Chapter 2 - The Ghost in the Alleyway
Lorenzo stumbled against her, his full weight pressing down onto her left shoulder as another wave of shock ripped through his nervous system.
The fabric of his navy suit was completely soaked with dark, venous blood that felt scalding against her forearm.
“My car,” Lorenzo rasped, his teeth gritted so hard a thin line of red seeped from his lip.
“Parked three doors down on Michigan Avenue.”
“Your car is an armored black Escalade with customized syndicate plates,” Chloe said, shoving him through the swinging stainless-steel doors of the main kitchen.
“Every patrol unit within four districts is currently speeding toward that license plate.”
The kitchen was an abandoned wasteland of sizzling pans and boiling stockpots left behind by the fleeing line cooks.
Steam hissed violently from an unattended grill, filling the air with the smell of scorched garlic and burning oil.
Sirens wailed in the near distance, their mechanical howls bouncing off the damp limestone walls of the alley outside.
Chloe dragged him to the dishwashing station and snatched three clean, heavy bar towels from a metal rack.
She wadded two of them together and pressed them with brutal force directly into the hollow of his shattered collarbone.
Lorenzo let out a ragged, strangled groan, his knees buckling until his back hit the cold edge of an industrial sink.
“Hold that,” she commanded, not breaking eye contact.
“Press until your fingers ache.”
“You didn't answer my question,” he breathed, his eyes tracking her every movement with predatory wariness.
“Waitresses don’t execute two contract shooters with clean center-mass shots in under three seconds.”
“And mafia bosses don’t usually get betrayed by the men they let manage their bank accounts,” she retorted, grabbing a clean white utility jacket from an employee locker hook.
She threw the oversized jacket over his ruined shoulders to hide the catastrophic bloodstains.
Her hand reached out and grabbed his left wrist, pulling his arm upward to inspect the gold timepiece gleaming beneath his wet cuff.
It was an exquisite Patek Philippe Grand Complications perpetual calendar watch.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, her voice dropping into a dangerous whisper.
Lorenzo pulled his hand back an inch, his brow furrowing in confusion and anger.
“Victor gave it to me for my thirty-second birthday last month.”
Chloe’s fingers dug into the bones of his wrist, turning the timepiece over to inspect the exhibition case back.
Near the winding crown, nestled beneath the intricate sweep of the platinum bezel, was a microscopic seam of hardened industrial epoxy.
It was less than a millimeter wide, completely invisible to anyone who had not spent years studying commercial surveillance gear.
“He didn’t just sell your route to the shooters, Lorenzo,” she said, looking straight into his eyes.
“He’s been tracking your heartbeat and your coordinates for four weeks.”
Lorenzo went completely still, the blood draining from what little color remained in his face.
“You’re telling me my brother planted a military transmitter on my arm?”
“I’m telling you that if we step into that alley with this watch on your arm, Victor’s second perimeter team will execute us before we reach the corner.”
Chloe grabbed the watch by the deployment buckle and wrenched it free with enough force to tear the delicate leather strap.
She snatched an empty eight-quart stainless-steel stockpot from the dish rack, dropped the watch inside, and slammed the heavy lid down over it.
Then she wedged the pot deep inside the industrial microwave oven beside the prep counter and slammed the door shut.
“The metal chamber creates a localized Faraday shield,” she said, pulling Lorenzo away from the sink before he could ask another question.
“The signal will bounce and decay within the walls for the next ten minutes, making them think you’re bleeding to death under the kitchen counter.”
Lorenzo stared at the microwave, then back at the slight, blonde woman who was holding a stolen weapon with the casual familiarity of a veteran.
“You have names for things that civilians don't even know exist.”
“Civilians stay alive by being ignorant,” she said, kicking the heavy steel push-bar of the rear service exit.
Cold rain lashed across their faces the moment the door swung open into the suffocating gloom of the alley.
The air smelled of wet asphalt, rotting trash, and diesel exhaust.
To their left, the mouth of the alley opened onto the blinding red-and-blue flashers of two Chicago Police squad cars sliding to a halt in front of the restaurant.
To their right, the alley dead-ended into a brick wall flanked by towering green dumpsters.
“Dead end,” Lorenzo muttered, his breath coming in shallow, wheezing gasps.
“Only for people who don't know the service tunnels,” Chloe replied.
She reached behind the secondary grease trap dumpster, finding the rusted iron latch of an old coal-chute service hatch built during the nineteen-twenties.
With a sharp heave that strained the muscles of her back, she wrenched the heavy iron grate upward.
A blast of humid, subterranean air rushed out, carrying the faint stench of sulfur and damp concrete.
“Down,” she ordered.
“I am not crawling into a sewer like a rat,” Lorenzo snarled, his mafia pride flaring despite his catastrophic blood loss.
Chloe grabbed his uninjured shoulder, shoved him toward the narrow chute, and stepped into his personal space until her face was inches from his.
“You are not a king right now, Capello.”
“You are a piece of meat with a shattered bone and a five-million-dollar target on your head.”
“You crawl down that chute, or I leave you here to be identified by the evening news.”
May you like
Lorenzo looked into her steel-gray eyes and saw absolute, unyielding conviction.
Without another word, he lowered his feet into the darkness and slid through the chute into the forgotten corridors beneath the city.
