't even have the strength to scream.
“Two minutes out,” Dominic said, checking his tactical dashboard monitor.
His face was grim, carved from stone, his dark eyes scanning every alleyway and parked commercial vehicle along the avenue.
He handed Mave a fresh twenty-round magazine for the suppressed Glock.
“Silvio’s scout car reached the intersection ninety seconds ago,” Dominic added, tapping his earpiece.
“Silvio, what do you have on the front stoop?”
A burst of white static crackled over the radio, followed by Silvio’s heavy breathing.
“Boss, we got an unmarked white utility van sitting double-parked fifty yards down from her building,” Silvio reported.
“Commercial plates, commercial magnetic decals on the side panels. Apex Environmental Services.”
Mave’s stomach plummeted into an icy abyss.
“They’re already inside,” Mave whispered, her voice tightening like a drawn bowstring.
“Vance doesn't post guards on the street; he moves four men directly up the interior stairwell while the driver monitors municipal police frequencies.”
Dominic slammed his foot down on the gas.
The Mercedes surged forward, clearing eighty miles per hour on the narrow residential street, its tires throwing up walls of brown, oily puddle water.
“We breach fast and loud,” Dominic ordered through the radio channel.
“Enforcers take the front entrance, cut off the stairwell escape route, and neutralize the driver. Mave and I go up the rear fire escape.”
Mave shook her head violently.
“No. The rear fire escape on that building has a corroded counterweight hinge. If you step onto the lower rung, the iron counterweight drops with a loud clang that echoes straight up the brick airshaft.”
Dominic glanced at her, surprised yet again by her absolute encyclopedic knowledge of urban terrain.
“Then how do we reach the fourth floor before they breach her apartment?” Dominic asked.
“The auto body shop next door,” Mave answered instantly, pointing through the rain at a rusted corrugated-metal garage.
“The roof of the garage sits level with the third-floor fire exit of the tenement. We climb the security fence behind the garage, cross the gravel roof, and enter through the laundry window.”
The Mercedes screeched to a halt half on the sidewalk, right in front of the auto shop’s chain-link gate.
Dominic didn't argue for a second.
He kicked open his door, pulled the short-barreled tactical shotgun from the floorboard, and leaped out into the freezing rain.
Mave was out of the passenger seat before the wheels had fully stopped spinning.
Down the block, the two Rossy Suburbans boxed in the white Apex van with brutal precision.
Tires screamed, steel crumpled against steel, and three muffled gunshots popped through the wet morning air as Dominic’s soldiers dragged the Apex driver out through the shattered windshield.
Mave ignored the street fight.
She scrambled up the six-foot chain-link fence behind the auto shop, clearing the rusted barbed wire at the top with a feral, feline agility.
She hit the gravel roof of the garage on the other side, rolling once to absorb the impact, and came up sprinting.
Dominic followed right behind her, his heavy boots crunching into the wet tar paper, moving with terrifying speed for a man of his size.
They reached the brick exterior of the tenement.
The third-floor laundry room window hung half-open, held in place by a rotting wooden wedge.
Mave shoved the sash upward, squeezed through the opening, and tumbled onto the peeling linoleum floor of the communal laundry room.
The hallway smelled of wet laundry detergent, boiled cabbage, and ozone.
From directly above them—on the fourth-floor landing—came the splintering crunch of a heavy steel pry bar tearing into an apartment frame.
Mave’s blood ran cold.
They were prying open Apartment 4B.
She bolted toward the narrow stairwell, taking four steps at a time, her Glock raised and leveled before her.
Dominic took the inner curve of the stairs, the shotgun tucked tight against his shoulder.
At the fourth-floor landing, three men in gray janitorial jumpsuits stood outside Clara’s door.
Two of them were leveraging a hydraulic pry bar against the deadbolt, while the third, holding an Uzi submachine gun with a massive barrel shroud, stood guard over the stairwell.
The guard spotted Mave’s face appearing over the banister and raised his muzzle.
Mave didn't wait for his barrel to level.
She fired three rounds through the wooden balusters.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.
The first two bullets tore through the guard’s chest; the third struck his larynx.
The man dropped the submachine gun, his hands clutching his ruined throat, and collapsed backward against the peeling wallpaper.
The two men at the door whipped around, reaching for sidearms beneath their canvas jumpsuits.
Dominic rounded the landing like a freight train, stepped into the corridor, and pulled the trigger of the tactical shotgun.
The blast tore through the first cleaner’s torso, hurling his lifeless body against the apartment door with enough kinetic force to snap the wood off its hinges.
The third man raised his pistol toward Dominic’s face, but Mave fired from the stairs.
Her bullet caught the man squarely through the temple.
He dropped instantly, his gun slipping from his limp fingers onto the cheap hallway carpet.
Silence crashed back over the fourth-floor landing.
Smoke from the shotgun blast curled through the air, mixing with the sharp smell of blood and wet plaster.
Mave kicked the ruined apartment door inward and stormed into the dim, drafty room.
