Chapter 5 – SANCTUARY IN THE SLUMS
Dominic didn’t shoot her. He didn’t have to.
As Celia lunged, I grabbed the heavy brass fire extinguisher mounted on the hallway wall and swung it with everything I had.
It connected with her shoulder. She shrieked, stumbling backward and crashing into the metal bedframe.
Dominic scooped the boy into his arms. “Let’s go. Now.”
We didn’t look back at Celia writhing on the floor. We sprinted down the stairs, out the kitchen door, and back into the cold Chicago night.
By the time we reached the hidden Mercedes, sirens were wailing in the distance.
Mrs. Russo threw open the back door. As soon as she saw the boy, she let out a choked sob. “Leonardo.”
The little boy buried his face in her neck, crying quietly. “Nana.”
Dominic threw the car into drive and peeled out into the street. “We can’t go to any of my safehouses. Paulie will have them watched.”
“Go to my apartment,” I said.
Dominic looked at me in the mirror. “Emily, if they track us there, your family—”
“My brother is on the night shift at the hospital,” I said firmly. “It’s empty. It’s in Little Village. No one from your world goes down there.”
He didn’t argue.
Thirty minutes later, we were carrying a sleeping Leo up three flights of rickety stairs to my cramped, two-bedroom apartment.
It was tiny. The wallpaper was peeling, and the radiator clanked loudly. But it was warm, and it was safe.
Mrs. Russo laid Leo on my bed, pulling my faded quilt over him. She sat in the rocking chair beside him, her strength finally giving out. She looked eighty years old in that moment.
Dominic stood in my small kitchen, staring out the barred window at the street below. He looked completely out of place in his ruined designer suit amid my thrift-store furniture.
I handed him a glass of tap water. It was all I had.
“Thank you,” he said roughly. He drank it in one go.
“Your brother,” I said softly. “The drawing.”
Dominic pulled the crumpled paper from his pocket, smoothing it out on my cheap formica counter. The stick figure woman with yellow hair pushing a larger figure down the stairs.
“My brother, Michael, didn’t slip,” Dominic whispered, his voice thick with a grief he had buried for two years. “Celia murdered him. And Paulie helped cover it up so they could take over the family.”
“Why did they leave Leo alive?”
“Because of the trust,” Mrs. Russo said, stepping into the kitchen. “Michael’s inheritance bypassed Dominic entirely. It went straight to Leo. Millions in offshore accounts. But it can only be accessed by his legal guardian when the current patriarch—Dominic—is dead.”
I gasped. “They were going to kill you tonight. And use their marriage to claim custody of Leo.”
Dominic’s eyes were black pools of fury. “They used me. They used my love for her.”
He looked at me, a maid from the South Side who was now standing in her own kitchen aiding a mob boss.
“Why did you help us, Emily?” he asked softly. “You could have walked away.”
“My father walked away when someone needed help,” I said, my throat tight. “He died a coward. I won’t live like one.”
Dominic reached out, his hand gently brushing a strand of hair from my cheek. His touch sent a shockwave through my chest.
“I will never forget this,” he promised.
Suddenly, my front door handle rattled.
We froze.
A key slid into the lock.
Dominic raised his gun, aiming directly at the door.
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