Chapter 7 - The Final Confrontation
The loading dock hung directly over the churning black waters of Lake Michigan. Rain fell in thick, freezing sheets, turning the metal walkway into a treacherous sheet of ice. A fifty-foot luxury speed boat was idling against the pylons below, its twin engines churning white foam into the dark waves.
Victor reached the gangway, his bodyguard turning to fire back at Adrian.
I raised my weapon, steadying my breath just as my father had taught me on our private hunting grounds in Montana. Breathe in, hold, squeeze.
The shot cracked through the roar of the lake wind. The bodyguard’s shoulder exploded in red, his gun flying over the railing into the water as he collapsed onto the wet planks.
Victor turned around, his eyes wild with desperation as he saw Adrian closing the distance like a relentless predator. Victor raised his own silver revolver, aiming straight for my chest.
“If I’m going down, the little princess goes with me!” he screamed.
Adrian threw himself horizontally through the air, his shoulder slamming into Victor’s chest with the force of a freight train. Both men crashed violently onto the slick metal gangway, skidding toward the edge of the drop. The revolver flew out of Victor’s hand, clattering against the metal before plunging fifty feet down into the freezing lake.
The two men wrestled on the edge of the abyss. Victor, driven by the frantic survival instincts of a cornered beast, gouged his thumbs toward Adrian’s eyes. Adrian grunted in pain, rolling sideways, delivering two brutal, bare-knuckle blows into Victor’s ribs that sounded like breaking timber.
Victor gasped for air, his vision swimming, but he managed to pull a serrated combat knife from his boot. He lunged upward, aiming for Adrian’s exposed throat.
I moved forward, racking the slide of my weapon. “Adrian! Drop!”
Adrian dropped his head back instantly, trusting my voice without a second of hesitation.
I fired. The bullet ripped through Victor’s right forearm, severing the muscle and sending the knife clattering to the deck.
Adrian swept Victor’s legs out from under him, rolling on top of him and planting his heavy knee squarely onto the older man’s throat. Adrian’s hand reached behind his back, drawing his own blade—a custom Damascus steel dagger with the DeLuca crest stamped into the hilt.
The tip of the blade hovered precisely one millimeter above Victor’s jugular.
Victor lay pinned, coughing blood onto the freezing metal deck, the wind howling around us like a chorus of condemned souls. The warehouse behind us had gone dead silent; the gunfire had ceased, replaced by the crisp, authoritative commands of DeLuca enforcers securing the surviving Marcone loyalists.
“Wait,” I said, stepping up to the edge of the platform, the cold rain plastering my dark hair to my face.
Adrian looked up at me, his eyes dark, feral, and wild with adrenaline. His chest heaved against his wet shirt, blood from his reopened collarbone mingling with the rainwater. “He tried to kill you twice today, Evelyn. He doesn't get to breathe our air.”
“Death is too easy for him,” I said, looking down at Victor with cold detachment. “If you kill him here, his lieutenants will fight for the scraps and turn Chicago into a war zone for the next five years. We take his business. We take his shipping permits. We take every bank account in Switzerland, Panama, and the Caymans. We strip the Marcone name until his family is begging on the corners of the Loop.”
Victor let out a wet, rattling gasp under Adrian’s knee. “You... you’re a devil, Hart...”
Adrian stared at me. The feral darkness in his eyes slowly shifted into something approaching awe. A slow, breathtaking smile broke across his bruised, blood-streaked face.
“You heard my wife,” Adrian whispered down into Victor’s ear, pressing the blade just deep enough to draw a single bead of crimson. “Sign the digital asset transfers Dante brings you, or I let her decide what happens to the rest of you.”
Adrian stood up smoothly, wiping the blade on Victor’s ruined coat before sliding it back into its sheath. He reached out his hand to me.
May you like
I looked at his open palm, battered, bleeding, but steady as a mountain. I placed my cold hand in his. His fingers curled around mine with a warmth and strength that grounded me against the raging storm.
“Let’s go home,” Adrian said softly.
