Chapter 8 - The Raid at the Depot
The abandoned railway depot on 4th Street groaned under the weight of the howling Chicago blizzard. Rusted iron beams hung from the cracked ceiling, and snow drifted through broken skylights, dusting the rotting wooden floorboards.
In the center of the vast warehouse, illuminated by the harsh yellow glow of halogen work lights, stood Mateo Moretti and Aaron Pike.
Aaron paced nervously, rubbing his hands together in the freezing air. He wore an expensive leather jacket—bought with stolen loan money—and kept checking his gold wristwatch.
“She’ll be here, Mateo,” Aaron stammered, intimidated by the four heavily armed Moretti enforcers flanking him. “Maya is weak. She’s terrified of me. She’s bringing the master codes, I swear it.”
Mateo Moretti, a scarred, burly man with cold, calculating eyes, spat onto the snow. “She better. If this is a setup, Pike, you’re the first one who takes a bullet.”
Suddenly, the heavy metal sliding doors at the far end of the depot creaked open.
A solitary figure stepped through the swirling snow, wrapped in a long dark coat, clutching a thick leather ledger against their chest.
Aaron grinned, stepping forward triumphantly. “See? What did I tell you? Come on, Maya! Bring it here!”
The figure stepped into the circle of halogen light.
Aaron’s smile instantly withered and died.
It wasn't Maya.
Standing before them was Roman DeLuca, dressed in an immaculate charcoal wool overcoat, his eyes burning like twin coals in the dark. Behind him, emerging like phantoms from the shadows of the depot, were twenty armed DeLuca soldiers, their assault rifles raised and locked onto the Moretti crew.
“Looking for someone, Pike?” Roman’s voice cut through the howling wind like an executioner’s blade.
Mateo Moretti instantly reached for his weapon. “Ambush! Fire!”
Before a single Moretti soldier could raise their barrel, the glass skylights shattered into a rain of crystalline shards. Two high-caliber sniper rounds cracked through the warehouse, dropping Moretti’s front two gunmen in an instant.
Chaos erupted. Gunfire roared through the hollow depot, muzzle flashes illuminating the rusted walls like strobe lights. The DeLuca men moved with ruthless, terrifying efficiency, flanking and suppressing the Moretti crew within seconds.
Mateo Moretti dove behind a rusted train car, clutching a bleeding shoulder. “DeLuca! This isn't over!”
“It is for you,” Roman said calmly, firing three rapid, suppressed shots through the rusted metal. Moretti slumped to the ground, disarmed and defeated, as Marco and three men pinned him to the floor.
Across the room, Aaron Pike screamed in terror, dropping to his knees and scrambling backward toward a broken window.
Roman didn't rush. He walked across the snow-covered floor, his polished leather boots crunching rhythmically against the gravel.
“P-Please!” Aaron wept, holding up his hands, his face pale as a corpse. “Mr. DeLuca, I didn't know! It was Moretti’s idea! Maya is my wife, I was just trying to get her back!”
Roman stopped two feet from Aaron, looking down at him with utter disgust.
“You forged her name,” Roman said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “You broke her knee on a staircase. You left her with forty thousand dollars in debt to scavenge for scraps. And then you tried to use her as a weapon against my family.”
“I’m sorry! I’ll sign whatever you want! I’ll leave the country!” Aaron sobbed, pressing his forehead against Roman’s boots.
Roman pulled an envelope from his pocket, tossing it into the snow before Aaron’s face. Inside were Aaron’s forged promissory notes, recovered from the loan sharks’ office an hour earlier by Roman’s enforcers.
“You aren't leaving the country, Pike,” Roman said coldly. “You’re going to a maximum-security state penitentiary for bank fraud, extortion, and interstate racketeering. The federal prosecutor on my payroll has enough evidence to put you in a cage for thirty-five years.”
Roman leaned down, grabbing Aaron by the collar of his jacket and lifting him effortlessly off the ground.
“If you ever speak Maya’s name again,” Roman whispered, his dark eyes boring into Aaron’s soul, “prison will be the safest place on earth for you. Because if you ever step outside those walls, I will feed you to the lake.”
Roman dropped him back into the freezing slush. “Marco. Hand him over to the federal marshals.”
“Yes, Don Roman.”
Roman turned his back on the pathetic, weeping man, stepping out into the clean, falling snow. The air was frigid, but inside his chest, Roman felt an unfamiliar, burning urgency.
May you like
He didn't care about the victory over Moretti. He didn't care about the territory he had just secured.
All he wanted was to return to his mansion—to the woman who had brought music back into his home.
