Chapter 3 - The Shadow in the Gallery
The grand gallery on the second floor of the Romano mansion was ninety feet long, lined with oil paintings of my ancestors—cold, unsmiling men who had carved their empire out of Chicago’s concrete with blood and iron.
I moved along the upper balcony, keeping to the deep shadows cast by the marble pillars. Below me, in the central hall, Marco Vance was standing near the grand fireplace, holding a portable electronic scanner connected to my private safe.
Two of his lieutenants were standing on either side of him, watching the heavy front doors with night-vision optics.
"The scanner isn't picking up the secondary frequency," one of the lieutenants muttered. "Kane must have taken the key with him to New York."
"He didn't take it," Marco said, his voice echoey and harsh in the empty hall. "Kane never travels with the vault keys. He leaves them with the housekeeper or hides them in his father's old desk. Keep searching."
"What about the decoy convoy?"
"They'll be here in twenty minutes," Marco said, checking his watch. "When Kane steps through those doors, our snipers at the gate will take out his lead car. We blow the estate, blame it on the Morettis, and clear out with fifty million in bearer bonds. Simple."
I crouched behind the stone balustrade directly above Marco’s head.
He had been like an uncle to me after my father died. He had taught me how to strip a handgun when I was twelve; he had stood beside me at my father's funeral; he had taken a bullet in the arm for me during the turf wars of '22. And yet, here he was, selling my father's legacy to the Morettis for fifty million dollars and a pile of paper bonds.
"Marco," I called out softly from the shadows above.
The three men in the hall froze instantly. Weapons whipped upward, flashlights sweeping the upper balcony in frantic, jerky movements.
"Who's there?!" Marco barked, taking a step back toward the cover of the marble staircase.
"You always had a terrible eye for tactics, Marco," I said, my voice echoing off the high domed ceiling so it seemed to come from everywhere at once. "You forgot to check the shoe-shine room."
Marco’s face paled under the harsh beam of his tactical light. "Kane? How... how the hell are you in the house?!"
"I came through the side door," I said, stepping into the dim moonlight near the balcony edge. I wasn't holding a weapon in my hands; my submachine gun was slung across my back. "The door my father used when he didn't want the world to see him."
The two lieutenants aimed their rifles at my chest.
"Fire!" Marco screamed.
Before they could pull their triggers, I reached out and kicked the heavy bronze statue of my great-grandfather off its marble pedestal. The three-hundred-pound sculpture plummeted straight down, smashing into the first lieutenant with crushing force.
I vaulting over the balustrade, dropping fifteen feet into the hall, landing hard on the second lieutenant. My boots slammed into his chest, driving the air from his lungs as we hit the marble floor together. I rolled, pulled my sidearm, and fired two rounds into his shoulder, neutralizing him instantly.
Marco scrambled backward, drawing his own pistol, his face twisted in a mixture of terror and rage.
"You think you're immortal, don't you, Kane?!" Marco yelled, firing wild shots as he backed toward the entrance of the library. "You think because your name is Romano, this city belongs to you forever?! The Morettis offered me thirty percent of the Midwest territory! What did you give me?! Orders! Scraps!"
The bullets chipped plaster from the wall beside my ear. I moved smoothly from pillar to pillar, closing the distance between us without firing a single shot.
"I gave you my trust, Marco," I said, my voice cold enough to freeze the blood in his veins. "I gave you my family's house to guard."
"Your family is dead!" Marco shouted, slamming his back against the heavy mahogany library doors. "Your father is in the ground, and you're just a ghost walking around in a suit!"
He squeezed the trigger again, but his slide locked back with a dry, hollow click.
Out of ammunition.
Marco stared at his empty gun, his eyes widening in sheer panic as I stepped out from behind the final pillar, standing six feet away from him in the faint amber light of the emergency lamps.
"You made one mistake tonight, Marco," I said softly, stepping closer.
May you like
"What mistake?" he choked out, fumbling wildly at his belt for a fresh magazine.
"You made a little girl believe she had to shine my shoes at midnight to save her mother's life."
