Chapter 2: “Ashes in Chicago”

(Chicago, 1994)(Chicago, 1994)

Snow fell like dust over the South Side, catching the sodium light and softening nothing. The old meatpacking warehouses along Canal Street had new tenants — importers, fixers, men with scars under their coats.

Inside one of them, Anthony “Tony” DeLuca stirred sugar into his espresso and watched Tunde Adeyemi across the table. The Nigerian had brought the cold with him, a tension that seeped into the concrete.

“So,” Tony said, tapping the spoon. “You say these stones are clean?”

Tunde smiled. “Clean enough to shine.”

Tony laughed once, dry and low. “Everything shines before it gets dirty. You know how many Africans told me that line this year?”

Amara sat two seats down, silent, her hair tied back, wearing a gray coat that made her look like she belonged nowhere. The Maseko brothers had stayed behind in Johannesburg, but their diamonds were here — hidden in crates of frozen tilapia marked for export.

Chike, under a false name, now worked as a dockhand on the receiving end of those shipments. He hadn’t seen Amara in six months. Lagos and Johannesburg were behind them, but the pattern hadn’t changed: money moves, bodies follow.

Tony leaned forward. “Let me be straight with you, Tunde. I don’t care where your rocks come from. I care if they get me killed. You start moving through my port without telling me, you’ll end up in the lake.”

Tunde’s smile didn’t break. “Then I’ll make sure you’re the first to know.”

He slid a small velvet pouch across the table. Tony peeked inside — three large stones, clean, brilliant, impossible.

“Well, hell,” Tony murmured. “Maybe you people do have God’s favor.”

“Only the devil’s patience,” Amara said quietly.

Tony looked at her then. “You’re funny.”

“She’s more than that,” Tunde interrupted. “She keeps me alive.”

That wasn’t true anymore.

That night, Amara sat in a small apartment above a laundromat on 63rd Street, the city howling through the gaps in the window frames. She poured herself a drink, the kind that burned enough to feel like truth.

The knock came at midnight — soft, deliberate.

“Who is it?”

“Laundry.”

Her heart stopped. She opened the door.

Chike stood there in a dockworker’s jacket, snow crusted on his shoulders.

“You really don’t die easy,” she said.

He smiled faintly. “Neither do you.”

He stepped inside, shaking off the cold. “I’ve been watching the docks. They’re moving diamonds under fish shipments. Next one leaves for New York in two days. You’re going with it?”

She didn’t answer.

“Amara, if you stay with him—”

She cut him off. “It’s not about him. It’s about what he owes me.”

“What could he possibly owe you?”

“Freedom,” she said. “And a passport with a name that’s mine.”

He studied her face — the exhaustion, the edge. “You don’t believe he’ll ever give it.”

“No,” she said. “That’s why I’ll take it.”

She poured him a glass of whiskey. “You still drink it neat?”

He nodded, but his hand shook when he took it.

Down below, a siren wailed, then faded into the city’s endless hum.

“You know he’s meeting the Italians tomorrow night,” Chike said. “If you want to disappear, that’s the window.”

Amara stared at him. “And you? You’ll just walk away?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. If you come with me.”

She laughed — not kindly. “You think I can just leave? You think Lagos, Johannesburg, Chicago — they don’t follow you?”

He looked at her for a long time. “Then maybe we stop running.”

There was a silence — soft, dangerous, intimate. The kind that carried more truth than any confession.

Then she said, “Tomorrow. The docks. Midnight.”

He nodded once, finished his drink, and left.

The next night was colder. The river looked black enough to swallow whole men. Tunde’s convoy rolled up under the rail bridge — two vans, four armed men, and Tony DeLuca himself, in a wool coat too clean for the weather.

“Shipment’s ready,” Tony said. “Your cut goes east. My cut stays.”

Tunde nodded. “And our friend in New York?”

“Waiting,” Tony said. “He’s got buyers lined up. You’ll like him — smooth talker, drinks gin, hates cops.”

Tunde smirked. “My kind of man.”

Amara stood apart, her breath fogging in the dark. Her eyes darted toward the docks — a shadow moved there. Chike.

He signaled once, subtle.

Tunde noticed her glance. “Who are you looking at?”

“No one,” she said.

But it was too late.

Two of his men turned toward the crates. “Check it,” Tunde ordered.

Gunfire cracked through the night — fast, sharp. Chike fired first, dropping one guard before the second spun and returned fire. The echo bounced off the steel. Tony ducked, cursing.

Amara hit the ground, rolling behind a stack of crates. Tunde shouted her name, then vanished behind the van door, shooting into the shadows.

“Chike!” she called.

He was bleeding from the shoulder but still moving, dragging a crate toward the water. “Get down!”

Another shot — closer.

Tunde advanced, gun steady, eyes full of disbelief. “You?” he hissed. “You were the leak?”

Amara’s hand trembled on her pistol. “I was the one you underestimated.”

He fired. She fired back. The flash lit her face white.

Tunde staggered, hit once in the chest. The gun fell from his hand, clattering against the ice.

He looked at her, mouth opening to speak — maybe her name, maybe a curse — then collapsed.

Sirens again. Closer this time.

Chike limped to her side, clutching his wound. “We have to move.”

She stared down at Tunde’s body. Snow was already dusting over it, like the city was trying to bury the evidence.

“New York,” she whispered. “That’s where the rest of the diamonds are going.”

He nodded. “Then that’s where we go.”

She looked at him — this man who had followed her across continents, who had killed for her now.

“Do you still believe we can stop running?” she asked.

He gave a faint, broken smile. “Maybe not. But we can choose the direction.”

She took his hand, cold against hers, and led him toward the waiting freight train that cut through the night like a slow-burning fuse.

Behind them, Chicago burnedwith sirens and betrayal. Ahead, the tracks curved east — toward New York City, and whatever waited there in the snow.