Chapter 2 - THE SNAKE IN THE CELLAR
The room suspended itself in a heartbeat that felt three minutes long.
Vittorio’s fingers were three inches from the receiver of the 9mm when I moved.
I didn't draw my own weapon. I reached across the corner of the table with my right hand, my heavy, gold-ringed fingers wrapping around Vittorio’s throat like a hydraulic press closing on a piece of soft wood.
The impact slammed his head backward into the wood panelling behind his chair with a loud, hollow CRACK.
His crystal cognac glass fell from his left hand, shattering on the concrete floor, splashing amber liquid across his three-hundred-dollar trousers.
“Don't,” I whispered into his ear, my face three inches from his.
Beside us, Enzo and Tomas had drawn their weapons in a fraction of a second. Two black muzzles were now aimed directly at Vittorio’s forehead, the red laser sights painting two perfectly motionless dots between his frantic, wide eyes.
Elena screamed, throwing her hands over her ears and burying her small head into the cushion of the high-backed chair. Bruno let out a sharp, tiny bark, scrambling backward on the polished table until his rear end hit my leather-bound ledger.
“Boss...” Vittorio choked out, his hands clawing uselessly at my fingers, which were buried deep into the tissue beneath his jawline. “She’s... she’s lying... she’s a kid... she’s confused...”
I didn't loosen my grip. I turned my head slightly, keeping Vittorio pinned against the wall, and looked down at Elena.
“Elena,” I said, keeping my voice as calm and steady as a church bell, despite the fire roaring through my veins. “Look at me.”
The girl slowly peeked out from behind her small hands, her body shaking so hard the oversized cashmere coat was rustling like dry leaves.
“Is that the man who took your mother?” I asked, pointing with my chin at Vittorio’s purple, straining face.
“He... he didn't have the grey suit on,” she whimpered, her tears finally cutting clear tracks through the dirt on her pale cheeks. “He had a black coat. But he’s the one who stood by the door. He’s the one who told the snake-scar man to hurry up because 'the Don was waiting at the pawnshop.'”
The words hung in the warm air of the basement like toxic gas.
The Don was waiting at the pawnshop.
The entire setup unfolded in my mind with brutal, terrifying clarity.
Vittorio hadn't just gone off on his own to find Patrick O’Shea’s black book. He had orchestrated the entire timeline. He knew I was standing under the pawnshop awning on 4th and Mercer because he was the one who had informed me twenty minutes earlier that the dock shipment was compromised. He had sent me to that specific corner, knowing I would be standing there alone, exposed in the rain, waiting for a call that was never coming.
He had meant for the girl to find me. Or perhaps he had meant for the girl to be killed alongside her mother, leaving no witnesses while he used the Irish mob’s territory to cover his own treason.
I turned my full attention back to the man under my hand.
I eased the pressure on his windpipe just enough to allow air to rasp into his lungs.
“Vittorio,” I said softly. “You’ve worked for me for eleven years.”
“Boss...” he gasped, his chest heaving as air rushed back into his lungs. “Listen to me... please... it’s not what you think...”
“You know what I do to traitors,” I continued, my voice smooth, almost conversational. “You were standing right beside me in ’18 when we took care of the Marcone brothers in the meatpacking district. You helped hold the bucket.”
Vittorio’s eyes went completely wide with horror. A dark stain began to spread outward from the crotch of his tailored gray trousers, soaking into the fabric as his bladder failed him.
“I didn't... I didn't sell you out to the Irish!” he squealed, his intellectual, dignified composure completely evaporating into the pathetic terror of a dying animal. “It wasn't the Irish! I swear on my mother’s grave!”
“Then who?” I asked.
“Moretti!” Vittorio sobbed, his hands dropping from my arm to clasp together in a pathetic gesture of prayer. “Moretti offered me two million for the black book! He said if I got O’Shea’s widow to give up the key, he’d give me twenty percent of the port revenues once you were... once you were out of the picture!”
