Chapter 2 - Blood on the Asphalt
The Escalade glided to a smooth stop outside a faded gray brick building on West Belmont Avenue. On the ground floor, the fluorescent lights of 'Suds & Bubbles' laundromat buzzed behind soap-smeared windows. Above it sat four narrow apartments, their fire escapes rusted by decades of harsh Midwestern winters. It was a modest, working-class neighborhood where people kept their heads down and minded their own business.
Nina reached for the chrome door handle, suddenly feeling the weight of the night crashing down on her like a lead apron. “Well. Thank you for the ride, Boss.”
“Nina.”
She paused, looking back over her shoulder. Luca had unbuckled his seatbelt. He was staring out the driver’s side mirror, his posture rigid as a coiled steel spring.
“Don't open the door yet,” he commanded, his tone sharp and entirely devoid of the gentle warmth from moments earlier.
“What? Why?”
“Behind us,” Luca said, his hand sliding smoothly beneath his charcoal overcoat toward the leather holster strapped beneath his shoulder. “Black sedan without plates. It’s been tracking two blocks behind Gus since we exited the expressway.”
Nina’s stomach plummeted. She glanced at the side mirror. Just past the streetlight, an unmarked black Dodge Charger sat idling in the shadows, its headlights killed, engine purring like a caged predator. Before she could process the image, the Charger’s driver-side door flew open.
A man stepped out, clad in tactical black, carrying a short-barreled automatic rifle.
“Get down!” Luca barked.
He lunged across the center console, his massive frame covering Nina completely as he slammed her down against the leather floorboard. A deafening roar shattered the quiet morning. The sound was not the muffled pop of television gunfire; it was an ear-splitting, concussive rip of high-velocity metal tearing through the night.
Bullets peppered the Escalade’s exterior with horrific thuds. The reinforced ballistic glass spiderwebbed instantly into dense, opaque patterns of white fractures, but it held. Nina screamed, her hands flying over her ears as the vibrations shook the vehicle down to its chassis.
“Stay low!” Luca snarled in her ear. Nina could smell him up close—bergamot, expensive tobacco, and the crisp, clean scent of iron. He drew a heavy matte-black pistol from beneath his coat, his movements chillingly calm despite the storm of lead hammering against the car.
Behind them, gunfire erupted in return. Gus and the second bodyguard were engaging the shooters. The sound of shouting, screeching tires, and shattered storefront glass echoed down Belmont Avenue. A burst of sparks illuminated the interior as a round struck the Escalade’s side mirror, shearing it completely off the frame.
Luca shifted his weight, kicking the Escalade into reverse. He stomped the gas. The massive SUV roared backward with brutal force, slamming into the front bumper of the Charger with a bone-jarring crunch of twisting metal and deploying airbags. The shooter on foot leaped out of the way, tumbling across the sidewalk directly into the laundromat’s plate-glass window, which shattered into a thousand glittering shards.
“Gus!” Luca yelled through a dashboard comm unit. “Flank them!”
“On it, Boss!” Gus’s voice crackled through the speaker alongside the staccato rhythm of return fire. “It’s the Petrov syndicate! They followed Tommy’s trail from the south docks!”
Nina was trembling violently against the floorboards, her knees pulled tight to her chest. She had treated hundreds of gunshot victims, dug lead out of shattered flesh, and pumped blood into dying bodies. But being on the receiving end of an assassination squad was an entirely different nightmare.
Luca threw the transmission back into drive, spinning the heavy steering wheel with one hand while keeping Nina pinned down with the other. The heavy tires found traction on the wet street, smoking as the vehicle rocketed away from the curb.
“You’re hit,” Nina gasped suddenly, her professional instincts cutting through the panic.
In the dim light of the dashboard, she saw dark crimson soaking through the cuff of Luca’s right sleeve. A stray fragment had penetrated the door frame seal during the impact, slicing through his forearm.
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“It’s a scratch,” Luca grunted, accelerating hard down a side alley toward the industrial corridor along the river.
“Shut up and let me look at it!” Nina snapped, scrambling up onto the passenger seat despite the swerving motion of the vehicle. “I didn't survive a twenty-hour ER shift and a drive-by just to watch my driver bleed out on his bespoke leather upholstery!”
