Chapter 8 - The South Side Ambush
The sub-basement corridor exploded into violent, frantic motion.
“Lock the vault!” Luca roared, his voice deafening in the enclosed concrete space.
Marco slammed the iron gate shut, shoved the heavy steel blast door into the frame, and turned the manual deadbolt with a brutal metallic crash.
Vanessa’s muffled, hysterical laughter was instantly cut off behind six inches of solid steel.
I stood frozen in the damp corridor, my vision tunneling, my heart hammering so hard I thought my ribs would crack.
My mother.
My sixty-two-year-old mother who walked with a cane, who kept a bowl of lemon hard candies on her coffee table, who was sitting alone in a freezing living room watching television.
“Mr. Moretti—” my voice cracked into a desperate, strangled sob.
Luca was already moving.
He grabbed my upper arm, not roughly, but with an iron grip that forced me to move with him up the spiral stone stairs.
“Marco!” Luca barked as our boots pounded against the masonry.
“Radio the motor pool! Armored Suburban One and Two, engines running in the garage right now!”
“Call Captain Russo at the South Side perimeter outpost! Tell him to scramble four units to 31st Street immediately!”
“What about the girl, Boss?” Marco shouted back, taking two steps at a time.
“Lily stays in the central safe room with five sworn men,” Luca commanded, reaching the main floor foyer.
“Gianni takes perimeter command.”
“If anyone approaches the inner doors without the daily cipher, shoot through the wood.”
We burst into the grand foyer.
The air in the house was electric with tactical adrenaline.
Four armed guards in black Kevlar vests were already running through the corridor carrying assault rifles and tactical gear bags.
Luca didn't waste half a second.
He dragged me toward the private elevator leading down to the underground vehicle bay.
“Claire, look at me,” Luca commanded, stopping in front of the elevator doors and grabbing both of my shoulders.
His dark eyes were blazing with ferocious focus.
“I am not going to let them touch your mother.”
“Do you hear me?”
“Your father died helping my wife.”
“I owe your family a debt of blood, and I will tear Chicago in half before I let Antonio Bellini hurt another Dawson.”
I swallowed down the bile rising in my throat and nodded frantically.
“Please, Luca... please hurry.”
The elevator doors opened, and we stepped inside.
Three seconds later, we emerged into the brightly lit subterranean garage.
Two massive, reinforced black Chevrolet Suburbans were idling on the concrete, their custom exhaust systems rumbling like thunder.
Marco threw open the rear passenger door of the lead vehicle.
He tossed a lightweight Kevlar vest into my lap.
“Put it on, Claire. Buckle the side straps tight.”
My hands were shaking violently, but I managed to slip the heavy ballistic vest over my housekeeper’s uniform and pull the Velcro straps taut across my ribs.
Luca climbed into the seat beside me, slamming the heavy armored door shut.
He racked the slide of a customized tactical shotgun, resting the barrel against his knee, while a second semi-automatic pistol sat holstered on his chest.
Marco hit the accelerator.
The tires shrieked against the smooth concrete as the two-ton vehicle surged forward.
The heavy blast doors of the underground garage swung open automatically, and the Suburban launched up the ramp and out into the howling Chicago night.
The snow had begun to fall in thick, swirling sheets.
The windshield wipers slapped frantically against the glass as the vehicle blasted down the private driveway, through the massive iron gates, and onto the empty lakeside boulevard.
The digital speedometer on the dashboard climbed rapidly: seventy, eighty, ninety-five miles per hour.
Red and blue covert emergency lights pulsed through the front grille, clearing the rain-slicked highway.
I pulled my cell phone from my apron pocket with trembling fingers and dialed my mother’s landline.
The dial tone rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
Four times.
Every ring felt like an eternity carved into my flesh.
“Pick up, Mom... please, pick up...” I prayed out loud, tears streaming down my face.
On the sixth ring, the line clicked.
“Claire?” my mother’s frail, confused voice came through the tiny speaker.
“Claire, sweetheart, why are you calling so late?”
“Mom!” I screamed into the phone.
“Listen to me very carefully! Are you inside the house?”
“Yes, dear, I’m in the living room watching the late news with a blanket.”
“Mom, I need you to get off the couch right now!”
“Go into the rear bathroom, lock the door, and sit on the floor inside the cast-iron bathtub!”
My mother’s voice turned nervous and hesitant.
“Claire, what on earth are you talking about?”
“There’s a strange black van idling across the street with its lights off, dear.”
“I was just looking through the front blinds—”
“Mom! Step away from the window right now!”
A deafening crash exploded through the phone speaker.
The sound of shattering glass and splintering wood echoed into my ear, followed by the terrifying, high-pitched scream of my mother.
