Chapter 10 - THE CLEAN REPAIR
Inside the dark, freezing root cellar, Norah pressed her back against the damp earth walls, listening to the war raging above her head.
The ceiling shook as heavy boots stormed onto the porch. Glass shattered, wood splintered, and the deafening roar of gunshots echoed through the floorboards. She heard Arthur’s revolver fire three times—slow, deliberate, precise—followed by screams and the heavy thud of bodies falling onto the maple floor.
“He’s in the kitchen!” Sal’s voice bellowed through the ruin of the cabin. “Kill him!”
Norah didn't hesitate. She grabbed the black leather ledger crammed into her jacket pocket, found the stone drainage trench at the rear of the root cellar, and threw her weight against the small wooden door that led outside.
The door yielded with a crunch of frozen pine needles.
Norah dragged herself out into the knee-deep snow behind the cabin, completely hidden by a dense cluster of evergreen trees.
Ten feet away, parked near the edge of the woods, sat Sal Varone’s personal black Suburban—engine idling, driver's side door unlocked, completely unattended while his men stormed the house.
Norah looked at the car. Then she looked at the cabin, where smoke was beginning to pour from the front windows.
She didn't run into the woods.
She scrambled through the snow, reached the driver's door of the Suburban, and climbed inside.
In the center console lay a heavy 12-gauge tactical shotgun left behind by Sal’s driver.
Norah picked up the shotgun. She had never fired a gun in her life, but she remembered how her father had taught her to operate heavy machinery: Understand the lever, safety off, pull the trigger smooth.
She racked the slide back with a loud, mechanical clack.
Norah put the Suburban into drive, slammed her foot down on the accelerator, and launched the three-ton vehicle straight through the wooden rear wall of the cabin.
The heavy SUV shattered the cedar siding, crashing into the kitchen in a shower of flying wood, plaster, and dust.
The impact slammed two of Sal’s hitmen against the stone fireplace, crushing them instantly beneath the front bumper.
Sal Varone, standing near the pantry hatch with his revolver raised, spun around in absolute horror as the front end of the SUV occupied his entire kitchen.
Norah kicked the driver's door open, stepped out onto the smashed floorboards, and leveled the 12-gauge shotgun directly at Sal’s chest.
“Nora?” Sal stammered, stepping back, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“I clean all the floors,” Norah said, her voice dropping into an icy, absolute calm.
She pulled the trigger.
The heavy roar of the shotgun filled the ruined cabin. Sal Varone was thrown backward through the shattered front window, landing motionless in the pristine white snow outside.
Silence fell over the cabin.
The remaining hitmen outside, seeing their boss dead and the kitchen demolished by an SUV, panicked, scrambled into their secondary vehicle, and sped down the dirt track, vanishing into the forest.
Inside the kitchen, dust settled over the wreckage.
Arthur lay on his side near the overturned kitchen table, holding his chest, staring at her through the haze of smoke and plaster dust.
Norah dropped the empty shotgun onto the floorboards with a heavy thud.
She walked over to him, pulled off her stained work gloves, and dropped to her knees beside him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face into his blood-soaked flannel shirt.
Arthur let out a weak, coughing laugh, his good arm wrapping tightly around her waist, pulling her against him.
“You’re terrible at following orders, Nora,” he rasped into her shoulder.
“I’m a maid, Arthur,” she sobbed, holding him tight. “I don't take orders from garbage.”
Three months later.
The city of Chicago looked entirely different in the warm June sunshine.
On the front page of the Chicago Tribune, a headline read: LARGEST MOB BUST IN ILLINOIS HISTORY: SYNIDICATE COLLAPSES AFTER ANONYMOUS LEAK OF FEDERAL LEDGERS.
Don Vitucci, Jimmy Luca, and forty senior capos were currently sitting in federal holding facilities awaiting trial under RICO indictments. The Costello estate had been seized by the state government and put up for auction.
In a quiet, leafy suburb forty miles outside Detroit, a small, two-story craftsman house sat at the end of a peaceful street.
In the backyard, Arthur Costello—wearing a simple grey t-shirt and jeans, his left shoulder bearing a thick, pale scar—was sitting on a wooden bench, watching the sun set over the trees.
The front door opened, and Norah walked out onto the porch carrying two glasses of iced tea.
She wore a simple summer dress, her hair down, her skin warm and clear in the evening light. Her ninety-thousand-dollar debt was gone, cleared by the Federal Witness Protection Program in exchange for the black ledger.
She walked down the steps and sat beside Arthur on the bench, handing him a glass.
Arthur took a sip, then set the glass down and reached out, taking her hand in his. His thumb brushed over her knuckles—no longer split, no longer bloody.
“What are you thinking about?” Arthur asked softly.
Norah looked at the quiet house, the green lawn, and the man sitting beside her—the man who was no longer a boss, no longer a murderer, just a human being sitting in the sun.
“I was thinking about the basement,” Norah said gently.
Arthur turned his head, his grey eyes soft and clear. “Do you miss it?”
May you like
Norah smiled, leaning her head against his shoulder.
“No,” she whispered, closing her eyes as the warm breeze blew through the trees. “The boilers were too loud.”