“Clara!” she screamed, her voice cracking with a terror she had never shown in the Rossy boardroom.
The tiny living room was dark.
A cheap thrift-store sofa, a small television with rabbit-ear antennas, and shelves lined with medical textbooks and pill bottles filled the space.
In the small bedroom beyond, a thin, pale figure huddled on the mattress against the wall.
Clara sat with her knees pulled to her chest, her bald head covered by a knitted purple beanie, clutching an empty ceramic mug like a weapon.
Her huge, dark eyes were wide with shock, her frail body trembling so violently the mattress squeaked beneath her.
The moment Clara saw Mave’s face, the ceramic mug fell from her fingers, shattering against the floorboards.
“Mave?” Clara sobbed, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
“I heard... I heard men shouting outside... they were kicking the lock—”
Mave dropped her gun onto the bedside table and threw her arms around her little sister, burying her face into Clara’s neck.
“I’m here, Clara. I’m here. You’re safe,” Mave murmured, rocking the shivering girl against her chest.
Dominic stepped into the bedroom doorway, his large frame filling the entire frame.
He lowered the shotgun, his eyes taking in the heartbreaking poverty of the room.
The peeling paint on the ceiling, the plastic sheeting taped over the drafty window, the rows of generic chemotherapy vials sitting on the nightstand beside a half-eaten bowl of dry crackers.
This was the life Mave had been protecting.
She had spent her nights on her knees scrubbing dried blood and spilled bourbon off his penthouse floor so this fragile girl could live another two weeks.
Dominic felt a sudden, deep knot tighten in his chest—a feeling he hadn't experienced since his father was buried a decade ago.
Clara looked past Mave’s shoulder, her eyes fixing on Dominic’s soot-stained face, his tailored suit, and the heavy shotgun in his hand.
“Mave... who is he?” Clara whispered, trembling.
“He’s the man who is getting us out of here,” Mave answered, pulling back and brushing a strand of sweat-soaked hair from Clara’s pale forehead.
Dominic stepped into the room, kneeling down beside the bed so his eyes were level with Clara’s.
He softened his voice to a gentle, quiet cadence that none of his soldiers would have recognized.
“Clara,” Dominic said gently. “My name is Dominic. Your sister saved my life tonight. And now my men are going to take you to a place where you will have doctors, warm food, and guards at every door.”
Clara looked at Mave, seeking confirmation.
Mave nodded, her eyes fierce and steady.
“Pack only your medical records, Clara. We leave everything else behind.”
Downstairs, Silvio’s heavy footsteps bounded up the tenement stairs.
Silvio arrived at the threshold, breathing hard, his hand resting on the holster of his sidearm.
“Boss, the street is locked down,” Silvio said.
“We cleared the van. Two more Apex cleaners were waiting around the corner in an unmarked sedan; my guys boxed them in and put them in zip-ties.”
“Put Clara in the armored Mercedes,” Dominic ordered Silvio.
“Escort her personally to the safe house in Marblehead. I want two private oncologists from Mass General brought to the property within three hours. Pay whatever consulting fee they demand.”
Silvio blinked, nodding respectfully. “Consider it done, Dom.”
Silvio carefully lifted Clara from the bed, wrapping her in her heavy wool blanket as if she were made of spun glass, and carried her down the hall toward the waiting convoy.
Mave stood alone in the bedroom with Dominic.
She looked around the tiny, wretched apartment one last time.
Seven years of hiding, seven years of eating cold beans from a can and sleeping with a kitchen knife under her pillow, had ended in thirty seconds of gunfire.
Dominic walked over to the dresser, picking up a framed photograph of a younger Mave and Clara standing beside an older man in a diplomat’s suit in front of an ancient stone cathedral in Kyiv.
Dominic handed the frame to Mave.
“Take it,” he said softly. “You won't be coming back here.”
Mave slipped the photograph into the inner pocket of her navy smock, right next to her heart.
She picked up her Glock from the nightstand, checking the chamber with a crisp, practiced flick of her wrist.
“Where is Marcus Vance’s headquarters?” Mave asked, her voice turning once more into solid steel.
Dominic looked out the shattered window, watching the armored Suburbans pull away down the street with Clara safely inside.
“Apex Environmental Services operates out of a three-story municipal incinerator and recycling depot at the edge of the Charlestown Navy Yard,” Dominic said, his gray eyes narrowing into slits of pure vengeance.
“That depot sits right on the municipal harbor line. It’s where Vance processes all the city’s confidential waste.”
Mave smiled a cold, razor-thin smile.
“An incinerator facility has its own industrial water turbines and private high-voltage substation,” she remarked, the blueprints of the city clicking into place behind her eyes.
“If we cut the city grid to that block, their backup generators take forty-five seconds to sync with the blast doors.”
Dominic looked at her, his lips curving into a fierce, predatory grin.
May you like
“Forty-five seconds is thirty seconds more than we need,” Dominic said.
“Let’s go tear down The Architect’s office.”
