Chapter 2 - The Roar That Shook the VaultThe subterranean corridor seemed to buckle under the raw, concussive force of that single human voice.
For six years, the Rossi syndicate had believed its founder was an empty husk rotting toward the grave. Now, that husk stood before them as an avenging phantom.
The four armed mercenaries in the doorway took two steps back, their automatic rifles dropping by instinct toward the floorboards. In the underworld of Chicago, men did not question Don Francesco Rossi. You knelt before him, or you took two hollow-point rounds behind the ear.
Matteo remained on his knees, his broad chest rising and falling in sharp, jagged gasps.
His obsidian eyes were fixed on the trembling arm of his grandfather.
“Grandpa...” Matteo whispered, his voice cracking down the middle. “You’re awake.”
“Awake?” Francesco rasped, his voice tearing through his dry vocal cords like rusty wire dragged over stone. “I was never asleep! I was buried alive by the whores you invited to eat at my table!”
The old Don did not release my wrist.
His grip was cold, his skin paper-thin, but the ancient, terrifying will behind those fingers held me anchored against his iron wheel.
I trembled so violently that my swollen belly pressed against the coarse woolen fabric of my apron.
“Frank...” I choked out, tears burning my eyes, spilling through the coal dust on my cheeks. “Please... I didn't mean to cause trouble...”
“Hush, little bird,” Francesco commanded, his tone dropping from thunder into a raspy, gravelly warmth that stunned every killer in the room. He turned his cloudy, scarred eyes back toward Matteo. “Look at her hands, boy! Look at the blood on her fingers! While your bride was upstairs drinking vintage port, this child dragged dry logs down fifty steps so my old bones wouldn't freeze into ice!”
Matteo slowly rose to his feet.
He stood six-foot-two, his tailored charcoal suit unbuttoned, his silhouette blotting out the dim yellow glare of the overhead lightbulb.
The vulnerability that had briefly softened his face vanished completely, replaced by the terrifying, calculating stillness of a predator stepping into an execution chamber.
He looked down at my wrist, where Francesco’s hand still held me tight. He looked at my split knuckles, the black coal grime staining my woolen sweater, and the paper sonogram clutched in his grandfather’s fingers.
Then, with mechanical slowness, Matteo turned his head toward Victoria Vance.
Victoria was trembling so hard her chinchilla fur shook against her shoulders.
“Matteo, darling... it’s a hallucination!” she pleaded, her voice rising into a shrill, hysterical pitch that cracked against the masonry. “It’s a neurological stroke event! Terminal agitation! He’s repeating words he heard on the television!”
Matteo took one slow, deliberate step across the frosted concrete.
“A neurological event, Victoria?”
“Yes! The medical journals document it—”
“My grandfather has been silent since the winter of 2018,” Matteo said, his voice dropping into a register so cold that the frost on the iron pipes seemed to thicken. “And his first words were an order to drown you in the lake.”
Mrs. Gable dropped to her knees on the filthy cement, clutching the cuffs of Matteo’s trousers with trembling, powdered hands.
“Mr. Rossi, please! I only obeyed Miss Vance! She told me you wanted the old man out of sight! She told me the medical expenses were bankrupting the estate!”
Matteo didn't look down at the housekeeper.
He didn't draw the customized Beretta resting beneath his left armpit.
He simply looked at the chief of his personal security detail, Dante, who stood at the back of the corridor with a suppressed tactical carbine.
“Dante.”
“Yes, Don Matteo.”
“Take Mrs. Gable to the north terrace.”
Mrs. Gable let out a strangled shriek. “No! Mr. Rossi! Have mercy!”
“Strip her coat,” Matteo continued, his voice flat as a funeral stone. “Let her stand by the frozen fountain in her slip until she understands what six winters without heat feel like.”
“Mercy! Don Matteo, mercy!” the woman screamed as two guards dragged her down the corridor, her fingernails clawing at the concrete until the heavy steel doors at the end of the hall slammed shut, cutting off her voice.
Victoria backed up until her spine hit the rusted iron frame of the coal chute.
“Matteo... you cannot touch me. My father controls the maritime container terminals from Montreal to Buffalo. If you harm a hair on my head, your northern supply lines will burn!”
Matteo stepped past her, paying no more attention to her threats than to the wind outside.
He walked back to cell 3C.
He knelt once more in the frost before the iron wheelchair, reaching out with both hands to gently cup the swollen, calloused feet of his grandfather.
“Forgive me, Don Francesco,” Matteo whispered, his forehead pressing against the worn leather of the footrests. “I was blind.”
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Francesco’s chest heaved. He reached down, his left hand finally slipping from my wrist, resting firmly on the back of his grandson’s dark head.
“A Don who cannot see the wolves in his own kitchen is not blind, Matteo,” the old man rasped. “He is asleep. Now stand up... and pick up the mother of your future.”
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