Chapter 5 - The War Room
The penthouse living room had been converted into a command center. Blueprints of the Chicago docklands were spread across the Italian marble dining table, weighed down by tactical radios, encrypted satellite phones, and coffee mugs. Outside, the storm raged against the floor-to-ceiling glass, lightning illuminating the sprawling city below.
I sat on the large velvet sofa, wrapped in a warm fleece blanket, sipping hot broth while the DeLuca medical team finished running an ultrasound.
“Fetal heart rate is 142 beats per minute,” Dr. Elena Rossi announced, wiping the cold gel from my belly with a gentle smile. She had been escorted to the penthouse under armed guard thirty minutes after the alleyway skirmish. “No placental abruption. Cervix is completely closed. Your daughter is a fighter, Naomi. But your blood pressure is high. You need bed rest.”
“I’ll rest when Victor Vance is behind bars or in a cemetery,” I said, sitting up and pulling my sweater down over my bump.
Ronan stood by the window, watching the monitors. He had changed into a black turtleneck and dark jeans, his shoulder holster strapped snugly across his broad chest. Hearing my words, he turned around, a flicker of surprise and reluctant admiration crossing his stern features.
“You’re not fighting, Naomi,” Ronan said firmly. “Your only job is to stay in this fortified suite with Grant and six guards.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m an invalid, Ronan,” I countered, standing up from the sofa and walking directly over to the dining table. “Victor Vance came after me because of the Terminal 4 ledger. He thinks my father hid the physical master drive containing his offshore account keys before he was killed. That’s why he wanted me alive—he thinks I know where the drive is.”
Grant leaned over the table, his eyes narrowing. “Do you know where it is?”
“Of course I do,” I said coolly.
Every man in the room went dead silent. Ronan stepped forward, his eyes locking onto mine with fierce intensity. “Where, Naomi?”
“My father had a safe deposit box at the Old National Bank on Michigan Avenue,” I explained, crossing my arms. “He left me the key inside an antique silver music box on my sixteenth birthday. He told me, ‘If anyone ever comes asking for your father’s retirement, take this key to Box 412.’ I thought it was just his pension papers and my mother’s wedding band. I never opened it.”
“Vance has surveillance on every major bank branch in the Loop,” Grant muttered, running a hand over his buzzed hair. “The second Naomi walks into Old National, Vance’s spotters will alert his strike team.”
“Then we let them,” I said.
Ronan’s jaw set into stone. “No. Absolutely not. I am not using my eight-months-pregnant wife as bait for a cartel hit squad.”
“I’m not bait, Ronan—I’m the trap,” I answered, stepping right up to his chest, refusing to flinch under his imposing glare. “Vance thinks I’m a terrified, naive nurse who just found out her husband is a monster. He expects me to run to that bank to retrieve my father’s legacy and buy a plane ticket out of Chicago. If you stage a public argument outside the penthouse, if you pull your security back just enough to look vulnerable, Vance will send his top lieutenants directly into the bank vault to corner me.”
“And that’s where we ambush them,” Grant realized, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face. “Old National’s vault has reinforced concrete walls and a single entry corridor. Once Vance’s men enter the subterranean floor, we seal the blast doors. They’ll be trapped like rats in a barrel.”
Ronan looked between Grant and me. The struggle inside him was violent, his protective instincts warring with the tactical genius that had kept him alive in the underworld for fifteen years.
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“If a single hair on your head is harmed, Naomi...” Ronan whispered, his large hand coming up to gently cup the nape of my neck, his thumb tracing my jawline.
“Nothing will happen to me,” I said softly, leaning into his touch for the first time in twenty-four hours. “Because my husband will be watching every shadow.”
