Chapter 5 - Fire and Blood
The next sixty seconds passed in a blur of deafening noise and blinding flashes. Joseph kept his weight over my mother and me, his body acting as a shield while bullets whined through the air above us, shattering picture frames and tearing up the wooden floorboards.
"They brought heavy ordnance, Boss!" Marco yelled over the thunder of his weapon, ducking behind the couch as drywall dust filled the air like fog. "It's Moretti's hit squad! We need to move to the basement NOW!"
"Rose, move!" Joseph commanded, grabbing my mother by the arm and pulling her toward the kitchen hallway.
My mother was paralyzed with fear, staring at the destruction of the home she had built over twenty years of hard labor. I grabbed her other arm, dragging her along the floor as another volley of gunfire chewed through the front door frame.
"This way!" I shouted, kicking open the door to the small basement cellar.
We tumbled down the wooden stairs into the darkness, Joseph falling in behind us and slamming the heavy oak door shut, throwing the iron bolt into place just as bullets struck the wood from the other side.
"Dominic is holding the kitchen!" Marco shouted from the top of the stairs, his face smeared with black soot and blood from a graze on his forehead. "Boss, Moretti himself is out there. He wants you dead tonight. He knows if you survive this, you'll wipe his family off the map."
In the dim light of the single bulb hanging from the basement ceiling, Joseph looked at my mother and me. He was breathing heavily, his coat torn, blood dripping from a cut on his cheek.
"Is there an exit out of this cellar?" Joseph asked me.
"There's an old storm hatch under the coal chute," I said, pointing to a rusted iron door hidden behind stacked cardboard boxes. "It leads out to the alley behind the garage."
"Marco, take Rose and Audrey through the chute," Joseph ordered calmly, pulling two extra magazines from his inner pocket and reloading his pistol. "Get them to the safehouse in Oak Park."
"What about you, Boss?" Marco asked, his eyes wide. "I'm not leaving you here."
"I'm staying," Joseph said. His voice was cold, lethal, and absolute. "Leo Moretti thinks he dragged me into a trap. He doesn't realize he just stepped into mine. If I leave this house, he will hunt Rose and Audrey to the ends of the earth. It ends tonight. In this house."
"No!" my mother screamed, grabbing Joseph's lapels. "No, Joseph! You can't stay! They'll kill you!"
Joseph looked down at her face, his eyes softening for a brief second. He reached up with his gloved hand and gently wiped a tear from her cheek.
"Twenty years ago, I let them take you from me because I was weak," Joseph said softly. "I won't run again, Rose. I will protect my family."
He turned his eyes to me. The word family hung in the air, heavy and undeniable.
"Take care of your mother, Audrey," Joseph whispered. "You have her strength. I saw it the moment you talked back to me at the restaurant."
"Joseph, please!" my mother sobbed, but Marco was already pulling us toward the storm hatch, using his body to shield us as he kicked away the wooden boxes.
"Move, Miss Rose! Move!" Marco barked, lifting the heavy rusted iron door.
May you like
The cool night air rushed in, smelling of rain and gunpowder. Marco shoved us through the narrow opening into the muddy alleyway behind the house.
As the storm hatch slammed shut behind us, I looked back one last time through the gap in the iron frame. Joseph Salvini was standing at the foot of the basement stairs, his gun raised toward the door above, waiting for the shadows to break through.
