Chapter Twenty-Nine The Warehouse

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE THE WAREHOUSE

The more I cried, the more I thought about everything that had happened, and slowly my resolve grew steadier than all the pain swimming inside me. If all the Falcones did was put people in the ground, then how could they know the benefits of second chances and what they can do for someone? How much good were they doing by ripping the potential out of a man before he could find the good in himself?

Luca and Nic might not have had a choice about killing Jack, but I did. I didn’t know his number to call him – never mind that my phone was presently in the possession of thug-in-training CJ – but I knew where they were going, I had a weapon, and I had money to get there. If I abandoned my uncle now, I would never forgive myself, and I would never think of Nic with anything other than contempt. I had made a promise to my father to look after Jack, and if his brother died like this I knew he would never recover. He was barely hanging on already.

But there was still time, I could still do something. I could stand between Nic and my uncle, I could stop him from killing him. I might not have been able to convince Luca, but I knew Nic would listen to me. He wouldn’t devastate my family so completely, not after everything we had shared with each other.

I picked myself up and did my best to clean my face, wiping the blood from my chin and pulling my hair around my eyes to hide the bruising. I forced my body to straighten, walked into the service station, and broke the fifty-dollar bill so that I’d have one measly quarter to call a cab. I waited in the service station bathroom until it arrived, studying my reflection. I pulled my matted hair back from my face and stifled a horrified gasp. Deep bruises pooled out from under my swollen eyes. The bridge of my nose was crooked, and my cheeks and chin were raw from where I had scrubbed the blood away. I gripped the sides of the sink as the pain in my ribs surged. A few weeks ago, my biggest problem was the stifling July humidity. How had it come to this?

Somewhere along the way, there had been a gross misunderstanding. Everything had spiralled out of control. I couldn’t just think about the drugs or the money or the dark parts of my uncle’s soul without thinking about the good parts of him too, the parts I knew existed. My uncle was not the one-dimensional villain the Falcones thought he was – how could they make allowances for themselves and not him? It wasn’t right. Even if I couldn’t convince them of that before it was too late, I still had to try.

Twenty minutes later, and to the bewilderment of the cab driver, I got out at a vacant lot on the outskirts of Old Hegewisch. Along the periphery, plastic bags floated like ghosts over sideways shopping carts. The old auto warehouse was halfway across the lot; it was a huge, faceless structure, its cracked concrete walls stained with rust and pigeon crap. On either side, shipping containers were precariously stacked like giant Lego bricks, orange, beige and blue. Along the top, a worn sign reading G REENE ’ S A UTO S UPPLIES swung precariously from its final screw. I walked briskly towards it, feeling less scared than I should have been. I was running entirely on adrenalin now, and I could feel my pulse in my fingertips.

I walked along a row of corrugated steel containers until I found an alley barely wider than a car. It was pitch black and completely hidden from the entrance to the parking lot. At the end of the alley, I turned right and found two of the Falcones’ SUVs, parked and empty. So Luca and Nic were here already, but who had come in the other car? It was obvious why they had chosen the spot. It gave them a secret entrance and an immediate upper hand for when Jack arrived.

At the back of the warehouse, a small door was hidden behind several stacks of wooden crates. It was partially ajar. The lock had been broken, but I doubted its necessity – the door itself was already crumbling at the edges, and probably could have been kicked in by a child.

I tiptoed between the crates and slid through the door. The space inside was mostly empty; it was cold and dirty, and damp. The smell of mould hung in the air, and more stacks of termite-eaten crates were piled haphazardly around the edges, regurgitating strips of plastic packaging. A single wire cage lamp illuminated a circular space at the front, and another smaller light bulb had been strung near the centre, where the Falcones were standing, partially shielded by a tower of crates that came up to their chests. Luca was arguing with Felice, while Gino and Dom hovered behind them, fidgeting with their guns. Nic was several yards away, waiting just inside the front entrance. If only I could get his attention, maybe he would listen to me without being influenced by his brothers.

I started moving around the side of the warehouse, clutching at my sides as I bent low behind the boxes. Rats scurried in and out of crates, and I had to bite hard on my tongue to keep from yelping every time one skittered by my sneakers.

I stopped creeping and listened as the faraway rumblings of a car grew louder.

The activity in the warehouse fell deathly quiet.

The engine cut somewhere beyond the front entrance. I heard a car door shut. Jack . My heart was pounding hard and fast in my chest. Suddenly all I could think about was my uncle’s face when he walked into the guns that were about to be levelled at his head.

Then something unexpected happened: I heard another door shut, and another, and finally a fourth. Jack wasn’t alone.

Nic peered around the warehouse entrance and then pulled his head back in a blur. ‘He’s got company,’ he announced to the others, backing away from his post and coming to stand beside Luca. Both of them looked uneasy, but no one seemed particularly surprised. I don’t know why I was so shocked: walking into a dark warehouse alone was suicide. Jack was smarter than that, and, to my dismay, he was obviously used to this world and how things worked in it.

‘They’ll have guns,’ said Dom casually.

‘Classic Gracewell,’ said Felice with a mirthless laugh. ‘There is never any honour in his agreements. We always knew he would come heavy. How many are there?’

‘It’s too dark, I couldn’t tell.’ Nic’s voice was tight with frustration. He pulled out his gun and double-checked to make sure it was loaded. How could I get to him now, when he was so close to his brothers? Maybe if I made it to Jack before he came inside, it would stop him from trying to come in at all. All this time I had been so worried about my uncle that I hadn’t stopped to think about the possibility that he might come prepared too. And that meant Nic and Luca weren’t any safer than he was.

Stupid vendetta .

I became more deliberate about my steps as the crates grew fewer and further between. They were getting trickier to hide behind and, with each shallow breath like a stab in my cracked ribcage, I was finding it harder to exert myself. If I could just make it through that front door before anyone came in, I might be able to stop a massacre.

‘I knew this would get messy,’ Felice was ranting. ‘And if he sees we don’t have the girl any more, then he won’t hesitate to shoot first. We need to be on our guard – we’ve lost the upper hand.’

The shadows of Dom and Gino murmured their agreement. Luca’s voice was too low to hear, but by the way his hands were gesturing, I guessed he was protesting his innocence. From my vantage point, it looked convincing. I hoped it was.

‘And you’re not even fully protected.’ Felice motioned towards Luca’s and Nic’s chests. ‘Go out back before you get injured. Valentino’s angry enough already. We can’t afford to have anything else go wrong.’

Neither of them moved. ‘We’ll see this through,’ said Luca.

Nic rolled his neck around until it cracked. He squared his shoulders and clenched his jaw. If this was him in soldier mode, it was damn effective. And that made me want to pull my hair out of my scalp, because he was preparing to kill my uncle.

The Falcones fell out of their conversation; no one wanted to argue any more. They grew silent, each of them boring holes in the door with their eyes, waiting for Jack to make his move. They knew he was out there; he knew they were inside. Both sides had backup and both sides, presumably, had guns. And I was stuck, crouching in rat piss behind a stack of mouldy crates in a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, wondering which of the people I cared about would die first, and whether I would survive long enough to try and forgive the ones that didn’t. If this wasn’t rock bottom, I shuddered to think what was.

I was trying to sneak across a gap between two toppled crates when the door to the warehouse creaked open, first one notch, and then another. I froze. The Falcones raised their guns at the entranceway. I was too late. I had failed.

‘Hello,’ said a quiet, nervous voice.

My whole body turned to ice.

No one answered her.

‘Hello?’ she said again, the word just a wavering tinkle in this huge, barren space.

In one echoing click, they set their guns ready to fire, and aimed them at my mother as she edged into the warehouse.