Chapter 3 - The Shadow on the Concrete
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I said, backing up until my spine hit the cold wood of the waiter station.
My knees were still wet with dirty water and melted ice.
My hands were covered in minor abrasions from the glass shards, and my knuckles trembled with fading adrenaline.
“I just saved your father’s life,” I continued, struggling to keep my voice from wavering.
“I did my job. I’m going home to my apartment, and I’m forgetting tonight ever happened.”
Mateo picked up his father’s silver cane from the floor.
He inspected the heavy handle, where an intricate Sicilian serpent was carved into the solid sterling metal.
“You think you can walk out that door and go home to study your medical books?” he asked softly.
He took two measured steps toward me, his movements as fluid and quiet as a panther.
“You think my father dropped this cane because he had indigestion?”
“He’s seventy-six years old!” I retorted, my chest heaving beneath my apron.
“He has severe coronary artery disease. His carotid showed clear signs of arteriosclerosis!”
“Do not play the ignorant student with me, Tessa,” Mateo interrupted, stopping three feet from my face.
The raw power radiating off him was suffocating.
“My father has survived three assassination attempts, two prison riots, and a decade in exile.”
“He does not faint from high blood pressure.”
“He collapsed because you whispered a name that was buried in a mass grave outside Corleone in 1968.”
The air left my lungs in a cold rush.
1968.
That was the year Nonna Chiara had arrived in New York on an ocean freighter, carrying an infant girl with no father listed on the birth certificate.
My mother had been that baby.
My mother had died of breast cancer when I was twelve, leaving behind only unpaid clinic bills and a grandmother who refused to speak English whenever strangers entered the grocery store.
“I don’t know anything about Corleone,” I lied, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper.
“I don’t know anything about your business or your family.”
Mateo tilted his head, watching the pulse jump violently in the hollow of my throat.
“You speak the dialect of the mountain families with an accent so pure it could only be learned from a woman who grew up behind the old stone walls.”
“And you knew who Salvatore was before he even gave his name.”
“Everyone in Chicago knows who Salvatore Vitiello is!”
“They know the name,” Mateo countered, his gray eyes narrowing.
“They do not know the family dialect. They do not know how to greet a capofamiglia with the ancient blessing of the Madonie.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, clean linen handkerchief.
Without waiting for permission, he took my right hand.
His fingers were warm, firm, and calloused across the knuckles.
Gently, with surprising care, he wiped a speck of blood from my torn skin where the glass had cut me during compressions.
“Look out the front window, Tessa,” he commanded quietly.
I turned my head toward the heavy velvet curtains covering the glass facade of Bellori.
Through a two-inch gap in the fabric, I could see the dark, rain-slicked asphalt of Huron Street.
Parked beneath the sodium-vapor streetlamp two doors down sat an unmarked black sedan with tinted windows.
Its engine was idling, thin plumes of white exhaust curling into the freezing Chicago rain.
“That is not my car,” Mateo said, his voice dropping an octave.
“Those are men who answer to Dominic Costa.”
The name sent a shiver through my stomach.
Even living in a low-rent apartment in Pilsen, I read the newspaper crime blotters.
Dominic Costa was the vicious rival who controlled the river barges and the gambling rings on the South Side.
For three years, the Vitiellos and the Costas had maintained an uneasy, fragile truce that kept bodies from washing up on the shores of Lake Michigan.
“Dominic Costa has had scouts watching Bellori for three weeks,” Mateo continued, releasing my hand.
“He knew my father was arriving tonight.”
“And now his men have just watched an emergency transport van pull away from the alley with medical sirens muted.”
“They saw Dr. Valenti.”
“They know Salvatore went down inside this building.”
Mateo leaned down slightly, bringing his gaze level with mine.
“If they think you are the catalyst that broke the old man, they will take you off the street before you reach the bus stop on Michigan Avenue.”
“They will not ask you politely about your nursing degree.”
“They will peel your fingernails back one by one until you tell them what Salvatore whispered to you on that floor.”
A cold, nauseating knot tightened in the pit of my stomach.
I looked at the black sedan sitting in the rain, silent and predatory.
I thought of my tiny studio apartment on Eighteenth Street, with its flimsy deadbolt and rusted fire escape.
There was nowhere to hide in that concrete shoebox.
“What did he mean?” I asked, my voice cracking against the quiet room.
“When he said blood cannot be hidden?”
Mateo didn't answer immediately.
He turned back toward the table, picking up his overcoat from the back of his chair.
“My grandfather had a sister,” Mateo said, slipping his arms into the heavy wool coat.
“Her name was Chiara.”
“According to the official records in Palermo, she was executed fifty-eight years ago for refusing an arranged marriage with the head of the Lucchese family.”
“Her body was never found.”
Mateo turned back to face me, his expression unreadable in the dim restaurant light.
“Salvatore spent his entire youth hunting the men who claimed to have buried her.”
“And tonight, an American girl carrying water plates repeats her blessing and carries her grandmother’s ghost in her cheekbones.”
He walked toward the service door leading into the back alley, stopping with his hand on the push bar.
“You can stay here and let Dominic Costa’s wolves drag you into a basement on 35th Street.”
“Or you can walk with me to my car and find out why your great-grandmother spent sixty years hiding in the snow.”
He pushed the door open.
The freezing Chicago wind rushed inside, carrying the smell of wet pavement and diesel exhaust.
I looked down at the puddle of water on the marble floor.
I looked at Marco, who was still shivering behind the bar, refusing to even meet my eyes.
There was no going back to the life I had built with six years of sweat and silence.
May you like
The door had slammed shut behind me the moment I spoke the ancient words.
I pulled off my dirty apron, threw it onto the waiter station, and followed Mateo Vitiello into the rain.
