Chapter 10 - The Traitor at the Gates
The darkness inside the warehouse office was broken only by the violent, strobing flashes of muzzle fire from the loading dock.
The deafening cracks of automatic rifles echoed off the corrugated steel walls like rolling thunder.
Silas was crouched beside me, firing his heavy semi-automatic in controlled, double-tap bursts through the shattered doorway.
“Silas!” I shouted over the din, clutching the heavy chemical ledger to my chest.
“Where is Matteo?”
“He’s on the crane walkway!” Silas yelled back, ejecting an empty magazine and slapping a fresh one home.
“He’s trying to drop onto the cargo deck before the ship clears the lock!”
“We have three shooters between us and the dock!”
I looked around the dark office.
The drywall was shredded, and dust was choking the air.
Beside the dead body of Vincent Vale was an emergency fire hose cabinet mounted to the load-bearing pillar.
Connected to the valve was a high-pressure commercial hose used for chemical washdowns.
And beside the cabinet stood two fifty-gallon drums of industrial degreaser—pure chemical petroleum distillate.
My father had worked industrial sites for thirty years.
He had taught me about workshop hazards every summer when I was a teenager.
“Silas!” I grabbed his tactical vest, pulling him down as another spray of bullets punched through the metal desk above our heads.
“The degreaser drums!”
Silas glanced at the yellow steel barrels.
“What about them?”
“The floor has a four-degree slope toward the loading dock ramp!” I shouted.
“Shoot the bottom valves!”
Silas didn't ask questions.
He leaned around the corner of the steel desk, leveled his pistol, and fired two heavy-caliber rounds straight into the base of both drums.
The thick, highly flammable chemical liquid surged outward under hydraulic pressure, spreading across the smooth sealed concrete in a massive, slick black sheet.
The liquid cascaded down the ramp toward the three shooters taking cover behind a forklift.
“Now the breaker box!” I yelled, pointing to an exposed junction box on the wall near the door.
Silas fired a single round into the high-voltage electrical box.
A blinding shower of blue sparks rained down into the chemical pool.
WHOOSH.
A wall of roaring orange fire erupted across the warehouse floor, climbing ten feet into the air.
The three shooters behind the forklift shrieked in terror as the heat engulfed their position, forcing them to abandon their weapons and scramble backward toward the exterior exits.
“Move!” Silas roared, grabbing my arm and hauling me through the clearing smoke toward the open dock doors.
We burst out into the freezing river air.
The scene before us was absolute madness.
The Northern Star had pulled forty feet away from the concrete pier, its massive propellers churning the black river water into frothing white foam.
High above the water, hanging from the steel ladder of a gantry crane, was Matteo Romano.
His black coat whipped wildly in the gale.
With terrifying precision, he released his grip on the ladder.
He dropped twenty feet through the empty air, crashing onto the metal shipping containers stacked on the ship’s stern.
He rolled across the corrugated steel, absorbing the brutal impact, and came up with his Kimber .45 already drawn.
On the bridge wing above him stood Alessandra Vale.
She was clutching a chrome revolver in both hands, her emerald gown ripped, her face twisted in psychotic desperation.
Beside her stood an older woman with sharp, severe features and platinum-blonde hair tied in a tight knot.
Evelyn Vale.
The ghost Donna Carmela had seen in the dark two years ago.
“Matteo!” Alessandra screamed over the roar of the ship’s diesel engines.
“Stay back or I swear I will sink this ship with the valves open!”
Matteo didn't stop.
He climbed the exterior companionway stairs of the ship’s superstructure with lethal, deliberate speed.
He didn't seek cover.
He moved like an ancient god of vengeance, heedless of the bullets Alessandra fired wildly down the iron steps.
One of her rounds pinged off the steel railing an inch from his hip.
Matteo raised his weapon.
A single shot cracked through the night.
The chrome revolver flew from Alessandra’s hand, spinning into the dark waters of the Calumet River below.
She screamed, clutching her bleeding fingers, stumbling back against the glass of the wheelhouse.
Evelyn Vale raised a small, concealed derringer from her coat pocket.
Matteo’s second shot caught Evelyn cleanly in the right shoulder, spinning her around and slamming her against the steel bulkhead.
She slid down to the wet deck, gasping in pain, her weapon clattering across the iron grating.
Matteo stepped onto the bridge wing, towering over both women.
His breathing was heavy, the blood from his reopened shoulder wound soaking entirely through his black sleeve.
He looked down at Alessandra, who was cowering on the deck, sobbing uncontrollably.
“My father gave your family everything,” Matteo said, his voice carrying over the wind, so low and terrifying that even from the pier, I could feel its weight.
“He gave you contracts.”
“He gave you respect.”
“He was going to give you his name.”
“Your father was a tyrant!” Alessandra spat through her tears, glaring up at him with unrepentant malice.
“He treated my father like an errand boy!”
“My mother developed the compounds that made your family untouchable!”