“Claire! Someone just kicked in the front door!”
Heavy, muffled shouts in deep male voices erupted through the line.
“Search the rooms! Grab the old woman!”
A gunshot roared through the receiver, followed by the sound of the telephone handset crashing onto the hardwood floor.
“Mom!” I shrieked, pressing the phone against my ear until the plastic bent.
“Mom!”
The line went dead with a high-pitched electronic whine.
I dropped the phone into my lap, my chest heaving in absolute panic.
“They’re inside,” I choked out, looking at Luca with terror-stricken eyes.
“They just broke the front door down.”
Luca leaned forward, his face turning into a mask of pure, murderous rage.
He grabbed the dashboard radio handset.
“Marco, blow through the intersections.”
“Ram anything that gets in our way.”
“We engage with maximum lethality the second the tires touch the curb.”
The Suburban took a violent ninety-degree turn onto 31st Street, the heavy armored suspension groaning as the tires slid across the wet asphalt.
Three blocks ahead, through the swirling blizzard, I saw my childhood home.
It was a modest, single-story red brick bungalow with a small front porch and a chain-link fence.
Parked crookedly across the frozen lawn was a black cargo van with tinted windows.
Two men dressed in dark tactical gear and ski masks were standing near the front steps, carrying automatic submachine guns.
A third man was dragging a struggling figure wrapped in a floral blanket out through the splintered front doorway.
It was my mother.
“Hold on!” Marco roared.
He didn't tap the brakes.
He slammed his foot flat against the floorboard.
The two-ton armored Suburban roared across the lawn, smashing through the chain-link fence like paper.
The front steel brush guard slammed directly into the side of the black cargo van with a catastrophic, bone-crushing impact.
The van was thrown sideways, rolling onto its side against a concrete retaining wall in an explosion of crushed metal and shattering safety glass.
The two gunmen on the porch scrambled backward, raising their weapons toward our windshield.
Before they could pull their triggers, Luca kicked his armored door open.
He stepped out into the freezing storm, his tactical shotgun leveled at his shoulder.
BOOM.
The first blast tore through the wooden porch railing, sending the first gunman flying backward into the snow.
The second gunman sprayed a desperate burst of automatic fire against the Suburban’s bulletproof glass.
Luca didn't even flinch.
He pumped the shotgun with a clean, mechanical snap and fired again.
The second shooter crumpled onto the concrete steps, dropping his weapon into the frozen slush.
The third man dropped my mother onto the wooden porch floor and drew a semi-automatic pistol, aiming it directly at her head.
“Back off!” the man screamed through his black mask.
“Back off or I blow her brains across the siding!”
I launched myself toward the open vehicle door, screaming my mother’s name.
Luca’s left arm shot out like an iron bar, blocking my chest and shoving me safely behind the armored door frame.
“Stay down, Claire,” Luca commanded, his voice ice-cold.
Luca didn't lower his weapon.
He stepped out into the open yard, exposed to the gunfire, his eyes locked onto the masked man on the porch.
“You work for Antonio Bellini,” Luca stated calmly, his boots crunching against the snow.
“Yeah, and I’m taking this old bitch to Cicero!” the hitman shouted, his hands trembling against the grip of his pistol.
“No,” Luca said softly.
“You’re not.”
From the shadows beside the garage, Marco appeared.
He had circled behind the bungalow through the alleyway in total silence.
A single suppressed gunshot cracked through the winter night—phut.
A neat red hole appeared in the center of the hitman’s forehead.
His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed over the porch railing, his pistol clattering harmlessly against the snow.
“Mom!” I broke free from Luca’s arm and sprinted across the frozen lawn.
I leaped over the splintered porch steps and threw myself onto the floorboards beside the floral blanket.
My mother was hyperventilating, her face pale, her hands trembling violently as she clutched my wrists.
“Claire... oh, God, Claire...” she sobbed, burying her face into my Kevlar vest.
“I’m here, Mom,” I wept, wrapping my arms tightly around her shoulders.
“I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
Luca walked up the porch steps, his shotgun lowered to his side.
He knelt down beside us, his massive frame sheltering both of us from the freezing wind and driving snow.
He reached down, taking my mother’s cold, frail hand in his large palm.
“Mrs. Dawson,” Luca said gently, his voice devoid of any threat.
“My name is Luca Moretti.”
My mother looked up, her tear-stained eyes widening as she recognized his face from the city newspapers.
“Your husband was an honorable man who stood up for what was right,” Luca whispered.
“And tonight, his debt is paid.”
May you like
“You are coming with us to my home.”
“And as long as there is breath in my lungs, no one will ever touch you again.”
