Chapter 2 - Sleet, Gunfire, and the Brooklyn Devil
The private elevator took forty agonizing seconds to reach the ground floor.
Madeline huddled in the corner of the mirrored cab, wrapping her arms tightly around her bare chest to stop her violent shivering.
The reflection looking back at her was a ghost: hollow-eyed, trembling, wearing an evening slip that offered no more warmth than tissue paper.
When the elevator chime rang and the brass doors parted, the lobby was cavernous and dead silent.
The midnight concierge was nowhere to be seen behind the sweeping marble desk.
A damp service towel lay abandoned near the security monitors, and the main telephone receiver was off the hook, emitting a faint off-line buzz.
Madeline realized instantly that the building had been breached from the inside.
Her bare feet slapped against the freezing polished granite as she pushed through the heavy glass revolving doors.
The shock of the New York street air hit her like a physical blow.
Freezing rain had turned into driving sleet, whipping through the concrete canyon between the skyscrapers.
Ice crystals immediately bit into her exposed shoulders and froze the hem of her slip against her thighs.
She stepped onto the sidewalk and gasped as the frozen slush seared the soles of her feet like dry ice.
She slipped on an iron drain grate, stumbling forward and catching her hip against a rusted parking meter to stay upright.
Down the avenue, the streetlamps cast sickly yellow cones of light through the falling storm.
A low-slung black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows and Brooklyn plates swung around the corner, its tires hissing against the slush.
It did not accelerate; it drifted along the curb like a predatory shark stalking the shallows.
Madeline backed away toward the recessed entrance of the building, her breath coming in ragged white clouds.
The rear passenger window of the Escalade rolled down two inches, revealing the sharp, scarred profile of Lorenzo Castiglione.
"Salvatore’s clean-up crew entered the rear parking garage three minutes ago," Lorenzo’s deep voice cut through the howling wind.
"Get inside the vehicle if you want to see tomorrow morning."
Madeline’s teeth chattered so violently she could barely articulate her words.
"Did you... did you pull the intercept on Pier Fourteen?"
"The dock is already surrounded by Vitiello turncoats waiting for Dominic’s convoy," Lorenzo replied, pushing the door open from the inside.
"Your husband didn't listen to you, did he?"
Before Madeline could take a step toward the open door, the sharp crack of a rifle shot echoed off the stone facade above her.
The side mirror of the Escalade shattered into a thousand plastic and glass fragments.
From the service alley across the street, two figures in dark heavy parkas emerged with suppressed submachine guns raised.
They were not wearing Brooklyn colors; they bore the silver wolf head insignia of the Vitiello family’s internal security squad.
Salvatore’s personal executioners had not come to observe; they had come to eliminate the only witness who could expose the dockside coup.
"Down!" Lorenzo roared, lunging forward from the rear seat with a heavy automatic pistol drawn.
The street erupted into chaos as automatic fire chewed through the concrete pillars of the penthouse entrance.
Puffs of pulverized limestone exploded around Madeline’s head like miniature chalk grenades.
She dropped to her knees in the slush, screaming as shards of broken windshield glass dug into her bare shins.
Lorenzo fired three deliberate shots through the open door, dropping the first gunman on the curb.
The second shooter adjusted his sights directly toward the open passenger compartment where Madeline was crawling.
Madeline saw the muzzle flash before she heard the report.
A sensation like an incandescent iron poker drove directly into her left side, just below the ribs.
The sheer kinetic force of the bullet knocked her sideways across the frozen asphalt.
Her head bounced against the steel rim of Lorenzo’s rear tire.
The freezing street suddenly felt extraordinarily warm where the dark crimson puddle began to spread beneath her hip.
She tried to draw a breath, but her left lung seized, filling her mouth with the copper taste of warm blood.
Lorenzo kicked his door wide open, ignoring the crossfire pinging against the armored frame of his truck.
He grabbed Madeline by the strap of her dress and hauled her dead weight across the leather bench of the back seat.
Another bullet tore through the headrest where his neck had been a second earlier.
The Escalade’s driver slammed the transmission into reverse, the reinforced tires smoking as they found traction on the icy street.
The SUV spun one hundred and eighty degrees, smashing the front bumper of the second assassin's sedan before roaring east toward the bridge.
Through the blood-spattered rear window, Madeline looked up through fading vision at the top floor of the skyscraper.
The golden lights of Dominic’s penthouse glowed like distant, unfeeling stars in a black sky.
Her hand slipped from her side, leaving a smear of scarlet along the leather door panel.
Beside her, Lorenzo ripped his tailored cashmere scarf from his neck and pressed it ruthlessly into her bleeding flank.
The pain was an all-consuming fire that blinded her to the dark skyline rushing past the glass.
"Stay awake, Madeline," Lorenzo’s voice seemed to come from the bottom of an ocean.
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"If you die in this car, Dominic will burn this entire city to the ground before I can show him who actually pulled the trigger."
Madeline’s eyes fluttered shut as the sound of the tires on the Manhattan Bridge dissolved into silence.
