Chapter 4 - The Fire and the Vow
The threats weren't empty.
On Thursday night, at two in the morning, the smell of gasoline woke me from a deep sleep in our small apartment above the diner.
I sat up in the dark, my heart hammering against my ribs. Smoke—thick, black, and smelling of burnt rubber—was oozing through the floorboards near my closet.
"Nana!" I screamed, tearing off my blankets.
The hallway was already filled with a choking grey haze. Downstairs, the sharp crackle of wood eating fuel echoed through the floor. The O'Malley crew hadn't waited for Friday.
I burst into Nana’s room. She was struggling to sit up, coughing violently as the heavy fumes filled her lungs. She was sixty-eight, her knees stiff with arthritis, and the panic in her eyes was terrible to see.
"Elena... get out!" she gasped, pointing toward the fire escape. "Go!"
"Not without you!" I grabbed her arm, hitching her weight over my shoulder. We stumbled through the kitchen, the floor beneath us growing hotter with every second. By the time we reached the rear escape, flames were already licking up the sides of the wooden staircase.
I hauled her down the iron rungs as the glass windows of The Blue Anchor exploded outward behind us, sending a shower of orange sparks into the freezing night sky.
We collapsed onto the wet alley asphalt, watching our entire life burn. Five years of hard work, my father’s leftover tools, Nana’s hand-written recipe books—all of it turned into ash in twenty minutes.
Neighbors gathered at the mouth of the alley, their faces illuminated by the towering blaze. Sirens wailed in the distance, but in this part of Chicago, the fire trucks always took twenty minutes longer to arrive than they did in the high-rises along the lake.
As I sat there in the slush, wrapping my coat around my shivering grandmother, a large black Mercedes SUV pulled to a stop at the end of the alley, blocking out the light of the fire engine that had finally arrived.
The rear door opened.
Mikhail Volkov stepped out. He didn't wear a firefighter's coat or a police badge. He wore a long, bespoke charcoal coat, his face as unreadable as the iron seal on his coin. Beside him stood two large men with silent, watchful eyes.
He walked down the alley, his polished shoes stepping through the oily puddle where Nana and I sat.
He didn't look at the burning building. He looked down at me.
"I told you that you were family," Mikhail said, his deep voice carrying over the crackle of the flames and the wail of distant sirens. "Family does not sleep on the street."
He reached down, offering his hand to my grandmother first, then to me. His grip was steady, dry, and cold as iron.
May you like
"Who did this?" I asked, my voice choked with ash and tears as I looked up at him. "Was it the men who came to the alley?"
Mikhail looked at the flames reflecting in his grey eyes. "It does not matter who started it, child," he said softly. "It only matters who finishes it. Get in the car."
