Chapter 4
Chapter 4
“My father had a vault beneath the Union Cold Storage depot,” Lorenzo said, leaning against an iron staircase. “Only three men knew the combination. My father, myself, and the man who held his deathbed confession.”
“Victor,” Chloe concluded, her eyes scanning the rooftops above. “Then the vault is already watched, Capello. Walking into a Capello property tonight is just signing our names on Vance’s official autopsy report.”
“Victor knows the vault exists,” Lorenzo replied with a dark, bitter smirk. “He does not know what my father kept inside the refrigeration pipes behind the third freezer door. That was between a dying father and his heir.”
They reached the perimeter of the rail yard by midnight. Freight cars groaned against rusted tracks as shunting engines pushed iron through the downpour, masking their footsteps against the gravel and crushed slag.
Two sentries stood beneath the sodium halogens of the loading dock, wearing high-collar tactical parkas over expensive Italian suits. The combination of federal gear and syndicate styling turned Chloe’s stomach with familiar disgust.
“Victor’s personal guard,” Lorenzo murmured from behind a boxcar. “They were assigned to protect my sister two years ago. Now they hold submachine guns for the man who tried to put me in the morgue.”
“I’ll take the high walkway,” Chloe said, already moving toward the fire escape without waiting for his approval. “Count to ten. When the steam release opens on the compressor, you make your move to the dock.”
“Chloe,” he called softly. She paused on the iron rung, looking down at him through the torrential curtain of water. “Don’t miss. I don’t like owing my life to the same woman twice in one night.”
“Keep counting, Capello. You’re already three debts behind.” She disappeared into the upper ironwork like a wisp of wet smoke, her boots silent against the rusted metal grating above the yard.
Lorenzo watched the steam valve hiss, a white plume blinding the dock lights. Exactly on ten, a sharp double crack echoed through the yard, followed immediately by the dull thud of two bodies hitting concrete.
He lunged forward, catching the second man’s weapon before it hit the floor. Chloe dropped from the loading crane ten feet above, landing light on the balls of her feet with her gun raised and steady.
“Clear,” she whispered, stepping over the fallen guards without looking down. “Keycard is on the belt. The sub-level compressor is running. If your father’s vault is down there, we have seven minutes before the shift change.”
Lorenzo swiped the keycard through the heavy steel hatch of the cold storage facility. The door unsealed with a hiss of frigid air, plunging them into a subterranean maze of frosted pipes and hanging meat hooks.
The temperature plummeted below freezing, turning their panting breath into thick clouds of white mist. Lorenzo stumbled once against a row of frozen beef sides, his blood congealing dark and sluggish against his torn sleeve.
“Third door,” he gasped, his skin taking on the gray tint of hypothermia and shock. “Behind the manifold. There is a brass dial hidden inside the ammonia pipe release valve. Turn it counter-clockwise three times.”
Chloe worked fast, her fingers aching with the bitter cold. The brass wheel gave way with a groan of iron, opening a narrow steel recess behind the frost-covered tile wall of the ancient refrigeration chamber.
Inside lay a heavy lockbox sealed with lead solder and stamped with the faded seal of the Capello patriarch. Beside it sat a leather-bound ledger, its pages yellowed and thick with handwritten dates spanning twenty years.
“Look at the names,” Lorenzo ordered, his voice trembling with exhaustion. “Tell me the name on page forty-eight. Tell me my father was not the monster who ordered your brother’s execution in that marsh.”
Chloe flipped the brittle pages with shaking thumbs, her flashlight illuminating rows of payoffs, kickbacks, and federal case numbers. On page forty-eight, written in bold, archaic script, was a name she recognized instantly.
Victor Capello – Payment to Special Agent Marcus Vance. Contract: Daniel Cross. Status: Completed. Underneath was a note in Lorenzo’s father’s hand: Victor acted without sanction. May God forgive our house.
“Your father didn’t order it,” Chloe whispered, her eyes burning with eight years of deferred grief. “He found out after Daniel was already buried, and he kept this ledger as leverage to keep Victor from taking the family.”
“And when my father’s heart finally gave out last year,” Lorenzo said, his head resting against the frozen tiles, “Victor realized the only thing standing between him and the throne was me, and the ghost of Daniel Cross.”
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The roar of diesel engines shook the ceiling above them, raining flakes of frost onto their heads. Heavy footsteps pounded down the metal stairs leading from the upper platform of the refrigerated warehouse.
—END OF Chapter 4,
