Chapter 4 - THE RAT PACK AT CICERO
The Cicero Rail Terminal was a rusted graveyard of neglected freight cars, overgrown tracks, and derelict locomotive barns that had sat abandoned since the collapse of the steel industry. Rain mixed with sleet, turning the gravel into thick, treacherous mud that swallowed the boots of fifty heavily armed men.
Inside the central repair barn, kerosene heaters roared, casting flickering orange shadows across the graffiti-strewn walls.
Arthur Sterling sat on an overturned wooden crate, clutching his ribs, his immaculate bespoke suit torn and spattered with mud from the ambush that had broken him out of federal custody. Across from him stood Evelyn, her broken wrist crudely splinted with duct tape and cardboard, her eyes manic, her hair wild.
Standing between them was Don Salvatore Moretti. Sixty years old, thick-chested, with a scarred throat and eyes that had watched a hundred men die, Moretti puffed on an unlit cigar, his heavy trench coat open to reveal a tactical vest and an automatic submachine gun.
"Your daughter is a fool, Arthur," Moretti growled, his gravelly voice echoing in the barn. "She promised me the Romano shipping ports on a silver platter. Now my bank accounts are flagged by Interpol, my safe houses in Detroit are being raided by state troopers, and we're hiding in a sewer like cornered rats."
"We still have the offshore routing keys to the secondary accounts," Arthur gasped, coughing wetly. "Three hundred million in liquid bearer bonds. If we get to the airfield in Gary, we can be in South America before sunrise!"
"You aren't going anywhere, Sterling," Moretti spat. "Not until I have Vincent Romano’s head on a spike. That arrogant kid took everything my family built in this city. If I’m going down, he’s going down with me."
"He's coming," Evelyn hissed, peering through a crack in the boarded-up window. "I know how his mind works. He won't let us leave the state. He'll come to finish it."
"Let him come," Moretti laughed, a dry, rattling sound. "I’ve got forty men with military-grade hardware spread across the yard. Every approach is zeroed in. The moment his convoy enters the gates, we blow the transformers and bury them in crossfire."
A sudden sound cut through the roar of the kerosene heaters.
A low, rhythmic rumble that shook the concrete floor.
It wasn't the sound of approaching sedans.
It was the terrifying, iron screech of a two-hundred-ton freight locomotive moving along the supposedly dead southern line.
Moretti froze. "What the hell is that?"
Outside, through the sleet, a monstrous black freight engine came barreling down the spur line at fifty miles an hour. It had no headlights, no warning horn, running totally silent until it smashed through the rusted chain-link gates with an apocalyptic roar.
The locomotive didn't stop. It plowed directly into the perimeter barricades, crushing three of Moretti’s armored SUVs like aluminum soda cans, sending twisted metal and fiery sparks soaring fifty feet into the night sky.
"Ambush!" Moretti’s lieutenants screamed, opening fire on the iron beast.
Dozens of assault rifles opened up, their muzzle flashes illuminating the darkness, but the heavy steel plate of the industrial train shrugged off the bullets like hail.
Then, from the shadows behind the rail cars, the real strike began.
Vincent had not come through the front gates. He had utilized the abandoned subterranean coal tunnels that ran beneath the entire Cicero complex—tunnels mapped by his grandfather during Prohibition that the Sterlings never knew existed.
Dozens of Romano family soldiers, dressed in black tactical gear and moving with lethal, disciplined coordination, emerged behind Moretti’s perimeter lines. The crossfire was sudden, overwhelming, and absolute.
Within three minutes, the outer yard went completely silent, save for the crackle of burning vehicle wreckage and the hiss of escaping steam from the locomotive.
The heavy steel doors of the repair barn shuddered under the impact of a hydraulic ram.
BOOM.
The hinges groaned.
BOOM.
The iron bolts sheared in two, and the doors crashed inward, sending a shockwave of dust and sleet across the floor.
Vincent Romano stepped through the smoke.
He wore no helmet, no body armor. He walked into the barn with absolute, terrifying calm, a heavy automatic pistol resting at his side. Flanking him were twenty men, their weapons trained with lethal precision on the remnants of the Sterling-Moretti faction.
Arthur Sterling shrank back into the shadows, shaking violently. Evelyn fell to her knees, staring at Vincent with hollow, disbelieving eyes.
Salvatore Moretti stood his ground, raising his submachine gun with a roar of defiance.
Vincent didn't flinch. He didn't dive for cover.
In one fluid, blindingly fast motion, Vincent raised his sidearm and fired twice.
The bullets struck Moretti with pin-point accuracy, driving the old mob boss backward into an iron workbench. Moretti’s weapon clattered to the floor, his hands clawing weakly at the air before he collapsed into the grease, his eyes staring blankly at the rusted ceiling.
The surviving Detroit mercenaries instantly threw down their weapons, raising their hands in total surrender.
Vincent walked slowly across the barn, his boots clicking rhythmically against the concrete until he stopped two feet from Evelyn and her father.
Arthur looked up, tears of pathetic terror streaming down his wrinkled face. "Vincent... please. We were family. Your father and I—"
"My father would have had you fed to the pigs twenty years ago," Vincent said calmly. "I was more generous. I let you sign your own death warrant with the Department of Justice."
He looked down at Evelyn.
She looked broken, the designer clothes torn, her face smeared with soot, the diamond engagement ring lying bent and cracked against the concrete where she had dropped it.
"Shoot me," she whispered, her voice cracked with despair and bitter venom. "Do it, Vincent. That’s what you do, isn't it? You're a monster."
Vincent looked down at her with nothing more than cold, absolute pity.
"Shooting you would be an act of mercy, Evelyn," Vincent said quietly. "And you don't deserve mercy."
He turned to Leo, who stepped forward with a satchel of zip-ties.
"Leave them for the federal marshals," Vincent ordered. "Let the public see Arthur Sterling in orange jumpsuits. Let Evelyn spend the next forty years in a federal penitentiary in West Virginia, scrubbing kitchen floors for eight cents an hour."
Vincent turned his back on them, walking toward the shattered entrance.
May you like
"Vincent! Come back here!" Evelyn shrieked, her voice echoing pathetically off the cold steel girders as the sirens of dozens of approaching law enforcement vehicles began to wail in the distance. "Vincent!"
He never looked back.