“We built this city just as much as the Romanos did!”
“And you killed him like a coward in his sleep,” Matteo answered.
He did not raise his gun to execute her.
Instead, he reached down, took Alessandra by the wrist, and dragged her toward the ship’s railing.
He forced her to look down into the black, churning water beneath the stern.
“You wanted power, Alessandra.”
“Now you are going to give me every name in your mother’s ledger.”
“Every politician.”
“Every judge.”
“And the person inside my father’s house who gave you the security codes tonight.”
Alessandra began to laugh—a high, hysterical sound that was lost in the river wind.
“You think it was just a guard, Matteo?”
“You think someone took an envelope of cash to open the gate?”
She looked up at him, her eyes burning with triumphant spite.
“The person who gave me Salvatore’s cipher is sitting in your Lake Forest manor right now.”
“The person who opened the doors tonight is the man who has managed your family’s money for twenty-five years.”
Matteo froze.
His fingers loosened slightly on her wrist.
“Vincent isn't the only uncle in this city, Matteo,” Alessandra whispered, blood dripping from her hand onto the white paint of the deck.
“Ask your Uncle Carlo why he visited my mother’s lab every Tuesday for six months before your father died.”
My heart stopped.
Carlo Romano.
Salvatore’s younger brother.
The man who was currently at the Lake Forest manor, alone with Donna Carmela, my crippled father, and my brother Leo.
I dropped the heavy ledger onto the concrete and reached for Silas’s radio.
“Marco!” I screamed into the transmitter, terror tearing my throat raw.
“Marco, do you copy?”
Static hissed through the speaker.
Then, a faint, trembling voice came through the encrypted channel.
It wasn't Marco.
It was my twenty-year-old brother, Leo.
“Claire...” Leo whispered, his voice shaking with unimaginable dread.
“They took Marco out.”
“Uncle Carlo just walked through the front doors with six men.”
“They’ve locked Donna Carmela in the wine cellar.”
“And Claire...”
A loud thud echoed over the radio, followed by the sound of my father groaning in agony.
“They have a gun to Dad’s head.”
“Carlo says if Matteo doesn't bring the Cicero ledger to the manor in twenty minutes...”
“He’s going to shoot Dad on the living room rug.”CHAPTER 11 — The Speed of Blood
The radio went dead with a high-pitched burst of electronic hiss.
My knees struck the wet concrete of Pier 42 before I even realized my legs had given out.
The freezing river water soaked through the knees of my dark slacks, sending a shock of ice into my bones.
All I could hear was the metallic thud of my father’s aluminum crutch hitting the floorboards of the Lake Forest manor.
All I could see was the memory of his calloused hands, hands that had built half the skyscrapers along the Chicago River, now trembling under the muzzle of an executioner’s gun.
“Twenty minutes,” I choked out, my fingernails digging into the rough gravel at the pier’s edge.
“He gave us twenty minutes.”
Silas was already on his feet, his broad chest heaving as he scanned the river locks.
Above us, on the steel superstructure of the cargo vessel, the emergency floodlights flickered once and died, leaving only the dull orange glow of the chemical fire burning in the warehouse behind us.
Matteo Romano descended the metal ladder of the ship with terrifying speed.
He did not look like a man who had taken a bullet through his deltoid less than an hour ago.
He dragged Alessandra Vale by her arm with one hand, her emerald gown now drenched in diesel exhaust and black river water.
Behind them, two of Silas’s men were carrying Evelyn Vale down the gangplank, her right arm bound tightly in a field dressing where Matteo’s bullet had shattered her collarbone.
Matteo stepped onto the concrete dock, his black coat whipping violently in the freezing gale.
His face was completely drained of warmth, set into an expression of murderous geometry.
He tossed Alessandra onto the gravel at my feet as if she were a discarded sack of wet rags.
She lay there coughing, clutching her fractured wrist, her teeth chattering so hard the enamel clicked.
“Matteo,” I gasped, lunging toward him and grabbing the lapels of his wool coat with both hands.
I didn't care that he was the most dangerous man in Cook County.
I didn't care about syndicate hierarchy or the loaded Kimber .45 resting against his ribs.
“My father is going to die.”
“My brother is twenty years old, Matteo.”
“Your uncle is going to put a bullet in their heads in nineteen minutes.”
Matteo’s hands came up, clamping over my wrists with crushing firmness.
His eyes locked onto mine, burning through the dark mist with an intensity that forced the panic in my chest to halt.
“Look at me, Claire.”
His voice was low, vibrating against the center of my ribcage.
“Your father is not dying tonight.”
“Lake Forest is thirty-five miles north,” I sobbed, tears finally breaking through my eyelashes and burning hot against my cold cheeks.
“Even at ninety miles an hour on an empty expressway, it takes forty minutes.”
“Physics doesn't care about your anger, Matteo!”
“We cannot drive thirty-five miles in nineteen minutes!”
“We aren't driving,” Matteo said.
