Chapter 4 - The Ledger In The Cold Storage
The wounded enforcer, whose name was apparently Frankie, was dragged into the back dry-storage room by his collar.
Alio dragged him with one arm, his teeth bared in silent agony as his freshly stitched ribs took the strain.
"Stop moving, you idiot," Norah hissed, throwing a bucket of cold water over the smear of red trailing into the pantry.
"You're ripping open everything I sewed yesterday."
"A torn stitch heals," Alio replied coldly, kicking the pantry door shut on Frankie's pathetic whimpering.
"A bullet between the eyes does not."
Norah threw down her mop.
The handle clattered loudly against the galvanized metal bucket.
"You just shot a man in broad daylight in front of my customers!" she shouted, her voice echoing off the terracotta walls.
"Mrs. Gable is probably halfway to the precinct right now!"
"Mrs. Gable didn't see anything," Alio said, walking over to the counter and pouring himself a cup of black coffee from the surviving carafe.
"My men were waiting across the street."
"They offered Mrs. Gable five hundred dollars to take a taxi to her sister's house in Evanston for the weekend."
"She took the money."
Norah stared at him, dumbfounded by the sheer scale of the apparatus operating around her small, ordinary life.
"Who do you think you are?" she asked, her voice dropping into a dangerous whisper.
"You think you can just buy off the entire city?"
Alio took a slow sip of the scalding liquid.
He leaned his hip against the counter, regarding her with those dark, unreadable eyes.
"The city was bought seventy years ago, Norah," he said gently.
"I'm just paying the maintenance fees."
Rosa emerged from the walk-in freezer like a frightened turtle, clutching a wooden rolling pin to her chest.
Her face was streaked with tears, and her lips were moving in silent, frantic Hail Marys.
"Rosa," Norah said gently, hurrying over to the older woman and placing both hands on her trembling shoulders.
"Go home."
"Take the back alley."
"Go straight to your sister's house and stay there until I call you."
Rosa looked at Alio, whose massive silhouette stood framed against the shattered porcelain of the coffee station.
"He is the devil, Norah," Rosa whispered in broken English, crossing herself twice.
"His father was the devil, and he is the devil."
"I know, Rosa," Norah said softly.
"Just go."
She pressed a wad of cash from the register into Rosa's apron pocket and guided her out the steel back exit into the snowy alley.
When the heavy door slammed shut and locked, Norah turned back to face the devil in her kitchen.
"Now," she said, folding her arms over her chest.
"Explain the grocery store."
Alio didn't move.
"Explain what my grandmother did for your father, or I swear to God I'll open that front door and scream until the tactical unit arrives."
Alio set his ceramic mug down with a soft clink.
"Come with me," he said.
He walked into the back storage room where Frankie was tied to a heavy steel shelving unit with zip-ties, a rough cloth gag shoved into his mouth.
Alio ignored the bleeding mobster entirely.
He walked to the far corner of the concrete room, where an old, rusted floor safe sat half-buried beneath twenty-pound bags of imported Colombian coffee beans.
"Move the bags," Alio instructed.
Norah hesitated, then stepped forward and shoved three heavy sacks aside.
The steel door of the safe was covered in surface rust, but the brass dial was polished bright.
"Your grandmother didn't just leave you this building, Norah," Alio said, standing behind her like a towering wall of dark wool.
"She left you the vault."
"She didn't give me the combination," Norah snapped, staring at the cold steel.
"She gave it to my father," Alio replied.
He reached down, his scarred fingers spinning the dial with practiced familiarity.
Left to thirty-four.
Right to seventeen.
Left to eighty-nine.
A heavy mechanical clunk reverberated through the concrete floor.
Alio pulled the thick handle upward.
The heavy safe door swung open with a screech of dry hinges.
Inside was not a pile of gold coins or stacks of cartel cash.
There was only a single, leather-bound accounting ledger, its black cover cracked and flaking with age.
Norah reached in with trembling fingers and lifted the heavy volume into the dim fluorescent light.
She opened the front cover.
The first page was covered in her grandmother's distinctive, elegant cursive handwriting, penned in faded blue ink.
Dates spanning from 1984 to 2002 lined the yellowed paper.
Beside every date was a name, a dollar amount, and a Chicago police precinct number.
"What is this?" Norah whispered, her eyes scanning the names of judges, aldermen, police captains, and federal prosecutors.
"That is the only reason your grandmother lived to be eighty years old," Alio said, his voice dropping into a solemn hush.
"In 1991, my father, Lorenzo Moretti, had a falling out with the Outfit."
"They wanted to turn Little Village into a heroin distribution hub."
"Your grandmother refused to let them poison the neighborhood children."
"My father agreed with her."
"He stole the Outfit's entire political payroll ledger and brought it to Elena Vasquez's basement."
Norah's fingers tightened against the leather spine until her knuckles turned white.
"She kept their secrets?"
"She kept the leverage," Alio corrected.
"For thirty years, whenever the Outfit or my corrupt uncle Silvio wanted to bulldoze Little Village or execute a Vasquez cousin, your grandmother turned one page of this book."
"She held the trigger to the destruction of the entire Chicago political machine."
Norah looked up from the ledger, horror and awe warring inside her chest.
"And when she died..."
"When she died, the leverage died with her," Alio said, stepping closer.
"Until Marco found Henderson's real estate records and realized where the safe was buried."
"They didn't come here to kill me, Norah."
"They came here to find this book."
"I came here to make sure they never touched it."
The realization crashed over Norah like a wall of sub-zero lake water.
Her café wasn't an innocent bystander caught in crossfire.
Her café had been the epicenter of a thirty-year cold war between two dynasties, and her grandmother had made her the guardian of the bomb without ever leaving her the manual.
Suddenly, a loud groan came from the tied-up enforcer in the corner.
Frankie had worked the gag down to his chin, his face slick with sweat and tears of pain from his ruined knee.
"You're dead, Alio!" Frankie spat, coughing up a spatter of red onto his shirt.
"Marco already told Silvio about the girl!"
"Silvio's got guys heading to her mother's apartment in Berwyn right now!"
Norah froze.
The air vanished from her lungs entirely.
"What did you just say?" she whispered, turning on the wounded mobster.
Frankie smiled an ugly, bloody smile.
"Your mother, sweetheart."
"The junkie who lives on 16th Street."
"Let's see how tough you are when Silvio sends her back to you in four separate grocery bags!"
Before Norah could scream, Alio drew his pistol, reversed the grip, and brought the heavy steel butt down across Frankie's temple.
The enforcer went instantly limp, slumping against the shelving unit into unconsciousness.
Alio shoved the weapon back into his waistband and grabbed Norah firmly by both arms.
Her eyes were wild, her breath coming in panicked, hyperventilating gasps.
"My mother," she gasped, her hands clutching at the front of his tactical sweater.
"Alio, my mother can't protect herself, she doesn't even know what day it is—"
"Look at me," Alio commanded, his voice cutting through the rising tide of her hysteria like a razor.
"Look at me, Norah!"
She forced her eyes to meet his dark, scarred gaze.
"We have twenty minutes before Silvio's crew reaches Berwyn," Alio said, his jaw locked with absolute determination.
"We take my car."
"We get your mother."
"And then we burn this city's hierarchy to the ground."
May you like
Norah didn't hesitate.
She closed the leather ledger, clutched it tight against her ribs, and ran toward the back alley door.
