Chapter 5 - The Broken Lock
The pre-dawn mist was turning into a heavy, freezing slush as the black SUV re-entered lower Manhattan.
Gabriel had refused to take the convoy of three armored cars his father had demanded.
“Three black Suburbans rolling into Little Italy at six in the morning is an invitation for a street war,” Gabriel had explained.
Instead, they rode in an unmarked, battered delivery van driven by Marco, Gabriel’s most trusted personal bodyguard.
Marco was an ex-military driver who spoke only when spoken to and kept a tactical shotgun beside his seat.
Tessa sat in the passenger seat, staring through the sweep of the windshield wipers at the waking city.
The streetlights reflected off the greasy, wet asphalt of Canal Street.
Garbage trucks were rumbling down the avenues, their yellow hazard lights flashing against the dingy storefronts.
Every nerve in Tessa’s body was humming with an unnatural, electric tension.
For five years, Mulberry Street had been her miserable, exhausting refuge from the world.
Now, it felt like an enemy perimeter crawling with unseen snipers.
“Are you certain the box is still where he put it?” Gabriel asked from the shadows behind her seat.
He was checking the magazine of a matte-black Sig Sauer pistol with practiced, mechanical efficiency.
The metallic slide clicked into battery with a sharp, lethal sound that made Tessa’s stomach turn.
“Vito spent three hours sealing the seams with waterproof pitch and electrical tape,” Tessa said quietly.
“He didn't trust floorboards because landlords rip up flooring when tenants die.”
“He dropped it down the interior cavity of the central heating vent behind the hallway linen closet.”
“The only way to reach it is with a magnetic retrieval line or by unscrewing the cast-iron vent plate.”
“And nobody has unscrewed that plate since the building was constructed in nineteen-twenty.”
The van turned sharply onto Mulberry Street, splashing grey slush across the curb.
Marco slowed the vehicle to a crawl, his eyes scanning the parked sedans lining the narrow street.
Two hundred yards ahead, the crumbling brick facade of four-twenty-eight rose into the murky morning sky.
Tessa leaned forward, her breath catching in her throat.
Parked directly across from the front entrance was an idling black Cadillac with heavily tinted windows.
Exhaust curled thick and white from its twin tailpipes into the freezing air.
“Look at the license plate,” Marco muttered under his breath, clicking off the van's headlights.
“Livery tags from Queens.”
“That’s Marcone’s crew from the Astoria docks,” Gabriel said, his voice dropping into absolute ice.
“They didn't wait for sunrise.”
“They are already inside the building.”
Tessa felt a surge of raw, protective fury wash over her fear.
That building was a squalid, freezing tenement, but it held the only memories of the only man who had protected her.
“My apartment is on the fifth floor,” Tessa whispered, her hand gripping the van’s door handle.
“The fire escape on the south alley connects directly to the fifth-floor window through the bathroom.”
“The window latch is broken; you can push it open with a pocket knife.”
Gabriel leaned forward, placing a firm, grounding hand on her shoulder.
“We don't go through the front doors,” Gabriel instructed Marco.
“Park in the delivery alley behind the bakery.”
“Marco, cover the alley entrance with the twelve-gauge.”
“If anyone comes out of that fire escape who isn't Tessa or me, put them on the ground.”
“Understood, boss,” Marco replied calmly, easing the van into the pitch-black alleyway.
Gabriel turned to Tessa, pulling a small, compact Glock pistol from his interior pocket.
He held it out toward her, grip first.
“Do you know how to use this?” Gabriel asked.
Tessa looked down at the cold, black polymer weapon with immediate revulsion.
“Vito taught me how to clean his old Beretta,” she said, her voice shaking slightly.
“He told me that if I ever pointed a gun at a man, I had better pull the trigger twice before he blinked.”
She pushed the weapon away with the flat of her palm.
“Keep it,” she said firmly.
“If I start shooting mob soldiers in my hallway, I become what you are.”
“I’ll show you the way in, but you do the shooting if it comes to that.”
Gabriel studied her face for a long, quiet moment, an unexpected flicker of profound respect in his dark eyes.
“Fair enough,” Gabriel murmured, sliding the weapon back into his waistband.
