Chapter 6 - The Alleys of Pilsen
The rain on the South Side fell like liquid lead, washing soot into the storm drains of 18th Street.
Mateo took the turns with brutal precision, never glancing in the rearview mirror long enough to betray doubt.
His left hand controlled the wheel with relaxed dominance, while his right rested against the grip of his sidearm.
My wet clothes clung to my skin, cold as river mud.
Beside me, the city I thought I knew blurred into a maze of dark brick factories and closed butcher shops.
“You never asked what happened to my mother,” I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
Mateo kept his eyes locked on the road ahead.
“Your mother was named Elena,” he replied, his voice calm despite the sirens howling miles behind us.
My breath caught in my throat.
“You knew before tonight.”
“I don’t sit at Table Four by accident, Tessa.”
He cut the headlights half a block before my building, letting the SUV glide into the shadow of an abandoned rail bridge.
“My scouts traced Elena’s death certificate in Milwaukee three months ago,” he continued quietly.
“We knew Chiara’s line had survived the fire in Palermo.”
“What we did not know was whether you were an innocent survivor or a weapon planted by Dominic Costa.”
“I am a nursing student who scrubs hospital bedpans for minimum wage!” I snapped, my whisper shaking with fury.
“And yet, tonight you spoke the high dialect of the Madonie without blinking an eye,” Mateo answered, turning to look directly at me.
His gray eyes were like chips of polished flint in the dark cabin.
“In my world, innocence and ignorance look identical until blood touches the floor.”
He reached into the back seat, pulling a spare black windbreaker and tossing it into my lap.
“Put that on and zip it to your chin.”
“Leave your phone in the console.”
I took off my damp uniform jacket and pulled the windbreaker over my trembling shoulders.
The fabric smelled of clean cedar and gun oil.
Through the rain-streaked window, I looked up at the four-story brick walk-up where I had lived for three years.
Third floor, corner unit, with peeling paint on the fire escape and a faulty streetlamp flickering directly below my window.
The lamp was dark tonight.
Someone had shattered the sodium bulb with a pellet rifle.
“They’re already inside,” Mateo said, his voice dropping into a register that made my spine go rigid.
“How do you know?”
“Look at the fire escape counterweight.”
I followed his gaze to the rusted iron stairs dangling over the alley.
The ladder was down, swaying slightly in the freezing wind, its safety catch unlocked.
My hands began to shake.
Under the floorboards of my bedroom, inside an old pine footlocker wrapped in mothballs, sat the only physical memory of Nonna Chiara.
A hand-carved cedar box with an iron hinge that had never been forced.
“If they open it—”
“They can’t open it,” Mateo said, pulling his weapon from his holster and checking the suppressor threaded onto the barrel.
“The lock on that chest is a dual-tumbler mechanism forged in Catania.”
“If anyone tries to pry the lid with a crowbar, a glass ampoule of sulfuric acid inside the lining shatters and incinerates the parchment.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“She lived in Wisconsin for forty years!”
“She was the sister of Salvatore Vitiello,” Mateo replied as he opened his door into the freezing night.
“She was born into a war that never ends.”
He stepped out into the rain, rounding the vehicle to open my door before I could touch the latch.
The wind off the Chicago River tore through the narrow alley, carrying the stench of rusted metal and wet asphalt.
Mateo pulled me against his side, his arm forming a solid wall between my back and the exposed brick wall.
“Step where I step,” he whispered into my hair.
“If glass crunches under your boot, freeze.”
We slipped through the narrow gate beside the garbage bins, our boots making no sound against the wet gravel.
The back door to the stairwell had been pried open, the deadbolt hanging loose from the splintered yellow pine.
Inside, the familiar smell of cheap laundry detergent and old radiator steam was overpowered by something else.
Cold grease and expensive tobacco.
Dominic Costa’s enforcers smoked Turkish cigarettes that smelled like burnt cloves.
Mateo halted at the bottom of the stairwell, his hand resting gently against my chest to hold me back.
His fingers were steady, his pulse slow and methodical.
Above us, on the third-floor landing, floorboards creaked under heavy footsteps.
A deep, gravelly voice echoed down the concrete shaft.
“Nothing under the mattress except loose twenties and anatomy notes, Frankie.”
“Check behind the baseboards,” another voice barked from inside my living room.
“Costa wants the papers before sunrise, or we don’t get our cut of the river docks.”
Mateo leaned down, his lips brushing the curve of my ear.
May you like
“Count to ten after I cross the threshold,” he whispered.
Before I could answer, he moved like a wraith up the carpeted stairs.
