Chapter 6 - THE DARK INHERITANCE
Emily couldn't breathe. The coppery scent of blood filled the narrow ventilation shaft, pressing in on her from all sides.
"Emmy," her mother wheezed in the dark, clutching Emily’s arm with surprising strength. "We have to keep moving."
They crawled downward through the suffocating darkness, every scrape of metal echoing like a gunshot in Emily's ears. The heavy brass key Vincent had given her felt like a burning coal in her palm. He was dead. The invincible king had fallen in her cheap, linoleum-floored living room, bleeding out for a family he barely knew.
They finally hit the basement floor. Emily fumbled blindly in the dark, finding the heavy metal utility door. She shoved the brass key into the lock. It clicked heavily, and the door swung open, spilling cold, biting winter air into the basement.
They stumbled out into the desolate alleyway. It was completely deserted.
"Where do we go?" Helen panted, leaning heavily against the brick wall. "They’ll be watching the hospitals. They’ll watch the diner."
Emily closed her fist around the key. The fear that had briefly paralyzed her in the shaft burned away, replaced by a cold, searing clarity. Vincent hadn't just given her a key to a basement door.
The brass key had a small tag attached to it. She held it up to the dim glow of the streetlight. It read: Locker 42, Union Station.
"We're going to the train station," Emily said, throwing her mother's arm over her shoulder.
It took them an agonizing hour to cross the city, sticking to the shadows of the rusted overpasses and dodging police cruisers that wailed toward their neighborhood.
Union Station was a massive, echoing cavern of marble and dirty glass at this hour. Emily guided her mother to a wooden bench near the ticket counters, then ran toward the banks of rusted lockers in the lower concourse.
She found Locker 42. Her hands shook violently as she pushed the key in and turned.
The locker sprang open. Inside sat a heavy, black leather duffel bag.
Emily unzipped it. It was completely full of banded, crisp hundred-dollar bills. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Enough to disappear forever. Enough to buy her mother a new life in any hospital in the world.
But sitting on top of the money was a small, worn, leather-bound ledger.
Emily pulled it out. She opened the cover. The pages were filled with meticulously handwritten notes. Names, dates, bank account numbers, payoffs to judges, dirty cops, and politicians. It was the complete, uncensored anatomy of Vincent Moretti's empire.
And on the very last page, written in fresh, bold ink, was a single sentence:
For Emily. Burn the empire down.
Suddenly, a massive hand clamped down over Emily's shoulder from behind, the fingers digging brutally into her collarbone.
"That's a very dangerous book for a little waitress to be holding," a slick, oily voice whispered in her ear.
May you like
Emily’s blood froze. She slowly turned her head.
Standing behind her, flanked by three enormous, heavily armed men, was Silas. And in his left hand, he was holding her mother’s rosary beads.
