Chapter 1 - The Blood on the Marble
The private dining room at Solace did not smell like a restaurant anymore. It smelled like an open grave.
Alio Valente remained on his knees, his expensive custom-tailored trousers soaked through with the grey, stagnant puddle of filth and rainwater that had pooled beneath the mastiff. Tommy Keen stood five feet back, his hand still hovering nervously over the Sig Sauer at his hip, his eyes darting from the dying dog to the blank, terrifying expression on his boss's face.
None of the twenty-four patrons in the main dining room dared to peek through the archway. They could hear the hum of the high-end ventilation system fighting a losing battle against the rot.
"Alio," Tommy murmured, taking a cautious half-step forward. "The back door is open to the alley. It could be a trap. A distraction. You know how the North Side crew operates. They send a diseased animal, your guard drops for three seconds, and—"
"Shut up, Tommy," Alio whispered.
The command was so quiet it barely disturbed the air, yet Tommy froze as if struck with a cattle prod.
Alio’s fingers, calloused from decades of holding weapons and counting currency that smelled of blood, brushed against the mastiff’s skull. The bone felt like dry timber under paper-thin skin. The animal's breath hitched, a dry, rattling wheeze that rattled deep within a chest cavity scraped bare by malnutrition. Yet, despite the agony radiating from its swollen, infected front leg, the dog did not flinch. It leaned its massive, ruined head directly into Alio’s palm.
Five years ago, Alio would have seen this as a symbol. A sign of weakness to be purged, or an enemy’s sick joke. But since the car bomb on Lincoln Park that took his mother’s life—since the day he learned that power could not stop a spark from reaching a gas tank—Alio had stopped looking for omens. He only looked at what was real. And right now, what was real was a creature that had crawled through a mile of Chicago winter sleet just to die at his feet instead of a dumpster.
"The vet," Alio said, his voice dropping an octave as he finally turned his head to look up at his head of security. "Where is Dr. Miller?"
"He's twenty minutes out. Crossing the loop," Tommy said, swallowing hard. "Alio, let us take the dog to the back alley. We can call an emergency clinic. You can't stay on the floor like this. The board members from the shipping syndicate are arriving in forty minutes."
"Let them wait," Alio said.
He didn't move. He used his other hand—steady, unblinking—to trace the thick, jagged scar running down the mastiff’s shoulder. Underneath the matted fur and dried crusts of old blood, he felt something hard. A subcutaneous lump the size of a pigeon's egg, buried deep in the muscle tissue.
"Tommy," Alio said softly. "Look at the scar tissue on his neck."
Tommy blinked, leaning in despite himself. "Looks like a collar was ripped off him. Or... hell. Look at the width of that line. That's not a pet collar. That's a tracking harness. Industrial grade."
Alio's eyes darkened, the slate-grey irises turning the color of a winter sea before a squall. "Find out who owns a security firm or an underground facility using military-grade tracking collars in Cook County. I want a name before the hour is out."
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"And the dog?" Tommy asked, glancing down with a mixture of dread and pity. "If he doesn't survive the night—"
"If he doesn't survive the night," Alio interrupted, standing up slowly with a terrifying, absolute calm, "every single person who touched this animal will spend their final hours wishing they had died in an alley too."
