Chapter 6 - THE VAULT
“Back away from the door!” Luca yelled, pushing me and Ben behind him. He raised his gun, aiming it squarely through the thick glass at Marcus’s face.
Marcus didn’t flinch. He simply held up a small, black remote detonator.
He pressed a button, and the bank’s intercom crackled to life.
“You can’t shoot through three inches of ballistic glass, Luca,” Marcus’s voice echoed through the vault speakers. “But I can certainly blow the hinges off this door. Slide the bus ticket under the air vent, and maybe I let you live.”
“Why do you want the ticket?” Luca demanded, keeping his gun raised. “It’s just a piece of paper!”
“It’s a locator,” I realized aloud, looking at the ticket in my hand. There was a handwritten address on the back of it. Pier 44, midnight. “It’s where Marco is supposed to meet my father for the extraction.”
Vanessa had kept Marco alive for two years, holding him in a secret location to use as leverage against the rival families. Now that Luca knew the truth, she needed to move Marco, or kill him, before Luca found him.
Ben tugged furiously on my sleeve. He pointed to the ceiling.
Air, he signed. It is getting hot.
I looked up. The ventilation grate was shut. Marcus had turned off the airflow to the vault. We had less than an hour of breathable air in here.
“I’m not giving you my brother’s location,” Luca growled into the speaker.
“Then suffocate,” Marcus replied, stepping away from the glass.
The lights in the vault abruptly cut out. We were plunged into total, suffocating darkness.
Ben whimpered in the pitch black. I dropped to my knees, finding him by touch, and pulled him into my lap. I placed his hands on my chest so he could feel my breathing, a grounding technique my mother used with me when the lights went out during storms.
“Emily,” Luca’s voice came from the darkness. “Do you have your phone?”
“No,” I said. “I left it in my apron at the house.”
“Mine has no signal in this steel box,” Luca muttered. I heard the metallic click of a flashlight, and a narrow beam of light cut through the dark. Luca had attached it to the barrel of his gun.
He shined it on the heavy steel door. Then, he shined it on the safety deposit boxes lining the walls.
“My father’s letter,” I said, holding it up into the beam of light. “There has to be a reason he kept the cash in the box too. Fifty thousand dollars is exactly the amount Vanessa forged in that ledger.”
“Arthur was smart,” Luca said, reading the letter over my shoulder. “He kept the cash Marco originally offered him to prove he never spent it. He kept it as evidence.”
Ben’s hands moved against my chest. He was signing in the dark, hoping I could feel the shapes.
F - I - R - E.
“Fire?” I asked aloud.
Alarm, Ben spelled out against my collarbone.
I looked at Luca. “Ben is saying fire alarm. If we trigger the smoke detectors in the vault, the bank’s automated emergency system will override the electronic locks and open the door to let the fire suppression gas in.”
“It’s a risk,” Luca said. “If the door opens, Marcus will be waiting on the other side with a gun.”
“We’ll die if we stay in here,” I said.
Luca nodded. He took the manila envelope, placed it on the metal viewing table, and pulled a silver lighter from his pocket.
He lit the envelope. The paper caught instantly, burning bright yellow in the dark. We held it up to the ceiling grate.
Ten agonizing seconds passed.
Then, a deafening siren began to blare. Red emergency lights strobed inside the vault.
With a heavy, pneumatic hiss, the massive steel door automatically popped open two inches.
Luca kicked the door outward with a savage grunt.
It swung wide.
Marcus was standing there, raising a shotgun.
But Luca was faster. He didn't shoot to kill; he fired twice into Marcus's knees.
Marcus screamed, collapsing onto the marble floor of the basement.
Luca kicked the shotgun away and grabbed Marcus by the throat.
“Where is Vanessa?” Luca roared over the sirens.
Marcus spat blood onto the floor. “She’s at Pier 44. She’s putting your brother in a shipping container right now. By the time you get there, Marco will be halfway across the Atlantic.”
Luca dropped him. He turned to me. “We go now.”
May you like
We sprinted out of the bank and into the freezing Chicago night, the sirens wailing behind us. My father’s bus ticket was clutched tightly in my fist.
We were going to finish what my father started.
