Chapter 6 - THE WATER AND THE FIRE
"Hey, Dominic!" Evelyn screamed.
Her voice tore through the echoing concrete garage, sharp and desperate. On the balcony above, Dominic paused, looking down at the waitress with mild amusement.
"Is this the new girl, Enzo?" Dominic sneered. "A bit loud for your taste, isn't she?"
Evelyn didn’t wait for his banter. She didn't wait for Lorenzo to make a tactical move.
She sprinted.
She abandoned the cover of the sedan and threw herself toward the wall, her boots slipping on the slick, gasoline-coated floor.
"Evelyn, stop!" Lorenzo yelled.
Dominic raised his weapon. But he didn't shoot. Instead, he pulled a silver Zippo lighter from his pocket—an arrogant, dramatic flair. He sparked the flame.
"Bad choice, sweetheart," Dominic laughed. He tossed the burning lighter over the railing.
Evelyn lunged. She hit the wall hard, her shoulder absorbing the impact. She grabbed the heavy red fire extinguisher mounted beside the emergency sprinkler glass.
The lighter hit the ground.
The gasoline ignited with a deafening whoosh, a wall of blue and orange flame roaring to life between Lorenzo and the exit.
In the same fraction of a second, Evelyn swung the heavy bottom of the extinguisher directly into the glass panel covering the sprinkler release. The glass shattered. She yanked the heavy iron lever down with all her weight.
A mechanized groan echoed through the ceiling.
Then, a torrential downpour of chemical foam and freezing water erupted from the ceiling vents.
The garage instantly filled with blinding white mist and the roar of pressurized water. The sudden deluge slammed into the rising flames, choking them into hissing, toxic black smoke.
"Move!" Lorenzo roared through the fog.
The water ruined Dominic’s visibility. Gunfire erupted blindly from the balcony, bullets sparking against the concrete floor.
Evelyn scrambled through the foam, grabbing Leo’s hand. Lorenzo was right beside them. "The maintenance stairs!" he shouted, pointing to a heavy steel door marked Authorized Personnel Only.
Lorenzo fired three shots up toward the balcony to keep Dominic pinned, then kicked the maintenance door open.
They piled into the narrow, pitch-black stairwell, the heavy door slamming shut behind them and cutting off the roar of the sprinklers.
They stood in the dark, gasping for air, soaked to the bone in freezing water and smelling of chemical foam and gasoline.
"Are you insane?" Lorenzo snapped, his chest heaving as he glared at Evelyn in the dim emergency light. "You could have been burned alive!"
"You're welcome," Evelyn shot back, swiping wet hair out of her eyes. She knelt down to check on Leo. The boy was shivering violently, but he nodded bravely when she squeezed his hand.
"We need to get to my apartment," Evelyn said, standing up and pulling the crumpled hardware store receipt from her wet pocket. She held it out to Lorenzo. "Leo found this at your safehouse. It dropped out of Marcus's killer's pocket."
Lorenzo took the damp paper. His eyes hardened as he read the Cicero address.
"They’re searching your place," Lorenzo said. "Why?"
"Because my father didn't just leave that ledger," Evelyn said, her voice dropping to a fierce whisper. "He left a cipher. A small black notebook. He used to hide it in the apartment. I thought it was just gambling debts, so I never threw it away. If Celeste finds it, she can decode the shadow accounts and erase her family’s involvement entirely."
"We can't go to Cicero," Lorenzo argued. "It's a trap. Dominic just proved they're ahead of us."
"We don't have a choice!" Evelyn pressed, stepping closer. The fear was gone, replaced by a desperate need to clear her father’s name. "If she burns that notebook, you can never prove she ordered the hit on your sister. You’ll be a dead man, and she’ll take everything."
Lorenzo stared at her. He looked at the receipt, then at his nephew, and finally at Evelyn.
"Do you have a car stashed somewhere?" Lorenzo asked. "Because Dominic just blew ours up."
"Better," Evelyn said grimly. "We’re two blocks from the Blue Line. Nobody looks for a dead mafia boss on public transit at three in the morning."
They slipped out the back alley door of the stairwell, vanishing into the freezing, empty streets of the Loop.
They kept to the alleys, moving fast. The adrenaline kept the cold at bay, but Evelyn knew Leo couldn't run much longer.
They reached the underground subway station. It was deserted, save for a sleeping homeless man and a flickering fluorescent light. They paid in cash, slipping through the turnstiles and boarding the rattling, empty train car headed west.
They sat in the corner. Lorenzo kept his right hand inside his coat, resting on his gun. Leo curled into Evelyn’s side, exhausted, his eyes slipping shut.
For a long moment, the only sound was the rhythmic clatter of the train on the tracks.
Lorenzo looked at Evelyn. The anger from the bank vault had settled into a wary respect.
"You didn't flinch," he said quietly. "When the fire started."
"I grew up in a house where the rent was always late and men came knocking at midnight," Evelyn said, staring at her own reflection in the dark train window. "You learn not to flinch."
Lorenzo reached into his pocket and pulled out her father’s silver Zippo. He placed it gently on the seat between them.
"If we find the notebook," Lorenzo said, "and it proves your father was complicit... I have to make it public to take down Celeste. It will destroy his memory."
"I know," Evelyn whispered, picking up the lighter. Her thumb brushed the engraved initials. "But I need the truth."
The train screeched to a halt at the Cicero station.
They climbed the concrete stairs up to the street level. The neighborhood was dead quiet. Broken streetlights cast long, jagged shadows across the snow-dusted pavement.
Evelyn led them down the block to her crumbling brick apartment building.
They stopped in the alley. Evelyn looked up at her fourth-floor window.
The lights were off.
But the front door of the building, which always stuck and required a heavy pull upward to lock, was swinging slightly in the wind. The lock was shattered.
"They're inside," Lorenzo whispered, pulling his gun.
"Let them be," Evelyn said, her voice terrifyingly steady. She didn't look at the front door. Instead, she walked to the rusted fire escape ladder hanging down into the alley.
"What are you doing?" Lorenzo hissed.
"They're searching my apartment," Evelyn said, gripping the icy iron rung. "But my father was paranoid. He never hid the real secrets where we slept."
She pointed to the basement window, heavily barred and caked in decades of grime.
"He hid them where the building’s heat comes from. The boiler room."
She knelt by the window, feeling along the edge of the brick until she found a loose stone. She pulled it out, revealing a rusted hidden key.
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But as she reached for the padlock on the grate, a cold, hard circle of steel pressed against the back of her neck.
"I always hated this neighborhood," Celeste Vane’s voice purred from the shadows. "Too dirty."
