Chapter 4 - The Fortress of Iron and Ash
The iron gates of the Morgan Street foundry parted without a sound, sliding open on greased internal tracks hidden beneath the gravel driveway.
Standing in the glare of the Cadillac’s high beams was a man who looked like he had been chiseled out of old railway ties: six-foot-four, bald as a river stone, wearing a heavy sheepskin coat and holding a customized twelve-gauge Benelli combat shotgun at low ready.
I rolled the driver's window down two inches, picked up the silver signet ring from the cup holder, and held it out into the freezing rain.
The giant leaned down, his pale blue eyes sweeping over my flour-stained face, my bruised knuckles, and finally to the unconscious, bleeding man slumped across the passenger leather.
"The baker brought the bread," I said, my voice deadpan.
The man didn't blink. He lowered the shotgun, tapped the roof of the SUV twice with his gloved knuckles, and pointed toward the massive brick warehouse at the end of the spur.
"Bay Four," the gatekeeper rumbled, his voice sounding like two grinding millstones. "The doctor is already scrubbed."
Ten minutes later, Vincent was lying on a stainless-steel operating table in what looked like an underground surgical suite built inside an industrial vault. Two men in tactical gear stood by the blast doors with carbines, while an elderly man with wire-rimmed glasses and a blood-spattered surgeon’s apron worked over Vincent’s leg with surgical clamps and local anesthetics.
I sat in a heavy leather armchair in the corner of the room, drinking bitter black coffee from a styrofoam cup, wrapped in a clean wool blanket someone had tossed over my shoulders. My clothes were ruined; flour, dried blood, and soot had formed an abrasive paste across my arms and neck, but nobody in the room asked me to leave.
The surgeon dropped a deformed lead slug into a stainless-steel basin with a sharp clink.
"Through-and-through flesh wound," the doctor announced, wiping his forehead with the back of his gloved wrist. "The tourniquet saved his leg. Ten more minutes on the asphalt and the tissue necrosis would have forced an amputation."
The doctor turned, looking over his spectacles at me. "Who tied that hitch?"
"I did," I said, setting the coffee cup down. "It's the knot we use to hang cured hams in the smoking shed."
The two armed guards near the door exchanged a quick, bewildered glance.
On the operating table, Vincent stirred, letting out a low, ragged groan as the local block took effect. He turned his head slowly, his dark gray eyes finding me through the sterile fluorescent glare.
"Martha," he croaked, extending a trembling, bloodstained hand toward the corner.
I didn't move immediately. I pulled the wool blanket tighter around my shoulders, stood up, and walked over to the edge of the operating table, looking down at the most feared man in Chicago like he was an unruly customer complaining about stale baguettes.
"You're awake," I said. "Good. You owe me fifty-four dollars for the flour, eight hundred dollars for the fire door, and about three hundred thousand for the bakery that’s currently ashes on Archer Avenue."
Vincent stared at me for three long seconds. Then, slowly, painfully, his chest began to shake.
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He didn't laugh quietly; he laughed until the surgical monitors began to beep frantically, his face flushing with color, his hand reaching out to clamp around my wrist with surprising, unyielding warmth.
"Three hundred thousand?" Vincent rasped, his eyes gleaming with a fierce, terrifying amusement. "Martha, my dear... by sunrise tomorrow, I’m going to buy you the entire street."