Frank Moretti.
The boss of the South Side family. A man who had signed a peace accord with me five years ago over the grave of his own brother.
My mind processed the tactical situation in less than three seconds.
Moretti was using Vittorio to grab Patrick O’Shea’s ledger. The ledger didn't just contain corrupt cops—it contained the banking codes for every offshore account my family used to launder our narcotics and extortion money through the Caribbean. If Moretti got that book, he didn't need to fight a war with me. He could freeze my assets, buy my lieutenants out from under me, and starve my territory into submission in less than a week.
And he was using an old grain elevator in the North District—Irish territory—as the staging ground, so that when my dead body was found, the evidence would point directly to the West End gang, sparking a bloody, destructive war between us while he sat back on the South Side and picked up the pieces.
It was a good plan. It was elegant.
It had only one flaw: an eight-year-old girl and a three-month-old puppy.
I looked at Enzo.
“Put Vittorio in the freezer,” I said flatly. “Tie him to the meat hooks. Don't touch him until I get back. If he tries to scream, use the duct tape from the kid’s shoes.”
“No! Boss! Please! Don't leave me in the cold! Don't leave me with Enzo!” Vittorio shrieked as Enzo grabbed him by the hair and dragged his two-thousand-dollar suit through the shattered glass and spilled cognac toward the back door of the basement.
The heavy steel door of the freezer slammed shut, cutting off Vittorio’s frantic screams into instant, dead silence.
The room was left with just me, young Tomas, Elena, and the puppy.
Tomas stood near the mahogany table, his face white, holding his weapon at his side. He was twenty-two years old, the nephew of my old captain, and had never seen an internal betrayal handled at this level.
“Boss?” Tomas asked, his voice shaking slightly. “What do we do about the girl?”
I walked over to the mahogany table.
I picked up the silver slide of the Sig Sauer, snapped it back onto the frame with a quick, practiced movement, racked a round into the chamber with a sharp CLACK, and engaged the safety. I tucked the weapon into my shoulder holster.
Then I reached down and lifted Elena off the high leather chair.
She was trembling worse than ever, her wide, terrified eyes fixed on the door where Enzo had just dragged Vittorio away.
“Elena,” I said softly, holding her close against my chest so she could feel the heavy, solid rhythm of my heart. “Look at me.”
She slowly turned her face toward mine.
“Is your mother still at the grain elevator?” I asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “The snake-scar man said they were going to wait until twelve o'clock. If the dark-coat man didn't come back with the key by twelve... they were going to put her in the concrete mixer.”
I pulled my pocket watch from my vest.
It was eleven-fifteen.
We had forty-five minutes before Frank Moretti’s men executed a widow in an abandoned grain facility six blocks away.
I looked down at the mahogany table. Bruno was sitting next to the open leather ledger, his tail giving two small, weak wags as he looked up at us.
I picked the puppy up with my left hand and slipped him back into the interior pocket of my heavy jacket, where he nestled against my chest, warm and completely quiet.
“Tomas,” I said, looking at the young enforcer.
“Yes, Boss?”
“Call the vanguard. Tell them to bring the heavy iron—suppressed submachine guns, body armor, thermal scopes. We aren't taking three cars. We’re taking the armored panel van.”
“Are we calling the Irish, Boss?” Tomas asked, his hand hovering over his phone. “Since it’s their territory?”
I looked down at Elena, whose pale cheeks were resting against the silk lining of my overcoat.
“No,” I said, my voice turning to pure slate. “If the Irish find out Moretti is operating in their district, they’ll bring forty men with shotguns and blow that grain elevator to hell before we can get the mother out. We do this ourselves. In and out. No noise. No survivors.”
May you like
I turned toward the steel meat-locker exit.
“Except for the snake-scar man,” I added, my eyes darkening as I thought of the man who had terrified a seven-year-old child in her own home. “Leave the snake-scar man for me.”
