Chapter 2 - The Shadow over the Steps
The rain had turned into a thick, freezing fog by the time my grey sedan pulled up to the curb half a block away from Rosa’s sister’s apartment building.
It was an old three-story brick structure with rusting fire escapes and a single flickering yellow streetlight at the entrance.
"Stay in the car," I ordered, turning off the headlights and pulling the parking brake. "Keep the engine running. If you hear shots, you drive straight to the precinct on 4th Street."
"Victor, no," Rosa pleaded, grabbing my forearm. Her grip was surprisingly strong. "My girls are inside! Sofia, Maya, Elena, Chloe—they're upstairs!"
"I know," I said, meeting her panicked gaze. "That's why I'm going in alone. Falcone’s men don't want a scene in the street yet. They want leverage. They want to hold those girls so I have to walk into their slaughterhouse on my knees."
I pulled a low-profile, black semi-automatic pistol from beneath the custom holster under my arm—a weapon I had prayed I would never have to touch again. I checked the slide with a clean, practiced flick of my thumb.
Rosa’s breath hitched at the sight of the gun, but she didn't shrink away.
"Bring my daughters down to me, Victor," she whispered, her voice cracking with an unbearable maternal terror. "Please."
"On my life," I promised.
I stepped out of the sedan, closing the door quietly, and melted into the shadows along the brick wall.
The front entrance door to the building had been jimmied open; the brass latch was bent, scraped raw by a crowbar. I slipped inside without making a sound, my rubber-soled boots catching the wet floorboards.
The stairwell smelled of old cabbage, damp radiator heat, and cheap cigar smoke.
Cigar smoke.
Vincent Falcone’s personal enforcers—the ones he sent when he wanted a message delivered in blood—smoked imported Dutch cigars.
I climbed the stairs two at a time, moving like a ghost. When I reached the second-floor landing, I saw the light flickering beneath the crack of apartment 2B. The door was slightly ajar.
I pressed my back against the wall next to the frame, listening.
"...tell your uncle Victor to come upstairs if he wants to see you finish your homework, little girl," a raspy, gravelly voice sneered from inside.
It was Paulie "The Hammer" Rizzio—Falcone’s chief lieutenant.
"He's not our uncle," nine-year-old Chloe’s voice rang out, remarkably firm, despite a clear tremor of fear. "He's just a man who came to our lunch!"
"Shut your mouth!" a rough slap echoed through the apartment, followed by a small, stifled cry from one of the younger girls.
A cold, white-hot fury erupted inside my skull, overriding every instinct of self-preservation I possessed.
I didn't kick the door open. I smashed through it shoulder-first.
The wooden frame splintered into a dozen pieces. Before the three men inside could even turn their heads, I brought the butt of my heavy steel pistol down onto the temple of the nearest guard. He dropped to the floor like a sack of wet cement.
"What the—!" Paulie yelled, reaching for his shoulder holster.
I stepped inside his guard, grabbing his wrist, twisting it upward until the bone snapped with a wet crack. He let out a strangled scream as I slammed him face-first into the kitchen table, pinning his neck with my forearm.
The third man raised a short-barreled shotgun, but seven-year-old Maya—the little girl who had called me quiet at the school lunch—screamed and knocked a heavy plastic chair against his shin.
It gave me the fraction of a second I needed.
I raised my piece and fired once. The heavy caliber round struck the third guard squarely in the shoulder, throwing him backward into the hallway wall.
Silence descended on the apartment, broken only by the heavy panting of the four sisters huddled in the corner beneath a blanket, and Paulie groaning under my elbow.
May you like
I leaned down until my lips were an inch from Paulie’s ear.
"Tell Vincent," I growled, my voice vibrating with a terrifying, unyielding rage, "that if his men ever look at these children again, I won't just leave his family... I will bury it."
