Chapter 2 - The Silent House
The sub-basement of the Moretti estate smelled of damp limestone, motor oil, and gun powder.
It was a world away from the polished Carrara marble and crystal chandeliers three floors above. Here, beneath the foundations of the historic mansion on the Gold Coast, the walls were three feet thick, built during Prohibition to outlast federal raids and rival Tommy guns.
Vincent shoved me behind an industrial steel shelving unit stacked with heavy plastic totes and unboxed ammunition cases. His hand stayed clamped around my wrist, his thumb resting against my pulse point. He didn't need words to tell me what to do; every muscle in his towering frame radiated an unspoken command: Do not move. Do not breathe.
Above us, the heavy oak doors of the grand foyer detonated inward with a dull, hollow boom.
It wasn't a raid by the Chicago Police Department. There were no sirens, no megaphone warnings demanding surrender. There was only the muffled, rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack of suppressed automatic fire echoing down through the floor joists.
I clamped my hand over my mouth to stifle a whimper.
For twenty-three years, my world had been defined by small, predictable miseries. I knew the sting of my father’s backhand when the rent money was twenty dollars short. I knew the humiliation of scrubbing dried grease off the stoves of wealthy women who looked through me as if I were made of glass. I knew the sick, greasy laughter of my brother Tyler as he counted fifty crumpled bills on the kitchen table while two of Vincent Moretti's capos waited on our cracked front porch with an unmarked black sedan.
“Fifty bucks,” Tyler had sneered, pocketing the cash. “More than you’re worth, Emmy. At least this way, the Don doesn't break Dad's kneecaps.”
I had prepared myself to be beaten. I had prepared myself to be locked in an attic, used as a servant, or discarded in an alley when the feared boss grew bored of his collateral.
I had never prepared for this: the most dangerous man in the city shielding me with his own body, his white shirt soaked in his own blood, his weapon raised to defend a woman who had cost him less than the price of a tank of gas.
Through the gaps in the metal shelving, I watched the steel security door at the foot of the stairs.
A shadow moved against the light at the top of the landing.
Vincent didn't wait. He raised the Glock with two hands, his elbows locked, his breathing completely silent.
The door began to turn.
Crack. Crack.
Two rounds tore through the sheet metal of the door precisely three inches above the handle. A muffled grunt sounded from the stairs, followed by the heavy, tumbling thud of a human body rolling down the concrete steps. The man hit the landing with a wet clatter of tactical gear, his rifle clattering across the floor.
Vincent stepped out from behind the shelves, moving with the terrifying economy of a panther. He kicked the fallen rifle away, crouched over the intruder, and checked the man’s neck for a pulse.
There was none.
Vincent reached down, ripped off the dead man’s black balaclava, and froze.
The face beneath was young—barely twenty-five, with a fresh tattoo of a crowned viper coiled around an anchor inked into his neck.
I recognized that tattoo. I had seen it three days ago on the wrist of the young guard who delivered groceries to the back gate, the one who always smiled politely and called Vincent Uncle.
His nephew. Leo Moretti.
Vincent stared down at the boy's face for three seconds. The pain in his eyes was blinding, an ancient, cavernous agony that no gunshot could ever produce. He slowly reached down and closed the boy’s unseeing eyes.
Then he looked at me, pulled a small silver pocketknife from his boot, and approached the wall beside the electrical breaker.
He dug the tip of the blade into a hairline seam in the brickwork. A hidden latch clicked open with a hydraulic sigh, revealing a narrow, dust-choked tunnel cut into the ancient bedrock beneath the city.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his bloody leather notebook, and tore out a fresh page. He scrawled four words in sharp, jagged strokes:
May you like
They want the city.
He shoved the paper into my hand, pushed me into the mouth of the tunnel, and pulled the brick door shut behind us, plunging us into absolute, suffocating dark.
