Chapter 3 - A BLOODLINE OF SHADOWS
“Don't move,” I commanded, my hand flying under my coat to grip the checkered handle of my custom Kimber .45.
Clara shrank back against the wall, her hands over her ears, tears cutting clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks. Evelyn didn't flinch. She had stared death in the face on the burning concrete of the expressway fifteen years ago; two goons in an alley weren't going to make her blink.
“Lorenzo!” I bellowed, stepping directly into the line of the window, framing myself against the light. “Stand down! Clear the perimeter and wait at the car!”
There was a five-second pause. Out in the snow, the engine of the Cadillac Escalade rumbled, its exhaust billowing into the frozen night. Lorenzo stepped into the cone of the headlights. His face was obscured by his black leather collar, but his posture wasn't that of a loyal captain waiting for his don. He held an MP5 pressed against his chest, barrel angled upward at forty-five degrees. Ready to raise and fire.
“Boss,” Lorenzo called back, his tone smooth, almost conversational. “We got an alert on your comms. Thought maybe the maid’s cousins tried to jump you for a ransom. Why don't you step outside? Let the boys handle the clean-up.”
“I gave you an order, Lorenzo,” I said, letting the venom bleed into my words. “Back. Up.”
Lorenzo hesitated. Through the cracked glass, I saw his eyes shift toward the back alley where another pair of headlights appeared—a nondescript black sedan idling quietly at the corner.
My father’s old inner circle.
‘He worked for the man who whispered in your father’s ear,’ Evelyn’s words echoed through my skull like a funeral knell.
Lorenzo hadn't come here because he was worried about me. He had tracked my vehicle because he had been monitoring Clara Bennett since the day she entered my estate.
“Understood, Don Dante,” Lorenzo said through tight lips. He lowered the submachine gun, gave a curt signal to the driver, and backed into the shadows of the alley, though the headlights remained burning, cutting through the dilapidated room like searchlights in a prison yard.
I turned back to the room. Every instinct honed over fifteen years of gangland survival was screaming at me.
“Pack whatever medicine she needs,” I told Clara. “Now. We have three minutes before this block is crawling with men who won't ask for permission before firing.”
“Where are you taking her?” Clara sobbed, scrambling toward a plastic drawer unit full of prescription bottles. “You can't just drag her into your world!”
“She’s been in my world since she pulled me out of that fire, Clara!” I snapped, stepping beside Evelyn's chair. I knelt down so my eyes were level with hers. For the first time in fifteen years, I bowed my head before another human being. “Evelyn. You gave up your body, your career, and your life to save a bastard who didn't deserve it. I can't undo those fifteen years of misery. But as long as my heart beats in this chest, no one will ever hurt you or your daughter again. Do you trust me?”
Evelyn reached out. Her scarred, calloused fingers touched my cheekbone, tracing the scar over my eye.
“I pulled you out of the fire, Dante,” she whispered softly. “Don't make me regret it now.”
I didn't waste another second. Slipping my arms beneath her frail frame, I lifted her from the wheelchair. She weighed almost nothing—barely ninety pounds of hollowed bone and faded muscle. She winced, an involuntary hiss escaping her cracked lips as her damaged vertebrae protested the movement, but she didn't cry out.
“Clara, grab her chair. Stay on my hip.”
I kicked open the rotting back door leading to the building's narrow utility corridor, avoiding the front alley where Lorenzo was waiting. The smell of mildew and damp laundry filled the air as we moved through the pitch-black hallway. Clara carried the folded metal wheelchair, her breath ragged, but terror kept her moving without a sound.
We emerged through an abandoned basement bulkhead into a secondary alley two streets over, where my personal unmarked Audi RS6 was parked under the skeleton of an old iron fire escape.
I placed Evelyn gently onto the heated leather of the back seat, wrapping my cashmere coat around her shoulders. Clara slid in beside her, pulling her mother tight against her chest.
I climbed behind the wheel, hit the ignition, and let the twin-turbo V8 roar to life.
As I pulled out of the alley onto South Michigan Avenue, I checked the rearview mirror. Three hundred yards back, the headlights of the black sedan and Lorenzo’s Escalade snapped on in unison.
Lorenzo hadn't obeyed my order. He was hunting us.
My phone rang through the car's dashboard console. The caller ID flashed a name that made my teeth grind together until they nearly shattered:
UNCLE SILVIO.
Silvio Rossi. My father’s closest confidant, the consiglieri who had handed me the family ring when my father died, the man who had promised to protect me.
May you like
I tapped the screen to connect.
“Dante,” Silvio’s gravelly voice came through the speakers, calm as winter ice. “Lorenzo tells me you're having an episode over some kitchen staff. You’re driving erratic, nephew. In our line of work, erratic men make terrible decisions. Why don't you bring the girl and her mother to the warehouse on 31st Street? Let's talk about the past... and whether you have a future.”
