Chapter 5 – THE TRAIN CAR

The rain started coming down in heavy, icy sheets as the SUV tore into the abandoned South Side rail yards.

Rusting, graffiti-covered train cars loomed in the darkness like massive steel coffins. The area had been decommissioned a decade ago, leaving a maze of decaying metal and overgrown weeds.

Luca killed the headlights as they rolled to a stop behind a crumbling brick maintenance shed.

“We go on foot from here,” Luca said, checking the magazine in his Glock.

Daniel pulled a heavy, tactical rifle from the trunk. “Boss, if Bellini has Hannah, he’ll have the area locked down. Snipers. Lookouts. We are walking into a kill box.”

“I know,” Luca said, his eyes scanning the labyrinth of train cars. “But Bellini is greedy. He won’t kill Hannah until she opens whatever Mary Collins left behind. We have a window.”

They slipped into the freezing rain, moving silently between the rusted wheels of the old freight trains. The smell of wet iron and oil was suffocating.

Up ahead, a faint, flickering orange light glowed from inside one of the massive boxcars.

Luca signaled Daniel to flank left while he moved straight toward the light.

As Luca crept closer, pressing his back against the freezing, wet metal of an adjacent car, he heard voices.

“Try the numbers again,” Marcus Bellini’s voice echoed out of the boxcar. It was arrogant, impatient, and cold.

“It’s not working, Papa,” Vanessa’s voice whined. “The keypad is rusted. Or the maid gave us the wrong sequence.”

Luca carefully peeked around the edge of the steel door.

Inside the cavernous boxcar, a portable halogen lamp illuminated the space. Marcus Bellini, a broad-shouldered man in an expensive camel-hair coat, stood smoking a cigar. Vanessa stood beside him, clutching her fur tightly, looking utterly out of place in the grime.

And kneeling in the center of the wooden floor, soaking wet and shivering violently, was Hannah.

Her right hand was still bleeding through the makeshift bandage. A heavy, brutal-looking Bellini enforcer stood over her with an assault rifle pointed at the back of her head.

In front of Hannah sat a massive, industrial steel lockbox bolted directly to the floor of the train car. It had a heavy, mechanical keypad built into the lid.

“I didn’t lie to you,” Hannah said, her voice shaking but surprisingly defiant. “The numbers on the wall were 41, 87, 99, 02. That’s all my mother left.”

Marcus Bellini stepped forward, blowing a cloud of cigar smoke into the cold air.

“Those are route coordinates, you stupid girl,” Bellini growled. “They led us to this specific train car. But they don’t open the box. Mary Collins was a paranoid bitch. She would have left a terminal digit. A keycode.”

He grabbed Hannah roughly by the hair, forcing her to look up at him.

“Think!” Bellini roared. “What else did she give you before she died? A date? A name? A code?”

Hannah cried out in pain. “Nothing! She gave me nothing but hospital bills!”

Luca’s blood boiled. He raised his weapon, lining up the sights on the enforcer standing behind Hannah. But before he could pull the trigger, Vanessa stepped forward.

“She’s useless, Papa,” Vanessa sneered, looking down at Hannah with absolute disgust. “Just shoot her and we’ll blow the box open with C4.”

“If we blow the box, we destroy the ledgers inside,” Bellini snapped, releasing Hannah’s hair. He paced back and forth. “Those ledgers prove I orchestrated Antonio Moretti’s death. If the Commission in New York ever sees them, my entire family is dead.”

Hannah stayed on her knees, gasping for breath. She looked at the lockbox. Then she looked at the broken blue pie dish she had shattered earlier that evening.

Luca frowned, squinting through the rain.

Sitting on top of the steel lockbox was a piece of the broken blue ceramic. The handle.

Why had Vanessa brought that?

“You broke that dish on purpose, didn’t you?” Hannah whispered, staring at Vanessa.

Vanessa smiled, a cruel, satisfied smirk. “Of course I did, darling. You think I care about Teresa’s sentimental garbage? My father has been looking for Mary Collins’s lockbox for ten years. But we didn’t know the final piece of the code.”

Vanessa picked up the broken ceramic handle.

“When my father’s men finally intercepted Mary Collins’s mail before she died, they found a letter to Teresa Moretti. It said, ‘The final sequence is where Antonio fixed what was broken.’”

Vanessa tossed the ceramic piece at Hannah’s feet.

“Teresa’s stupid pie dish,” Vanessa laughed. “Antonio repaired the handle thirty years ago. I broke it today to see what was underneath the old glue.”

Hannah looked down at the broken piece of ceramic.

In the harsh halogen light, microscopic numbers were etched into the exposed clay beneath the break.

7 – 7 – 4

“Type it in,” Bellini ordered the enforcer.

The enforcer lowered his rifle and reached for the keypad on the lockbox.

Luca knew this was his only chance. The moment the box opened, Hannah was dead.

Luca stepped out from the shadows into the open doorway of the boxcar.

“Step away from the box, Marcus,” Luca said, his voice echoing over the pouring rain.

Vanessa screamed, stumbling backward.

Marcus Bellini froze, his cigar dropping from his lips.

The enforcer immediately reached for his weapon, but Luca didn’t hesitate. He fired a single shot. The bullet caught the enforcer in the shoulder, spinning him around and sending him crashing to the wooden floor.

Hannah gasped, scrambling backward away from the lockbox.

“Luca!” Vanessa shrieked, holding her hands up. “Luca, please, you don’t understand!”

“I understand everything,” Luca said, keeping his weapon trained directly on Marcus Bellini’s chest. He stepped fully into the boxcar. “You killed my father. You hunted Hannah’s mother. And you stole money meant for a dying woman.”

Marcus Bellini slowly raised his hands, a dark, calculating smile spreading across his face.

“You’re just like your father, Luca,” Bellini chuckled darkly. “Too emotional. Too concerned with the help.”

Bellini looked past Luca, staring out into the rainy rail yard.

“Did you really think I came out here with only one man?”

Suddenly, the deafening roar of a heavy diesel engine shattered the night.

Blinding floodlights clicked on from all sides of the boxcar, pinning Luca in a crossfire of blinding white light.

Through the glare, Luca saw three black SUVs surrounding the train car, doors thrown open, a dozen heavily armed Bellini soldiers aiming directly at the boxcar doors.

Daniel was pinned down behind a rusted wheel axle, hopelessly outgunned.

Marcus Bellini buttoned his camel-hair coat, his smile turning feral.

“Drop the gun, Luca,” Bellini said softly. “Or my men will turn this train car into a slaughterhouse. And your little maid dies first.”