Chapter 5 - The Highway To Berwyn
The black BMW M5 tore through the slush on Ogden Avenue like a guided missile.
Alio drove with his left hand gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, his right hand resting on the center console near the gear shift.
Norah sat in the passenger seat, the leather-bound ledger clutched tightly in her lap like an explosive device that might detonate at any bump in the road.
The snow had begun to fall in thick, wet sheets, plastering itself against the windshield wipers in heavy gray clumps.
"How much time do we have?" Norah asked, her voice tight, vibrating with adrenaline.
"Not enough," Alio answered without looking at her.
"Silvio's crew operates out of a garage on Cicero Avenue."
"They have an eight-minute head start."
Norah stared out at the passing blur of strip malls, pawn shops, and concrete overpasses.
Her mother, Teresa Vasquez, was a ghost who had haunted her entire childhood.
Teresa was a woman broken by addiction, cycling through rehab clinics and derelict walk-up apartments, kept alive only by the monthly rent checks Abuela Elena had faithfully mailed from the café's register.
Norah had not spoken to her mother in seven months.
Their last conversation had ended in a screaming match over fifty dollars that had vanished from Norah's purse during a Sunday visit.
Yet the thought of Silvio Moretti's ruthless executioners kicking down Teresa's flimsy apartment door made Norah's throat burn with sickening dread.
"Why did Silvio wait until now?" Norah demanded, turning toward the driver's seat.
"If this book has been in my storage room for years, why move today?"
Alio cut the steering wheel sharply, drifting the heavy sedan through a red light at the intersection of Pulaski Road.
Horns blared behind them in the blinding snow.
"Silvio's kidneys are failing," Alio said, his voice flat and clinical.
"The doctors gave him three months to live."
"He knows that when he dies, the Moretti syndicate defaults to me by bloodline and by vote of the captains."
"He wants Marco to inherit everything."
"To ensure Marco's succession, Silvio has to wipe out every piece of blackmail that could be used against the family by federal prosecutors."
"He needs the ledger destroyed, and he needs everyone who ever saw inside it dead."
"Including you," Norah whispered.
"Especially me," Alio said.
"I spent five years in Florence and two in New York building legitimate logistics operations."
"I returned to Chicago to pull this family out of the gutter, not to run brothels and loan-sharking rings."
"Silvio knows I will dismantle his entire empire the second he takes his last breath."
The car crossed the municipal boundary into Berwyn.
The neighborhood changed rapidly, shifting from industrial commercial strips to rows of tight, two-story brick bungalows with narrow driveways and sagging porches.
Teresa lived on the second floor of a converted graystone building on 16th Street, flanked by an auto repair shop and an abandoned bakery.
As Alio turned the corner onto the block, Norah's breath hitched.
Parked directly in front of the graystone was a dark gray Dodge Charger with heavily tinted windows and Cook County commercial plates.
Two men in heavy hooded jackets were standing on the front porch, kicking repeatedly at the wooden entrance door.
The frame was splintering under their heavy steel-toed boots.
"They're already there!" Norah yelled, her hand reaching for the door handle.
"Stay in the car," Alio commanded, his voice cold as the Arctic wind outside.
He didn't tap the brakes.
Instead, Alio slammed his right foot completely to the floorboards.
The BMW's twin-turbo V8 engine let out a guttural, mechanical roar that shattered the quiet neighborhood afternoon.
The sedan leaped forward across the icy asphalt, tires screaming for traction.
The two men on the porch whipped their heads around, their eyes widening in sudden, blind panic.
Alio didn't aim for the men; he aimed directly for the front bumper of the Dodge Charger parked at the curb.
The impact was catastrophic.
The BMW plowed into the Charger at forty miles per hour with a deafening crunch of crumpling steel and shattering safety glass.
The Charger was hurled sideways onto the sidewalk, smashing directly into the porch steps and collapsing the wooden railing into a shower of splinters.
The airbags deployed with a violent bang and a cloud of white talcum powder.
Norah's head snapped forward, caught by the seatbelt harness, the leather ledger still pinned against her chest.
Through the haze of smoke, she saw Alio already kicking his door open.
He didn't wait for his senses to clear.
He rolled out of the driver's seat into the slush, his Sig Sauer drawn and leveled before his boots even hit the pavement.
One of the hooded men on the porch was scrambling backward through the splintered front entrance, drawing a chrome revolver from his waistband.
Alio fired two rounds through the broken banister.
The man on the porch grunted, dropped his weapon, and collapsed backward onto the indoor stairwell, holding a shattered shoulder.
The second man had been caught between the Charger's rear bumper and a concrete retaining wall during the collision.
He was pinned, screaming in agony, his legs crushed beneath two tons of Detroit steel.
Alio stepped onto the broken porch, his weapon steady, his breathing ragged as blood began to soak through the dark sweater around his sutured ribs once more.
"Inside, Norah!" Alio shouted, covering the doorway.
Norah shoved her door open, tumbled out into the freezing slush, and sprinted up the broken wooden steps, clutching the heavy book to her chest.
She vaulted over the fallen gunman on the stairs, taking the steps three at a time until she reached the second-floor landing.
Apartment 2B was unlocked.
The flimsy hollow-core door was already cracked open from the concussive force of the collision outside.
"Mama!" Norah screamed, slamming the door open with her shoulder.
The apartment was tiny, smelling of stale cigarette smoke, fried corn tortillas, and cheap vanilla room spray.
In the small kitchen, sitting on a worn vinyl chair beside a humming refrigerator, was Teresa Vasquez.
She was barely fifty years old, but her face was lined with deep, premature wrinkles, her graying hair pulled back into a messy plastic claw clip.
She was holding a heavy cast-iron skillet with both trembling hands, her knuckles white, her brown eyes wide with absolute, unadulterated terror.
"Norah?" Teresa cried out, her voice cracking as the skillet shook in her grip.
"Norah, what is happening?! Who are those men outside?!"
Norah dropped the ledger onto the small kitchen table, crossed the linoleum floor in two strides, and wrapped her arms tightly around her mother's frail, trembling frame.
"You're okay, Mama," Norah breathed into her mother's hair, her own tears finally breaking past her fierce defenses.
"I've got you."
"You're okay."
Heavy, deliberate footsteps sounded on the wooden stairwell outside the apartment.
Alio Moretti stepped through the shattered doorway.
His face was streaked with soot and blood from a shallow cut on his forehead where the airbag had grazed him.
His dark coat was torn, his knuckles were bruised, and the Sig Sauer hung loosely at his side, barrel pointed toward the floor.
Teresa looked up from Norah's shoulder, her eyes widening as they locked onto Alio's scarred, imposing silhouette.
The breath hitched in Teresa's throat.
The cast-iron skillet slipped from her fingers, clattering loudly against the linoleum tile.
"Lorenzo...?" Teresa whispered, her voice barely a ghost of sound.
Alio paused in the doorway, his dark eyes softening by a fraction of an inch as he looked at the terrified older woman.
"No, Mrs. Vasquez," Alio said quietly.
"Lorenzo was my father."
"My name is Alio."
Teresa slowly brought a trembling hand to her mouth, her eyes darting between Alio's scarred face and the black leather ledger resting on the kitchen table.
"The day has finally come," Teresa whispered, her voice hollow with an old, long-buried despair.
"Elena always said the blood would come back to our door."
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"It came back, Teresa," Alio replied, stepping into the room and locking the ruined door behind him with a deadbolt.
"Now it's time we finish what your mother and my father started thirty years ago."
