Chapter 14 - The Reckoning of Dominic Costa
The rain had turned into a howling blizzard by three in the morning, blinding the sodium streetlamps along the edge of Navy Pier.
Warehouse Nine sat at the very tip of the concrete spit, its corrugated iron walls groaning against the freezing gale coming off Lake Michigan.
Inside, the vast cavern of rusted steel and rotted timber was illuminated by the yellow headlights of Dominic Costa’s armored limousine.
Costa stood near an open trapdoor in the concrete floor, his men hauling up heavy steel strongboxes filled with bearer bonds and gold bullion.
His face was bandaged where Mateo’s cane had crushed his nose, his breath coming in ragged, nervous bursts of white vapor.
“Hurry up!” Costa barked, kicking a young soldier who was struggling with a heavy iron lockbox.
“The coast guard cutter will be at the mouth of the harbor in twenty minutes!”
“If we aren't past the breakwater before the Vitiello scouts find this place, you all swim to Canada!”
A sudden, low metallic creak echoed through the cavernous warehouse.
The heavy sliding freight doors at the far end of the dock slowly groaned open four feet.
The freezing wind rushed inside, swirling snow across the oil-stained concrete.
Costa spun around, pulling his gold-plated revolver from beneath his coat.
“Who’s there?” he yelled into the darkness.
“Frankie? Marco?”
From the shadows between two towering stacks of rusted shipping containers stepped a lone figure.
Mateo Vitiello walked into the glare of the limousine headlights.
He wore no coat against the bitter cold, only his dark suit, his white shirt stained with his father’s blood and melted snow.
He carried no assault rifle.
In his right hand was his standard-issue sidearm; in his left, the silver serpent cane.
“You’re late for your boat, Dominic,” Mateo said, his voice carrying clearly over the roar of the wind.
Costa’s five remaining bodyguards immediately raised their weapons, their lasers painting red dots across Mateo’s chest.
“You came alone?” Costa laughed, his voice cracking with hysterical triumph.
“The great Mateo Vitiello, the executioner of Chicago, walks into my crosshairs with a handgun and a walking stick?”
“He is not alone,” a clear, calm voice rang out from the catwalk above.
Costa’s head snapped upward.
Standing on the rusted iron catwalk thirty feet above the warehouse floor, silhouetted against the broken glass of the skylights, was me.
Beside me stood Luca and eight North Side sharpshooters, their high-powered rifles aimed directly down at the open heads of Costa’s men.
“Drop the weapons,” I commanded, my voice echoing off the corrugated iron like a magistrate delivering a sentence.
Costa’s men hesitated, looking between their boss and the red tracer sights now hovering over their foreheads.
“Shoot him!” Costa shrieked, pointing his revolver at Mateo.
“Kill him now!”
The warehouse exploded in violence.
The sharpshooters on the catwalk fired in unified precision.
Four of Costa’s men dropped instantly, their rifles clattering against the concrete floor before their knees gave way.
The fifth man scrambled behind a pallet of cedar crates, firing blindly toward the roof.
Mateo didn't even flinch.
He stepped forward through the smoke, raising his pistol with terrifying mechanical efficiency.
Two rounds punched through the cedar pallet.
The fifth man fell silent, sprawling face-down into a pool of engine oil.
Dominic Costa backed toward the open water of the slipway, his revolver trembling wildly as he aimed it at Mateo’s advancing form.
“Stay back!” Costa screamed, his back hitting the rusted iron bollard at the edge of the pier.
“I helped build this city, Mateo!”
“Your grandfather was a peasant from Palermo! My family had bloodlines in Venice while you were stealing goats!”
Mateo didn't speak.
He closed the distance between them with steady, deliberate steps, each strike of his leather soles echoing against the concrete.
When he was four feet away, Costa pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked down on an empty chamber.
Costa pulled it again.
Click.
He had emptied his cylinder during the initial panicked volley.
Mateo stepped inside Costa’s reach, sweeping the silver cane across the older man’s shins.
Costa went down with a howl of pain, his knees hitting the freezing concrete at Mateo’s feet.
Mateo pressed the barrel of his pistol against the center of Costa’s bandaged forehead.
“Wait!” Costa begged, tears of pure terror cutting through the dirt on his cheeks.
“Ask the girl! She’s a nurse! She took an oath!”
“Tessa! Tell him! Tell him you don't kill in cold blood!”
I descended the iron stairs, my footsteps ringing out in the sudden silence of the slaughterhouse.
I walked across the blood-slicked concrete, stopping beside Mateo.
The freezing spray of the lake whipped against my face, tasting of salt and industrial rust.
I looked down at Dominic Costa.
This was the man who had ordered my mother’s home terrorized.
This was the man who had chased me across the roofs of Pilsen, who had murdered Gianni’s men, who had sent Dr. Valenti to poison Salvatore in his bed.
He was not a king.
He was not a legendary gangster.
He was just a pathetic, greedy old coward kneeling in oil, begging for thirty more seconds of breath.
“Tessa,” Mateo murmured, his finger steady against the trigger, his eyes never leaving Costa’s face.
“This is your throne.”
“You give the order.”
I looked at the heavy platinum ring on my finger.
I remembered Nonna Chiara’s tiny kitchen in Wisconsin, the smell of flour, the silent tears she wept whenever an Italian song played on the radio.
She had spent fifty years running from the butchers so that her children wouldn't have their souls blackened by the blood of Sicily.
If I executed Dominic Costa on this pier, the cycle would continue.
His nephews in Naples would come for me.
Mateo would execute them in return.
And forty years from now, another girl would be scrubbing hospital tiles while waiting for the wolves to find her door.
“Let him live, Mateo,” I said quietly.
Costa let out a ragged, sobbing gasp of relief.
“Thank you... thank God, thank—”
“He doesn't keep the city,” I continued, my voice cutting through his groveling like a sharp blade.
“Luca,” I called out to the lieutenant on the catwalk.
“Call Federal Prosecutor Barnes at the Department of Justice.”
“Give him the keys to Costa’s offshore accounts in the Bahamas.”
“Give him the records of the bribe payments to the port authority directors.”
I looked down into Costa’s horrified eyes.
“You are not going to die a martyr on Navy Pier, Dominic.”
“You are going to spend the next thirty years in a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, wearing orange cotton and eating oatmeal from a plastic tray.”
“And every single penny you stole from the river docks will be transferred to the Chiara De Luca Pediatric Trauma Foundation.”
Costa’s jaw dropped in utter disbelief.
For a man who had lived his life by the gun, a federal prison cell and complete financial ruin was a sentence a thousand times worse than a bullet.
Mateo looked at me, his gray eyes searching mine through the falling snow.
A slow, profound respect softened the cold lines of his face.
Without a word, he flipped his pistol in his hand, grabbing the barrel and striking Costa across the temple with the heavy steel handle.
Costa collapsed unconscious onto the concrete.
Mateo turned toward the open freight doors, tucking his weapon inside his holster.
May you like
“Call the transport, Luca,” Mateo ordered, not looking back.
“The Donna has spoken.”
