Chapter 9 - The Bridge of Cinders
My boots hit the gravel of the garment factory roof with an impact that shot pain straight up my spine.
I stumbled, my weak ankle buckling under my weight, but Mateo’s arm caught me around the waist before my knees could slam into the tar paper.
He rolled us both behind a concrete elevator shaft just as automatic gunfire erupted from the roof we had just abandoned.
Bullets chipped the masonry above our heads, raining sharp chips of concrete into our hair.
“Stay down!” Mateo barked, sliding down the wall beside me.
He pulled his second magazine from his coat, his fingers working with terrifying speed despite the freezing cold.
Across the gap, three men in dark raincoats were silhouetted against the amber glow of the city lights, their rifles aimed across the alley.
“Mateo Vitiello!” a booming voice called out through the sound of the rain.
A man stepped to the edge of the opposite roof, holding an umbrella in one hand and a gold-plated revolver in the other.
He was broad-shouldered, with silver-streaked hair and a thick camel-hair coat that repelled the water.
Dominic Costa.
“You’re running out of roofs, boy!” Costa shouted, his laughter echoing against the brick walls.
“Give me the girl and the book, and I let you walk back to your father’s deathbed with your skin intact!”
Mateo didn't answer.
He didn't waste his breath on taunts.
Instead, he leaned his pistol against the corner of the elevator housing, sighting down the barrel through the downpour.
“He’s wearing Kevlar under that camel coat,” I whispered, my teeth chattering uncontrollably from the cold.
Mateo glanced at me, a sharp glint in his eye.
“I am not aiming for his chest.”
He fired two rounds.
Across the alley, the man holding Costa’s umbrella dropped with a scream, clutching his shattered kneecap.
Costa scrambled backward behind the parapet, cursing in foul Neapolitan slang as his men returned fire with a hail of lead that shredded the corner of our shelter.
“Mateo, look!” I pointed toward the far end of the garment factory roof.
A rusted fire escape led down toward a loading dock behind the railway tracks.
Parked beside the rusted freight cars was an unmarked black van, its hazard lights blinking once every three seconds.
The recognition signal.
“Gianni’s reinforcement team,” Mateo murmured.
“We have ninety seconds before Costa’s men circle the block to cut off the railway access.”
He stood up, pulling me to my feet in one violent heave.
“Run for the fire escape. Do not look back.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll cover the ladder.”
“Mateo, no!” I grabbed the lapel of his soaked jacket.
“They have heavy rifles! You can’t stop six men with a handgun!”
He looked down at my hand on his coat, then up at my face.
For a fraction of a second, the cold mask of the syndicate heir melted away, revealing the exhausted, wounded man beneath the armor.
“Your grandmother ran for fifty years so you could live in the light, Tessa,” he said softly, his thumb brushing against my wet cheek.
“I will not let them bury you in the mud of 18th Street.”
He pushed me toward the fire escape just as another barrage of rifle fire tore through the wooden roof door behind us.
I ran.
Pain exploded in my left ankle with every step, but adrenaline flooded my veins, numbing the agony into a dull throb.
Behind me, the rhythmic bark of Mateo’s pistol answered the roar of the rifles.
I reached the rusted iron railing of the fire escape and threw myself down the steps, three at a time, my hands sliding along the slick handrails.
From the roof above, a loud metallic clang was followed by an agonizing grunt.
I stopped on the second-floor landing and looked up.
Mateo was backing toward the ladder, his left arm hanging limp at his side, blood soaking through the dark fabric of his sleeve.
A bullet had grazed his bicep.
Behind him, two of Costa’s men were clambering over the parapet, their rifles raised.
Without thinking, without calculating the odds or remembering that I was supposed to be a peaceful medical student, I grabbed a heavy iron pipe lying abandoned on the fire escape landing.
I leaned over the railing and hurled it with all my strength at the nearest gunman’s head.
The pipe struck the man full in the temple with a sickening crack.
He wobbled on the edge of the parapet, lost his footing on the slick metal, and plummeted four stories into the darkness of the alley below.
His scream cut off with a dull, wet thud against the pavement.
Mateo didn't waste the opening.
He fired his final three rounds into the chest of the second attacker, sending him sprawling across the gravel roof.
He lunged for the fire escape ladder, sliding down the rails and landing heavily beside me.
“I told you to run,” he gasped, his breath ragged, his forehead dripping with a mixture of sweat and blood.
“And I told you I was a nurse,” I retorted, grabbing his uninjured arm and pulling him down the final flight of stairs.
“Nurses don’t leave dying patients behind.”
A faint, genuine smile broke across his blood-smeared lips.
“You really are Chiara’s blood.”
We hit the concrete of the loading dock just as the rear doors of the black van swung open.
Gianni leaned out of the passenger seat, an automatic shotgun resting across his forearm.
“Get in! Get in now!”
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Mateo shoved me inside onto the ribbed metal floor of the cargo bay before collapsing onto the bench beside me.
The van roared to life, its tires biting into the gravel as it tore through the rail yard gates, leaving Dominic Costa’s shattered hunters behind in the industrial dark.