They slipped out of the side door of the van into the freezing, rain-swept alley behind the Italian bakery.
The scent of fresh yeast and frying dough clashed violently with the smell of wet garbage and wet brick.
Tessa led the way through the narrow corridor between two brick buildings, moving with silent precision.
She knew every cracked flagstone, every loose iron grate, and every puddle that made noise.
They reached the rusted base of the exterior fire escape.
Gabriel reached up, caught the counterbalanced iron ladder with one gloved hand, and pulled it down without a sound.
They climbed through the sleet, their shoes gripping the wet iron rungs.
The cold wind off the East River whipped through Tessa’s thin coat, chilling her to the bone.
They reached the fifth-floor landing outside her small bathroom window.
Tessa pulled a flat butter knife from her coat pocket, slipped it between the wooden sash and the frame, and jiggled the latch.
The window slid upward with a faint, wooden groan.
Gabriel went through first, his pistol drawn and leveled into the darkness of the tiny apartment.
He cleared the narrow bathroom in three seconds, then signaled for Tessa to follow.
The apartment was in utter, catastrophic ruin.
The fragile wooden front door had been blasted inward with a hydraulic ram, hanging by a single splintered hinge.
Her mother’s old sofa was sliced open, the yellow foam stuffing strewn across the linoleum floor.
Every drawer had been overturned, her few clothes dumped and trampled with dirty work boots.
The floorboards around the small kitchen counter had been violently pried up with crowbars.
Tessa stood in the center of the carnage, her hands curling into tight fists of helpless rage.
“They tore the place apart looking for floor safes,” Gabriel whispered, scanning the broken hallway through the shattered door.
“They don't know the building’s layout.”
“They think like street thugs, not like Vito.”
Suddenly, the floorboards in the hallway directly outside groaned under heavy, deliberate footsteps.
The heavy scent of cheap cologne and damp tobacco drifted into the room.
Gabriel pressed his back against the wall beside the broken doorframe, raising his weapon with absolute stillness.
A tall, thickset man in a black leather jacket stepped through the splintered threshold.
He held a crowbar in one gloved hand and a heavy automatic pistol in the other.
His face was scarred across the bridge of his nose, his eyes dull with the casual brutality of an enforcer.
It was Luca, Matteo Marcone’s most trusted executioner.
Luca stopped in the center of the room, his eyes instantly locking onto Tessa standing near the bathroom door.
A slow, ugly grin spread across his scarred lips.
“Well, look at what came back to the nest,” Luca sneered, raising his pistol toward Tessa’s chest.
“Matteo said you’d come back for your little secrets, sweetheart.”
Before Luca could tighten his finger on the trigger, Gabriel stepped out of the blind spot behind the door.
The crack of Gabriel’s suppressed weapon was no louder than a dry branch snapping in the woods.
Luca gasped, dropping the crowbar with a clatter as he stumbled backward against the broken kitchen table.
Gabriel did not hesitate; he closed the distance with terrifying, predatory speed.
He struck Luca across the temple with the heavy steel slide of his weapon, driving the massive enforcer to the floor.
Luca collapsed into the debris, groaning as Gabriel kicked the dropped pistol across the linoleum.
Gabriel pinned the enforcer’s throat beneath the heel of his Italian boot, pressing the hot barrel of his gun against Luca’s forehead.
“Who sent you here, Luca?” Gabriel demanded, his voice a lethal, freezing whisper.
Luca spat blood onto the floor, glaring up at the heir of the family with defiant malice.
“You’re too late, little prince,” Luca choked out, his chest heaving beneath Gabriel’s boot.
“Matteo already has the Don surrounded in Westchester.”
“He knows the old man is dying, and he knows Vito left the records.”
“The whole city is flipping to Marcone by noon.”
Gabriel’s expression did not change; he simply increased the downward pressure of his heel until Luca’s eyes rolled back in pain.
“Tessa,” Gabriel said without looking away from his captive.
“Get the box.”
“We have five minutes before the men on the street realize Luca isn't answering his radio.”
May you like
Tessa stepped over the broken debris, turned toward the common hallway, and headed for the linen closet.
The hunt for the truth had officially turned into a race for survival.
