Chapter 7 - The Ranger Station
The southern ridge was shrouded in an eerie, windless silence.
The deep gorge acted as a natural acoustic barrier, swallowing the distant shouts and idling truck engines on the opposite cliff.
Vincent pushed himself up from the snowbank, every muscle in his back screaming with sharp, jagged pain.
He knelt beside Lily, whose eyelids were fluttering weakly.
Her skin had taken on a translucent, porcelain sheen, and her lips were a faint, bruised purple.
"Grandma, help me get her up," Vincent said, his voice flat with urgency.
Margaret walked over, her silver-headed cane sinking only an inch into the packed pine needle crust beneath the hemlocks.
"There is a state forestry maintenance outpost four hundred yards down this fire trail," Margaret said quietly.
"It was built during the CCC program in the thirties; the walls are solid river stone."
"Does it have power?" Vincent asked, pulling Lily up gently into his arms once again.
She felt lighter now, but only because his own limbs were going numb from exhaustion.
"It doesn't need power," Margaret replied grimly.
"It has a cast-iron wood stove, stacked seasoned oak, and an old county radio antenna."
Vincent didn't waste breath answering.
He walked onto the snow-covered fire trail, carrying Lily step by grueling step.
Her head rested limp against his collarbone, her breathing shallow and raspy.
"Lily," Vincent murmured, brushing a clump of freezing snow from her brow with his chin.
"Stay awake."
"I'm... so tired, Vincent," she whispered, her words slurring together.
"It feels like I'm falling asleep in a warm bath."
"That’s the cold lying to you," Vincent said sharply.
"You fall asleep now, and you don't wake up."
"Talk to me."
"Tell me what you were going to do once you found the evidence against my family."
Lily’s eyelashes fluttered against his cheek.
"I wanted... to hand it to the Department of Justice," she murmured.
"I wanted the men who burned my father to stand in a courtroom."
"I wanted their names written in the papers so people would know my father was an honest man."
"He wasn't a criminal, Vincent."
"He was just a man who fixed carburetors and loved his daughter."
Vincent felt a cold, hard knot form in his throat.
All his life, the Romano empire had been presented to him as a shield that protected their own blood.
His father had preached loyalty, family honor, and the code of silence.
Yet here was the shattered daughter of an innocent mechanic whose life had been crushed beneath the treads of that very empire.
"If we get out of this alive, Lily," Vincent said, his voice cutting through the falling snow with iron resolve, "your father's name will be cleared."
"I don't care who on the Commission goes down for it."
"Even if it's your own family?" she whispered, her dark eyes searching his in the pale gloom.
"Even if it's my own brother," Vincent answered without hesitation.
They reached the clearing five minutes later.
Sitting among a cluster of towering white pines was a squat, sturdy cabin built of rough-hewn fieldstone and heavy cedar shakes.
A rusted iron smokestack protruded from the steep roof.
Vincent carried Lily up the three wooden steps of the porch.
The heavy pine door was padlocked with a brass state parks lock.
Vincent didn't bother looking for a key; he stepped back and delivered a brutal side kick directly beside the deadbolt.
The dry cedar jamb splintered outward, and the door swung open into the dark cabin.
The air inside was freezing, smelling heavily of dry wood, creosote, and old canvas.
Vincent carried Lily directly to a narrow cot in the corner, laying her down onto a dry wool mattress.
He immediately stripped off her soaked outer jacket, throwing a heavy army-surplus wool blanket over her shivering body.
Margaret was already by the hearth.
She found a box of long wooden kitchen matches and a bundle of dry birch bark in an iron scuttle beside the stove.
Within ninety seconds, small yellow flames were dancing across the kindling inside the heavy iron cast-iron wood stove.
Vincent knelt beside Lily’s cot, pulling his tactical flashlight to inspect her right foot again.
The duct tape and survey stakes had held the joint immobile during the brutal trek across the gorge.
However, her foot was completely numb, cold as marble to the touch.
Vincent went to the small kitchen counter, found a metal basin and an old ceramic pitcher of water, and set it on top of the rapidly warming stove.
"Do not put boiling water on frostbitten flesh," Margaret warned from the hearth, feeding thick splits of seasoned oak into the roaring fire.
"Warm it slowly with dry wool."
Vincent took off his own shearling gloves, rubbing his warm palms together until they were hot.
He gently wrapped his bare hands around Lily’s bare, frozen toes, transferring his own body heat directly into her numb skin.
Lily gasped, a sharp whimper escaping her lips as the sensation began to return.
"It hurts," she cried softly, clutching the edge of the mattress.
"It feels like thousands of needles stabbing my skin."
"That means the tissue is alive," Vincent said gently, not breaking the contact of his hands.
"Let it hurt, Lily. Pain means you're going to keep your foot."
Across the cabin, Margaret walked toward an old wooden desk against the south wall.
Sitting atop the desk was an ancient olive-drab landline telephone connected to a heavy armored conduit running into the floorboards.
She lifted the heavy plastic receiver to her ear.
A steady, low dial tone buzzed through the earpiece.
"The state forestry trunk line is buried three feet under the highway," Margaret said, her voice filled with quiet triumph.
"Marco’s jamming equipment can scramble satellite and cellular towers, but it cannot touch an underground analog wire."
Vincent stood up from the cot, leaving Lily covered under three layers of dry wool blankets.
He walked over to the desk, his face bathed in the warm, orange flicker of the wood stove.
"Who are you calling?" Vincent asked.
"The only man in Chicago who has never taken a dime from the Commission," Margaret answered.
She dialed a seven-digit number from memory, her wrinkled fingers steady against the rotary dial.
The phone clicked four times, followed by three long, hollow rings.
Then, a raspy, gravelly voice answered on the other end.
"Speak."
"Silvio," Margaret said calmly.
"It's Margaret Romano."
A heavy intake of breath came over the analog wire from eight hundred miles away.
"Mrs. Romano?" the voice said, sounding suddenly alert and deadly.
"Where is Vincent? Word on the street is that the Commission declared an emergency vacancy for the Romano seat an hour ago."
"They announced Vincent was killed in a private plane crash over the Catskills."
Vincent stepped forward, taking the heavy receiver from his grandmother’s hand.
"I'm alive, Silvio," Vincent said, his voice dropping into a lethal, commanding tone.
"Vincent!" Silvio gasped.
Silvio Rossi was sixty-two years old, the veteran underboss who managed the family’s downtown transport docks and union halls.
He was the last man alive who had sworn fealty directly to Vincent’s grandfather.
"Who is sitting in my boardroom right now, Silvio?" Vincent demanded.
"Your brother Michael," Silvio replied, the words dripping with disgust and sorrow.
"He called an emergency meeting at midnight."
"He brought two councilmen from the Marcone family and the managing trustee of the Romano Trust, Arthur Sterling."
"They showed signed documents transferring all shipping assets and offshore accounts to a holding firm in Panama."
"They claimed you died without leaving an updated will."
"Sterling," Vincent murmured, his eyes narrowing into cold slits of fury.
Arthur Sterling had been the Romano family’s lead corporate attorney for twenty-five years.
He had handled the estate after Vincent’s father died.
"Is Michael acting under duress, Silvio?" Vincent asked, remembering his brother’s frantic tears over the phone.
"Duress?" Silvio let out a bitter, mocking laugh.
"Vincent, wake up."
"Michael’s wife isn't in a warehouse near O’Hare."
"Sarah was seen having dinner at the Palmer House with Don Marcone’s nephew three hours ago."
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"Michael wasn't coerced."
"He orchestrated the entire transfer of power to liquidate the family before you could find what your father hid in the Adirondacks."
