Bound to the Mob Alpha's Baby novel · Chapter 3 of 32
Chapter 3: Bolt Cutters
Mickey cuts the chain on his father's shop in front of the whole street and turns down Vin's checkbook, then finds his father's combination notebook stolen.
"Don't touch them," Mickey told her. "I'm coming."
Vin already had his coat back on.
Nonna came in from the hall, took one look at them, and put a foil-wrapped loaf of bread in Mickey's hands.
"For the sister," she said.
Mickey hadn't said he had a sister.
The driver got them to Milwaukee Avenue in twenty minutes, which shouldn't be possible at rush hour.
Corcoran Lock & Key sat between a vape shop and a Polish bakery.
Green door, gold letters on the glass, a brass key the size of a cat hanging over the sidewalk.
Tonight there was a chain through the door handles as thick as a wrist.
A padlock the size of a fist hung off it.
Three men in dark jackets stood in front of the glass with their arms folded.
Aoife was on the curb in her scrubs, red-faced, with her phone up, filming them.
Half the block was out.
The baker was out in her apron, and a man with a stroller had stopped to watch.
And in the middle of it all stood Shawn, holding a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve.
Mickey got out before the car stopped all the way.
"Stay in the car," he said to Vin.
"Mickey."
"It's my shop. Stay in the car."
Vin stayed.
Aoife grabbed Mickey's arm.
"They came in at five," she said. "They told me to get out or get locked in. I got out."
"Good."
"I'm not crying. It's the cold."
"I know."
Shawn held the paper out to Mickey.
"Notice to vacate," he said. "Eighteen thousand four hundred in back rent. Mr. Bianchi's been patient."
"Mr. Bianchi." Mickey looked at his face. "You were stuck in a closet with him an hour ago."
A couple of the neighbors laughed.
Shawn's ears went red.
"It's legal, Mick. You've got till Sunday to clear out your stuff. After that it's his."
"You know what's legal in Chicago?" Mickey said it loud, so the street could hear.
"A judge. You need a court order to put anybody out. A chain on a door is a lockout, and a lockout is a crime."
"Says who?"
"Says the landlord law my dad made me read when I was sixteen."
Mickey walked past him, down the gangway beside the bakery, into the alley.
The back door of the shop had a lock he'd installed himself.
It took him only a moment with the picks on his belt.
His dad's bolt cutters hung on the pegboard where they always hung.
He took them down and walked back out the alley and around to the front.
One of the men stepped toward him.
"I'm pregnant," Mickey said. "You want to be the guy on that girl's phone?"
The man looked at Aoife's phone.
He stepped back.
Mickey set the jaws on the chain beside the padlock and leaned on the handles.
He wasn't big. His dad never cared. He always said a good tool does the lifting.
The chain went with a crack.
It slithered through the handles and hit the sidewalk.
The baker clapped.
Somebody whistled.
Mickey picked the chain up off the concrete and dropped it at Shawn's feet.
"You apprenticed under my father for a year," he said.
"He taught you to cut a key by hand. He bought you your first set of picks."
"Mick, come on."
"You used them to lock his son out of his shop."
"It's not personal."
"You told a man with a syringe where to find me. You stood there while he priced my kid at forty grand."
The street went very quiet.
"You're not a locksmith, Shawn," Mickey said. "You're a key somebody else turns."
Shawn opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
The car door opened behind Mickey.
Vin got out and walked up the sidewalk, unhurried, with his coat open.
The three men in jackets saw him and found somewhere else to look.
Vin stopped beside Mickey.
He took a checkbook out of his inside pocket.
"How much is it," he said to Shawn. "The whole number."
"Put that away," Mickey said.
"It's eighteen thousand."
"It's eighteen thousand four hundred, and it's not yours to pay." Mickey turned so the whole street could see them.
"I don't want your money. Not for rent, not for anything."
"Mickey, you're about to lose the building."
"Then I'll lose it in court, in front of a judge, with my own name on the papers." Mickey looked him in the eye.
"You don't get to buy a piece of my dad's shop. Your family already took enough of it."
Something moved in Vin's face.
It wasn't anger.
Mickey didn't know what it was yet.
Vin put the checkbook back in his pocket.
"Okay," he said.
Shawn looked from him to Mickey and back.
Then he jerked his head, and the three men followed him to a gray van down the block.
Aoife stopped filming.
"Who," she said, "is the tall guy in the coat?"
"Later."
Mickey pushed the green door open, and the bell over it rang like any other day.
The front was fine.
He went through to the back, to his dad's bench.
He still worked at it. He'd never moved his dad's things.
The bottom drawer was open an inch.
The wood around the lock was splintered white, pried with something flat.
He knelt and pulled it all the way out.
His dad's old pencils were there. His loupe. A coffee can of springs.
The black notebook was gone.
Thirty years of combinations in his dad's square handwriting, every safe and vault he ever built.
The Bianchi vault was in it.
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