Chapter 5 - THE SINS OF THE FATHER
"No."
Evelyn backed away from the steel table, shaking her head. "No, you’re lying. My father was a bookkeeper. He took bets. He didn't order murders."
"The numbers don't lie, Evelyn," Lorenzo said, his voice terrifyingly calm. He spun the ledger around, tapping a specific column. "Three years ago. The exact date my sister was killed in a hit-and-run. A payout of fifty thousand dollars was authorized from a shadow account. The authorizing signature is T.E.C."
Evelyn stared at the familiar, messy scrawl of her father’s initials.
Her chest tightened so painfully she thought her ribs might crack. "He wouldn't. He loved me. He wouldn't leave a child without a mother."
She looked down at Leo, who was sitting quietly on a leather chair in the corner of the vault, swinging his legs. The boy who was motherless. Because of her father?
"People do desperate things when they owe the kind of money your father owed," Lorenzo said, his jaw locked. "Celeste’s father held his debts. He probably gave Tom a choice: authorize the hit to frame a rival family, or die."
"You said it yourself!" Evelyn shouted, her voice echoing off the vault walls. "The Vanes forced him! He was a pawn!"
Lorenzo closed the ledger with a sharp snap. The sound was like a gunshot.
"A pawn who signed my sister’s death warrant," Lorenzo said coldly. He grabbed the ledger and shoved it into his duffel bag.
For a terrifying second, Evelyn thought he was going to pull his gun. The air between them fractured. The fragile alliance they had built over the last two hours was gone, replaced by the bitter, bloody history of Chicago.
"So what now?" Evelyn challenged, lifting her chin despite the tears threatening to spill. "You shoot me in a bank vault? Leave me here?"
Lorenzo stared at her. The anger in his eyes warred with something else. Exhaustion. Grief.
"No," he finally said. "I owe you my life for tonight. That makes us even. But the second we leave this bank, you walk away. Take the Cicero train. Disappear."
He turned and walked toward the vault door, Leo trailing behind him.
Evelyn stood frozen for a moment. Then, anger—hot and fierce—ignited in her chest. She marched after them, catching the heavy steel door before it swung shut.
"I'm not going anywhere," she snapped, matching his pace down the dim hallway.
"I told you to leave, Evelyn."
"And go where?!" she demanded, stepping in front of him and forcing him to stop. "My face is on the security cameras at the Obsidian! By morning, Celeste will know I slipped you that note. If I go back to my apartment, I’m dead. If I go to the police, they hand me to her. You are the only person who can destroy her."
"This isn't your fight anymore."
"It became my fight the second I realized she murdered my father to cover up her family's crimes!" Evelyn poked him hard in the chest. "My father was weak. But he wasn't a monster. If he signed that ledger, he left proof behind to expose them. I know how he thought. There's a missing piece. A key to decipher the shadow accounts."
Lorenzo looked down at her. "And you know where it is?"
"Yes," Evelyn lied. She had no idea. But she knew she had to stay with him.
Before Lorenzo could respond, the screech of tires echoed from the alley outside.
Through the frosted glass of the bank’s rear exit, harsh white headlights illuminated the hallway. Shadows moved against the glass. Four men. Heavy rifles.
Arthur, the bank manager, hadn't just called Lorenzo. He had called the Vanes.
"Get down!" Lorenzo roared.
He tackled Evelyn and Leo to the marble floor just as automatic gunfire shattered the back doors. Glass rained down on them like deadly hail.
Lorenzo pulled his pistol, firing blindly toward the exit to keep the men back. "The garage!" he shouted over the deafening noise. "Move!"
They crawled behind the teller counters, glass crunching under their knees. They reached the side door leading to the bank's attached parking structure. Lorenzo kicked it open, pushing Leo and Evelyn through.
The garage was cold and cavernous. They sprinted toward Lorenzo’s sedan, parked fifty feet away.
Suddenly, a massive metal roll-down door at the far end of the garage slammed shut with a booming crash.
Then, the door behind them locked with an electronic heavy thud.
They were trapped.
Lorenzo grabbed the door handle of the sedan, but a sharp voice echoed through the concrete space.
"I wouldn't start that car, Lorenzo."
They froze.
Standing on the second-level landing, looking down at them, was a man in a tailored trench coat. It was Dominic, Lorenzo’s supposedly loyal caporegime. The man who had been laughing with Celeste at the restaurant table.
"Dominic," Lorenzo growled, aiming his gun upward. "You sold me out."
"Celeste pays better," Dominic said smoothly, lighting a cigarette. He flicked the match over the railing.
It landed on the concrete floor.
Evelyn smelled it before she saw it.
Gasoline.
A thick, dark puddle was slowly creeping across the sloped floor of the garage, pooling directly beneath their sedan. The match hissed out just inches from the edge.
"That was a warning," Dominic smiled. "The next match goes in the puddle. Toss the ledger up here, Enzo. And I'll make it quick."
Lorenzo pulled Leo behind him, his gun unwavering. But they were trapped in a concrete box, standing over a bomb.
Evelyn’s eyes darted frantically around the garage. She saw the heavy metal chain controlling the emergency sprinkler system locked behind a glass panel ten feet away.
Then, she felt a tiny hand tugging on her coat pocket.
She looked down. Leo was holding out a crumpled, greasy piece of paper.
"The bad man at the apartment dropped this," Leo whispered.
Evelyn took it. It was a receipt from a hardware store. But it wasn't the items that made her blood run cold.
It was the delivery address printed at the bottom.
Apartment 4B. 1190 South Laramie, Cicero.
May you like
Her apartment.
They weren't just hunting Lorenzo. They were already tearing apart her home.
