Chapter 4 - THE SAFE HOUSE AMBUSH
I didn't answer Silvio. I cut the call with a single flick of my thumb, slammed the accelerator down, and felt the Audi surge forward, its all-wheel-drive gripping the slush-covered asphalt as the speedometer climbed past eighty miles per hour.
“Hold on!” I shouted over the engine's scream.
In the rearview mirror, Clara had buried her face into Evelyn's shoulder, weeping uncontrollably. Evelyn, however, was staring at the dashboard console, her eyes wide with cold recognition.
“Silvio Rossi,” Evelyn said, her voice cutting through Clara's sobs like a razor. “That was the voice. That night in the ditch. It wasn't your father on the phone, Dante. The man who set the fire called Silvio. He said: ‘Silvio, it’s done. The boy is dead. Tell Antonio his prodigal son won’t be taking the throne.’”
“Silvio,” I growled, the pieces of a fifteen-year nightmare locking into place with sickening clarity.
My father had been dying of lymphoma back then. He had made it clear to the five families that I—his only son, young and untested—would inherit the entire syndicate. Silvio had spent forty years serving as the shadow behind the throne, expecting to take the crown once my father passed. When my father chose me instead, Silvio orchestrated my assassination on the highway.
Except I hadn't died.
Evelyn Vance had dragged me from the inferno. And when I showed up at the hospital battered but alive, Silvio had to pretend to celebrate my survival while secretly dismantling everything my father built, biding his time until he could strike again.
A sudden deafening CRACK echoed through the cabin.
The rear window spider-webbed into a million white fractures. A high-caliber bullet had punched clean through the glass, missing Clara’s head by less than four inches, embedding itself deep into the leather of the passenger headrest.
“Get down!” I roared, wrenching the wheel hard to the left.
The Audi swung sideways into an industrial alley behind the Fulton Market meatpacking district. A second black SUV blew past the intersection behind us, missing the turn, but Lorenzo’s Escalade braked hard, tires smoking on the salt and ice, swinging directly into the mouth of the alley to box us in.
Bullets peppered the rear chassis like hail.
“They're going to kill us!” Clara screamed, pressing her mother flat onto the floorboards.
“Not tonight,” I snarled.
I slammed the car into reverse. The Audi’s heavy bumper slammed into a row of commercial steel dumpsters, sending them sliding across the narrow alleyway to block Lorenzo’s direct line of sight. I killed the headlights, threw the gear into drive, and whipped around the blind corner into an underground loading dock reserved for an abandoned cold-storage facility I had bought through an offshore shell company five years ago.
The security gate rolled shut behind us with a heavy, hydraulic groan.
We were plunged into damp, echoing darkness.
I turned on the interior dome light. Evelyn was pale, her breathing shallow, but she hadn't suffered a scratch. Clara was trembling so violently she couldn't unlock her fingers from her mother’s coat.
“Are you hurt?” I demanded, turning around in my seat.
“No,” Evelyn whispered, though her teeth were chattering from the cold and shock. “Dante... look at your shoulder.”
I glanced down. A stray round had grazed my left deltoid, soaking my black shirt in crimson. I hadn't even felt it. Adrenaline was a venomous narcotic.
“It's nothing,” I said, opening my door and stepping out. I opened their door, gently pulling Evelyn back into her upright position. “This facility is off the grid. No trackers, no syndicate records. Lorenzo doesn't know this place exists.”
“He will soon,” Clara sobbed, looking up at me with raw, burning fury mixed with terror. “Why did you bring this to us? We had nothing! We were starving, but we were alive! Why couldn't you just leave us alone in the dirt?”
Her words struck harder than the bullet in my shoulder.
“Because she died for me, Clara,” I said, my voice breaking for the first time in my adult life. “Look at her! Look at your mother! She spent fifteen years living in squalor, eating cold scraps, while I slept on Egyptian cotton and ate off silver plates bought with the life she threw away to save mine!”
Clara froze, staring at my face, realizing that the dreaded mafia don in front of her wasn't angry at them. He was tearing himself apart from the inside out.
“Clara, be quiet,” Evelyn commanded, her voice weak but carrying the undeniable authority of a mother. “He didn't ask for this any more than we did. But now that we're here, we finish it. Dante... Silvio isn't just trying to kill you to cover up the past. He wants the Bennett name wiped out completely.”
I paused, binding my shoulder with a strip of clean cloth from the car’s medical kit. “What do you mean, the Bennett name? Your name was Miller.”
“My husband’s name was Bennett,” Evelyn said, her eyes darkening. “Before he died, he was the chief financial auditor for the Port of Chicago. He kept the ledger that proved Silvio Rossi was moving illegal weapons through the docks behind your father’s back. That was why they ambushed your car that night, Dante. They staged the crash on the expressway right outside our neighborhood to kill two birds with one stone—they killed my husband twenty minutes before they ran you off the road.”
The floor seemed to drop out from beneath me.
May you like
“The ledger,” I whispered. “The legendary Black Book my father searched for until his dying day.”
“It’s not a book,” Evelyn said, pointing a trembling finger toward Clara’s neck. “It’s an encrypted micro-drive. I hid it inside Clara’s christening locket fifteen years ago. Silvio has been tearing Chicago apart looking for it ever since.”
