Chapter 7 - The Siege of South Chicago
The rain had turned to freezing sleet by midnight, coating the industrial warehouses of the South Chicago shipping yards in a slick, dangerous sheet of ice.
A convoy of three black armored SUVs tore down the desolate access road, their headlights cutting through the swirling blizzard like lasers.
Inside the lead vehicle, Adrian Moretti sat in total silence, his fingers resting calmly on the grip of a Sig Sauer pistol, his face carved out of obsidian marble. In the passenger seat beside him, wearing a dark tactical turtleneck and heavy boots, sat Claire Bennett.
She wasn't hiding in Zurich. She wasn't sitting in a penthouse suite waiting for news. When Adrian had tried to lock her in the panic room before leaving the tower, she had picked up a heavy bronze paperweight and threatened to smash every computer monitor in his command center unless he handed her a radio and let her ride in the lead car.
She was a Moretti now, in the eyes of the underworld whether she liked it or not, and she refused to let men like Dante Russo burn down everything she loved without a fight.
“The main warehouse is up ahead,” Viktor’s voice crackled over the secure radio from the second vehicle. “Russo’s primary security detail is dug in behind the loading docks. At least thirty armed men.”
Adrian picked up his radio mic. “Don't clear the docks. Draw them out. I want Russo to know I’m coming for him personally.”
The convoy screeched to a halt fifty yards from a sprawling, dilapidated shipping warehouse where a single halogen light burned above the reinforced iron doors.
Before the vehicles had even fully stopped, gunfire erupted from the shadows.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Bullets sparked violently against the armored plating of the lead SUV.
“Stay down,” Adrian ordered, throwing his arm across Claire’s chest.
“I’m not staying anywhere,” Claire said. She reached into the glove compartment where Viktor had stashed a secondary encrypted comms unit and slapped her hand against the door release.
Before Adrian could stop her, she hit the floor, rolled out the passenger side door, and scrambled behind the thick, reinforced concrete barrier of a drainage ditch alongside the access road.
Adrian swore loudly, kicking his own door open and sliding out into the freezing sleet, his pistol raised.
Within seconds, total chaos exploded across the yard.
Adrian’s enforcers moved with terrifying precision, returning suppressive fire that drove Russo’s men back toward the warehouse doors. The sound of automatic gunfire echoed off the frozen concrete, shaking the night air.
Claire stayed low behind the concrete barrier, her heart hammering against her ribs, listening to the encrypted radio chatter in her earpiece as Viktor coordinated flanking maneuvers from the eastern perimeter.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement.
A heavy-set man in a dark tactical vest had slipped out of a side door of the warehouse, creeping stealthily along the shadow of a stacked shipping container—directly behind the position where Adrian was pinned down behind an overturned forklift.
The man raised a submachine gun, taking aim at Adrian’s back.
There was no time to think. No time to call for backup.
Claire scrambled backward across the icy gravel, grabbed a heavy iron wrench that had been left behind by a road crew, and stood up out of the ditch.
“Hey, asshole!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
The gunman spun around in surprise.
Before he could swing his weapon toward her, Claire hurled the heavy iron wrench with every ounce of strength in her body. It caught him square in the temple with a sickening thump.
The man collapsed instantly onto the frozen asphalt, unconscious.
Adrian, who had heard the commotion, spun around just in time to see the gunman hit the ground and Claire standing twenty feet away, chest heaving, holding a smoking pistol she had swiped from the unconscious guard’s holster.
Adrian’s gray eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated shock.
“Did you just...?” Adrian started, lowering his weapon for a fraction of a second.
“Shut up and watch your six!” Claire yelled back, pointing frantically toward the loading dock.
Adrian snapped back to reality, raised his pistol, and fired two precise shots that neutralized the remaining snipers guarding the main entrance.
Three minutes later, the gunfire died down into a tense, smoking silence.
The heavy iron doors of the warehouse were kicked open from the inside. Viktor and two other enforcers emerged, dragging a cursing, bloodied Dante Russo out into the sleet and throwing him onto the frozen concrete at Adrian’s feet.
Russo looked up, his nose broken, spitting blood onto the ice, sneering up at Adrian.
“You think this makes you safe, Moretti?” Russo spat, laughing hysterically. “There’s always another syndicate. Always another war—”
Adrian didn't let him finish. He stepped forward, pressed the barrel of his pistol firmly against the center of Russo’s forehead, and the courtyard went dead silent.
“The war ends tonight,” Adrian said, his voice dropping into a tone so cold and lethal it made Russo’s laughter die in his throat.
He didn't pull the trigger. He didn't have to.
With a swift, brutal kick, Adrian shattered Russo’s knee, and the older crime lord collapsed into the mud, screaming in agony.
May you like
“Take him to the southern freight yards,” Adrian instructed Viktor without looking back. “Put him on a cargo ship bound for South America. And make sure he knows that if he ever sets foot in Illinois again, I’ll feed him to the lake.”
“Done, boss,” Viktor said, hauling Russo up by his tactical vest like a ragdoll.
