Chapter 4 - Fire in the Tenements
Lena dropped to her knees on the Persian rug, clutching the phone with both hands until her fingernails turned white.
"Daniel! Daniel, can you hear me?" she screamed into the microphone, her voice shattering the sterile silence of the penthouse.
Through the tinny speaker, she heard the heavy crash of an iron boot kicking through thin plywood.
Her mother’s weak, wheezing cough cut through the static, followed by the wet thud of an oxygen tank falling against a linoleum floor.
"Lena... run..." a frail, broken whisper came through the receiver before a sharp metallic click cut the sound off.
The male voice returned to the line, cold, professional, and entirely devoid of mercy.
"Ten minutes, Miss Hart," the man said, the sound of rain drumming against an exterior fire escape audible in the background.
"If Mercer doesn't walk out of the front entrance of the Grandeur alone and get into his black town car, we put two rounds into the boy's chest."
"Then we turn the valve on the old woman's tank and let her choke on her own fluids."
The call disconnected with a hollow tone that echoed through the quiet penthouse suite.
Lena scrambled across the floor on her hands and knees, reaching out to grasp the hem of Victor Romano’s trousers.
She didn't care about dignity, she didn't care about pride, and she didn't care that he was the most dangerous criminal in the state.
"Please," she sobbed, tears cutting clean paths through the banquet dust on her cheeks.
"Please, they're going to kill my brother."
"Daniel can't even scream for help, he can't make a sound, he’s only fifteen years old!"
"Kill me, lock me up, do whatever you want with me, but send someone to that apartment!"
Victor looked down at the girl clutching his trousers with an expression that shifted from cold calculation into pure, predatory focus.
He did not kick her away; he reached down with one long, powerful hand and hauled her to her feet by her arm.
"Leon," Victor said, his voice dropping into a register that made the two police detectives back away toward the wall.
Leon was standing near the door, his eyes wild, his chest heaving as he realized his contingency plan had been triggered prematurely.
"Victor, listen to me," Leon said, backing toward the mahogany entrance.
"This wasn't my call! The Whitmores have backing from the southern syndicates!"
"They control the shipping terminals now! If you let me leave, I can negotiate a settlement!"
"You can keep the hotel, you can keep the casino holdings, just let the transition happen!"
Victor didn't look at Leon.
He looked at Dmitri.
"Break his kneecaps," Victor said casually, as if ordering a change of dinner reservations.
"Then put him in the walk-in meat locker on the banquet floor until I return."
Leon opened his mouth to scream, but Dmitri was on him before the sound could form.
There was a sickening, muffled crunch of bone, followed by Leon’s strangled shriek as he collapsed to the marble entrance floor.
Dmitri hauled the weeping lawyer up by his collar and dragged him out into the private elevator corridor like a sack of damp laundry.
The two police detectives stood frozen, their faces pale as chalk, their hands held high in the air away from their weapons.
Victor turned to the two guards standing by the doorway.
"Take their badges, take their service weapons, and lock them in the server closet," Victor commanded.
"If they make a sound before dawn, put a bullet through the keyhole."
Victor turned back to Lena, who was shaking so hard she had to lean against the arm of the leather sofa to stay upright.
"What is the address?" Victor demanded, his voice slicing through her panic like a surgical blade.
"Four-twenty-one South Tenth Avenue," Lena gasped, her breath catching in her throat.
"Third floor, apartment three-B."
"The fire escape window is broken; they can get in from the alley."
Victor pulled his charcoal tuxedo jacket off the back of the chair and slid his arms into the silk-lined sleeves.
He reached into the mahogany desk drawer and pulled out a heavy, matte-black semi-automatic pistol, checking the magazine with a practiced flick of his wrist.
"Dmitri!" Victor shouted into the hallway.
Dmitri reappeared in the doorway, wiping a smear of grease from his knuckles with a white napkin.
"Boss?"
"Call the perimeter strike team," Victor ordered, strapping a second magazine into his belt holster.
"Four black Suburbans at the service bay in three minutes."
"Full tactical loadout."
"We are going into the Tenth Avenue tenements."
"Boss, that's Moretti territory," Dmitri warned, his brow furrowing.
"If we roll four armored trucks into the South District without prior clearance, the entire precinct will turn into a shooting gallery."
"Then let it turn into a shooting gallery," Victor replied, his eyes burning with a dark, violent fire.
"Someone entered my house, tried to put poison in my glass, and threatened a child under my protection."
"Tonight, the city learns what happens when someone forgets who built the foundations of these streets."
He grabbed Lena by the wrist, his grip firm and unyielding as he pulled her toward the private executive elevator.
"You're coming with me," Victor said, pulling her inside the brass-paneled elevator car.
"I need you to show my men the floor plan."
"If you panic, you die."
"If you get in my way, you die."
"Do you understand me, Lena Hart?"
Lena looked at the pistol tucked against his ribcage, then looked up into the unyielding iron of his face.
"If you save my brother, you can do whatever you want with me," she said, her voice steadying through her tears.
The elevator dropped like a stone, racing down forty-four floors in a blur of humming cables and rushing air.
When the doors slid open at the subterranean loading bay, three black armored SUVs were already idling on the concrete pad.
Twelve men in black tactical gear and Kevlar vests stood by the open rear doors, checking their short-barreled assault rifles in silence.
Victor shoved Lena into the back seat of the lead vehicle, climbing in beside her as Dmitri took the front passenger seat.
The driver slammed the transmission into gear, and the heavy vehicle lunged forward up the concrete ramp into the pouring midnight rain.
Lena pressed her face against the tinted glass as the SUV tore through the city streets at eighty miles an hour.
Rain lashed against the windows like handfuls of gravel thrown by an angry hand.
The neon signs of the downtown financial district faded into the grimy, flickering streetlights of the industrial rail yards.
Lena pulled her phone from her pocket and stared at the dark screen, praying for a vibration, a ping, any sign that Daniel was still breathing.
"Five minutes remaining," Dmitri announced from the front seat, watching the GPS timer on the dashboard display.
"Frank says there are two lookouts posted on the corner of Tenth and Market."
"They’re driving stolen sedans with municipal plates."
"Whitmore’s private security contractors," Victor said, his fingers resting lightly on the slide of his weapon.
"They aren't syndicate soldiers; they are hired mercenaries who think a badge and a corporate retainer make them bulletproof."
"Do we take prisoners?" Dmitri asked, racking the bolt of his rifle.
Victor looked sideways at Lena, who had her eyes closed, her lips moving in a silent, desperate prayer.
"None," Victor answered softly.
The SUV banked hard around a flooded corner, its tires throwing up twin sheets of brown water against the brick walls of the tenements.
Ahead, the crumbling five-story brick building of 421 South Tenth Avenue rose against the stormy sky like a rotting tooth.
The front entrance glass was already shattered, and the rain was blowing into the grimy hallway where Lena had walked every day of her life.
On the third-floor fire escape, a silhouette holding a long-barreled shotgun moved toward the window of apartment three-B.
Victor leaned forward and tapped the driver's shoulder with the barrel of his gun.
"Ram the front doors," Victor commanded.
May you like
"Clear the stairs."
"Nobody leaves this building alive except the boy and the woman."