He turned his head toward the southern end of the shipping basin, where the dark expanse of Lake Michigan met the industrial canal.
“Silas!” Matteo roared over the wind.
“Get the Sikorsky off the pad at Meigs Field!”
“Tell Petrov if the rotors aren't spinning before our wheels touch the tarmac, I will personally throw him into the lake!”
Silas was already sprinting toward the black Escalade idling at the perimeter gate, his phone pressed hard against his ear.
Matteo looked down at Alessandra, who was watching him from the ground with a twisted, bloody sneer.
“You won't make it, Matteo,” she whispered, blood bubbling between her lips.
“Carlo has six heavy hitters from the West Side crew.”
“They didn't just bring pistols.”
“They brought street sweepers and thermite.”
“They’re going to burn that manor to the ground with your mother inside it.”
Matteo leaned down until his face was inches from hers.
“If there is so much as a scratch on my mother’s skin, Alessandra...”
“I will make sure your mother spends the next thirty years in a federal supermax receiving the exact chemical cocktail she brewed for my father.”
“One microgram every single day.”
Alessandra’s eyes widened with genuine, unadulterated horror as the true horror of her mother’s fate registered.
Matteo didn't wait for her to scream.
He grabbed my arm, lifting me to my feet with effortless power, and dragged me toward the passenger door of the armored SUV.
“Get in, Claire.”
I held the heavy blue chemical ledger against my chest, the cold plastic digging into my ribs as I threw myself into the leather seat.
Matteo vaulted into the driver’s seat beside me, slammed the heavy door, and pinned the accelerator to the floorboards.
The four-ton armored vehicle surged forward with a violent roar of twin turbos, shattering through the wooden gate of Pier 42.
The speedometer needle swung past sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour down the deserted industrial access road.
Beside me, the tactical radio was still hissing with white noise.
I grabbed the handheld microphone, pressing the transmit button until my thumb went numb.
“Leo!” I yelled into the mic.
“Leo, do you copy me?”
“Leo, answer your sister!”
For ten agonizing seconds, there was only the hum of the engine and the splash of standing water against the wheel wells.
Then, a soft, staticky click broke through the speaker.
“Claire...”
Leo’s voice was so faint it sounded like a ghost caught in the wires.
“Leo! Are you hurt?”
“I’m in the crawlspace behind the wine cellar,” my brother whispered, his breath coming in short, terrified gasps.
“They don't know I’m here.”
“They think I ran out the back patio doors when they breached the foyer.”
“Where is Dad?” I demanded, my fingernails biting into the plastic casing of the radio.
“He’s in the formal library, tied to the high-backed chair,” Leo sobbed softly.
“Carlo is standing over him with a snub-nosed revolver.”
“Dad’s face is bleeding, Claire.”
“Carlo hit him with his cane because Dad refused to tell him where your medical notes were.”
A feral growl escaped Matteo’s throat as his knuckles turned white against the leather-wrapped steering wheel.
He leaned across the console toward the mic.
“Leo, this is Matteo Romano.”
“Listen to me very carefully.”
“You are a software engineer, correct?”
“I... I’m a student, sir,” Leo stammered over the static.
“Good enough,” Matteo snapped, swerving the SUV around a stalled semi-truck at ninety miles an hour.
“The Lake Forest house has an independent smart-grid hub in the sub-basement behind the secondary furnace.”
“Can you breach a local network from a mobile terminal?”
There was a second of silence on the other end, followed by the faint rustle of a keyboard.
“I brought my diagnostic rig into the crawlspace,” Leo answered, his voice suddenly shifting, the trembling replaced by the hyper-focused clarity of an engineer under fire.
“I can access the house’s automated control bus if I splice into the low-voltage thermostat line.”
“Do it,” Matteo commanded.
“The house is equipped with a halon fire-suppression system in the main library to protect my father’s rare manuscript collection.”
“If Carlo tries to pull that trigger before our skids touch the lawn, I want you to dump that entire halon tank into the room.”
“It will displace eighty percent of the oxygen in twelve seconds.”
“It will drop every man in that room to their knees gasping for air before they can fire a single round.”
“What about Dad?” I screamed, horrified.
“Dad has severe chronic bronchitis from thirty years of welding fumes!”
“A halon discharge will cause immediate respiratory arrest!”
Matteo didn't take his eyes off the road.
“A respiratory arrest can be reversed with an ambu-bag and an epinephrine push, Claire.”
“A hollow-point bullet through the frontal lobe cannot.”
“He’s right, Claire,” Leo whispered through the speaker, the sound of wire strippers clicking against copper wire audible in the background.
“I’m tapping the line now.”
“You have twelve minutes.”
May you like
The Escalade crested the ramp onto the old runway of Meigs Field, the black expanse of Lake Michigan stretching out into the rainy dark.
Ahead of us, illuminated by portable halogen floodlights, the massive twin turbines of a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter were already screaming to life, its rotor blades slicing through the freezing rain.
