Chapter 7 - The Calumet Yards
The Calumet industrial rail corridor was a graveyard of rusted boxcars, towering floodlight towers, and stagnant black water reflecting the gray smog of southern Chicago.
It was eleven-forty-five when our convoy of five black Suburbans slipped through the abandoned freight entrance off Torrence Avenue. The rain had turned into a freezing, sleeting drizzle that coated the metal rails in a skin of translucent ice.
I sat in the middle row of Luca’s reinforced vehicle, wearing a heavy, fur-lined black parka over my sweater. Beside me, my cane rested against the leather seat, but my hand never left the gold locket resting beneath my collar.
In the front passenger seat, Luca sat in silence, checking the chamber of an automatic pistol with mechanical, rhythmic precision. He had stripped off his suit jacket, wearing a tactical black vest over his dark sweater, his jaw set in stone.
"Perimeter status, Daniel?" Luca asked without looking up.
"Thermal imaging shows eight heat signatures inside Warehouse Four," Daniel replied through the encrypted headset from the driver's seat. "Two vehicles parked by the central loading dock. One female subject matching Hannah Walsh’s profile is seated near the locomotive pit, guarded by two armed men. Vanessa Bellini is pacing the upper catwalk."
Luca clicked the magazine into place with a sharp, metallic clack.
"No suppressed fire tonight," Luca commanded, his voice vibrating through the quiet cabin like thunder. "When we breach, I want the entire district to hear what happens to people who threaten this family."
He turned in his seat, looking back at me.
In the dim amber light of the dashboard, his gray eyes were dark pools of ancient, lethal certainty. He reached across the console, his gloved hand reaching out to gently cup the side of my face, his thumb brushing against my cold cheek.
"Stay inside this truck, Lauren," Luca whispered, his voice dropping into a tone that was terrifyingly tender. "The doors are magnetically deadbolted. The glass can stop a fifty-caliber round. Daniel will stay with you."
"Luca... please be careful," I choked out, my fingers instinctively reaching up to clutch his wrist through the heavy fabric of his glove. "She’s lost her mind. She has nothing left to lose."
Luca leaned closer, his forehead resting lightly against mine for a fraction of a second, his breath warm against my trembling lips.
"I have everything to lose," he murmured. "And that makes me infinitely more dangerous."
He pulled back, kicked his heavy door open, and stepped out into the freezing sleet.
Through the tinted, rain-streaked window, I watched him walk into the darkness.
He didn't run. He didn't take cover. He walked down the center of the rail tracks with that slow, measured, predatory stride that commanded every inch of earth he touched. Behind him, twelve men in dark tactical gear fanned out into the shadows between the rusted boxcars, moving like wraiths through the mist.
A massive floodlight on the roof of Warehouse Four suddenly snapped on, bathing the rail tracks in a blinding, harsh white glare.
"Luca Moretti!" Vanessa’s voice shrieked through an industrial megaphone from the catwalk above the loading bay.
I leaned forward against the ballistic glass, my heart hammering like a trapped bird against my ribs.
Vanessa stood on the rusted iron catwalk fifty feet in the air, wearing a stained white wool trench coat, her dark hair wild and unkempt, whipping violently in the freezing lake wind. In her right hand, she held a compact silver revolver, pointed straight down at the concrete floor where Hannah Walsh sat tied to a wooden chair beside an open locomotive maintenance pit.
"Did you bring the little maid, Luca?" Vanessa screamed, her voice cracking with hysterical, unhinged laughter. "Did you bring the girl who ruined my wedding? Or did you think you could walk into my father's yard without paying the toll?"
Luca stopped twenty paces from the open bay doors, standing directly beneath the glare of the floodlight.
"Let the girl go, Vanessa," Luca said. He didn't shout. His voice was carried through the acoustic cavern of the warehouse with chilling clarity. "Your father has already signed over the western docks to the Commission to pay for your legal defense. You have no cards left to play."
"My father is a coward!" she shrieked, leaning over the rusted railing, her eyes bulging with manic, drug-fueled fury. "He sold me out! He thinks he can send me to an estate in Sicily while you marry that pathetic little peasant from the basement! I know why you gave her your mother’s locket, Luca! I have eyes in that house!"
My stomach plummeted into an icy void. She knew about the locket.
"If I can't have the Moretti name," Vanessa snarled, swinging the revolver down until the barrel was pointed directly at Hannah’s swollen stomach, "then no one will!"
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BANG.
A shot rang out through the freezing night.
