Chapter 2 - THE DEAFENING SILENCE
The heavy steel door of the west exit clicked shut behind us, cutting off the jazz music and the hum of the dining room.
I stood in the dimly lit corridor. The air smelled of bleach and old grease.
Elena didn’t stop moving. Her cheap black work shoes made no sound on the concrete floor. She was already pushing through the next set of double swinging doors that led to the alley.
“Elena.”
I didn’t shout. I didn’t have to. The quiet authority in my voice had been enough to freeze grown men in their tracks for twenty years.
She stopped, her hand flat against the battered metal of the alley door. But she didn’t turn around.
“You said one minute,” I reminded her, closing the distance between us. “We have thirty seconds left. Talk.”
I looked back at the small reinforced glass window in the door we had just come through. Through the narrow slit, I could still see a sliver of the main dining room. I could see the edge of the table where my three most trusted men were sitting. And far in the distance, I could see the glowing red exit sign over the south doors.
Where Sarah was waiting.
“Mr. Moretti,” Elena said, her voice shaking slightly. “You need to walk out this door and keep moving. There’s a black sedan running at the end of the alley. The driver works for me.”
“You’re a waitress,” I said coldly. “You don’t have drivers.”
“Tonight I do.” Finally, she turned. Her face was pale, but her dark eyes were locked onto mine with a fierce, desperate intensity. “Please. You have to trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone who pulls me into a blind alley without a name and a reason,” I countered. “Now, what is happening at the south entrance?”
Elena swallowed hard. She looked at the cheap plastic watch on her wrist.
“Ten seconds.”
“Elena—”
“Look at her,” Elena interrupted, pointing a shaking finger back toward the glass window on the door. “Just look at her hands.”
I frowned, shifting my gaze back to the window. Through the gap, I could see Sarah. She was still standing by the south entrance. She looked beautiful in that black dress. The dress I had bought her for her birthday.
But I wasn’t looking at the dress anymore. I was looking at her hands.
She was holding her white clutch purse tight against her chest with her left hand. In her right hand, she held her phone.
Her thumb moved. She was typing a message.
And then, she did something that made the blood in my veins turn to ice.
She reached up to her neck and unclasped the heavy, antique gold locket she always wore. The locket that had belonged to my grandmother. I had given it to her on the day I asked her to move in with me. I had told her it was a shield. That as long as she wore it, every man in Chicago would know she was mine, and she would be perfectly safe.
She took it off. She dropped it into her purse.
And then she stepped out of the restaurant, into the street, letting the heavy glass doors swing shut behind her.
She was leaving.
Without me.
“Five seconds,” Elena whispered.
“Sarah,” I breathed, taking a step toward the door. My mind couldn't process it. My fiancée. The woman I was going to propose to tonight. She had just signaled someone. She had removed my family’s protection.
“Don't open that door!” Elena lunged forward, grabbing the sleeve of my suit jacket.
I shook her off effortlessly and reached for the handle. I had to get to Sarah. I had to know what she had just done.
My fingers brushed the cold metal of the handle.
Then the world ripped apart.
It didn’t sound like an explosion at first. It sounded like a massive, physical punch to the foundation of the building. The concrete floor beneath my feet violently bucked upward.
A split second later, the sound hit. A deafening, roaring thunderclap that shattered every piece of glass in the restaurant simultaneously.
The shockwave blasted through the corridor, blowing the heavy steel door entirely off its hinges. The metal slab slammed into my chest, throwing me backward like a ragdoll.
I hit the concrete floor hard, the breath driven from my lungs in a violent rush.
The lights flickered and died. Emergency sirens immediately began screaming, a piercing wail that cut through the ringing in my ears.
Smoke, thick and choking, billowed into the hallway, carrying the bitter, metallic scent of explosives and burning fabric.
I coughed, rolling onto my side, fighting through the blinding pain in my ribs.
The south entrance.
The blast had come from the south entrance. Right where I had been supposed to walk out. Right where Sarah had been standing less than ten seconds ago.
“Mr. Moretti!”
Hands were grabbing my shoulders, hauling me upright. It was Elena. Her face was smeared with gray dust, and a thin cut above her eyebrow was bleeding freely, but her eyes were wild with urgency.
“We have to go! Now!” she screamed over the sirens.
I stumbled to my feet, leaning heavily against the brick wall. I looked through the ruined doorway into the restaurant.
It was a nightmare of twisted metal, shattered wood, and roaring flames. The private table where I had been sitting was completely gone, buried under a collapsed section of the ceiling.
My men. They were gone.
If I hadn't followed this waitress... I would be under that rubble. Or I would have been walking out the south doors right when the bomb detonated.
“Sarah...” I choked out, pushing away from the wall. I had to go back. Even after what I saw, I had to know.
“She’s gone, Vincent!” Elena yelled, abandoning the formal title. She planted herself between me and the burning restaurant. “She knew! You saw her take off the necklace! She was the one who lured you to that door!”
“Get out of my way,” I growled, reaching for the holster inside my jacket.
Elena didn't flinch. Instead, she reached into the pocket of her cheap black apron.
She pulled out a small, tarnished silver object and shoved it hard against my chest.
“If you go back in there, they will finish the job,” she said fiercely. “And if you die tonight, then everything he died for twenty years ago was for nothing. Look at it!”
I looked down at the object pressed against my ruined shirt.
The breath caught in my throat. My heart, which had been pounding like a war drum, seemed to stop entirely.
It was a silver Zippo lighter. Deeply scratched. And engraved on the front were three initials.
F. A. M.
Franco Anthony Moretti.
My older brother.
He had been murdered twenty years ago in a warehouse by a rival family. I had been there. I had watched him fall. And I had watched the killer take this exact lighter from Franco's pocket as a trophy before leaving me for dead.
I hadn't seen this lighter in two decades.
I snapped my head up, staring at the young, bleeding waitress in front of me.
“Where did you get this?” my voice was a dangerous, trembling whisper.
Elena grabbed my hand, closing my fingers tightly around my dead brother's lighter.
“I'll tell you everything,” she promised, her voice breaking. “But only if we walk out that alley door right now. The men who planted that bomb are coming through the kitchen to check the bodies. If they find you breathing, we both die.”
A loud crash came from the kitchen area, followed by the heavy thud of combat boots on shattered glass. She was right. The cleanup crew was already here.
May you like
I looked at the lighter in my hand. Then at the burning ruins where my old life had just ended. And finally at the woman who had just blown my entire world wide open.
“Lead the way,” I said.
