Chapter 8 - The Cornered Rat
With Marcus supporting Adrian’s wounded frame, we moved down the private service stairwell into the underground parking complex. The concrete cavern smelled of burning rubber, cordite, and copper. Adrian was losing blood fast, his heavy footsteps dragging against the pavement, but his right hand never loosened its grip on his weapon.
Near the southern exit ramp, Luca Rossi was pinned down behind an armored black SUV, surrounded by five dead mercenaries and two burning sedans. His tailored Italian suit was torn and covered in soot, his face pale with the frantic terror of a trapped beast.
“Adrian!” Rossi screamed into the echoing garage, his voice cracking with hysteria. “Call off your dogs! We can negotiate! I’ll hand over all my shipping contracts! I’ll pay fifty million in cash!”
Adrian leaned heavily against a concrete pillar, his chest heaving, blood steadily dripping from his jacket hem onto the gray floor. He raised his weapon, his arm shaking slightly before steadying into granite.
“You broke the ancient code, Luca,” Adrian said, his voice echoing off the high ceiling like rolling thunder. “You targeted my wife. You brought your filth inside my home. There are no contracts that buy your life back from that.”
“Your wife?” Rossi laughed wildly, poking his head out from behind the SUV’s reinforced door. “She doesn’t even want you! Sofia played her like a cheap violin! Claire, ask him what really happened to your father’s warehouse! Ask him who held the matches!”
My breath hitched. I looked at Adrian, whose face remained an unreadable, stony mask despite the agony wracking his body.
“My father’s warehouse was torched by your family, Rossi,” I said, stepping out from behind the pillar into plain view, ignoring Marcus’s frantic warning. “I found the original bank transfers thirty minutes ago in Adrian’s private safe. You paid the arsonists thirty million to burn my father’s fleet so you could monopolize the Great Lakes shipping lane. Adrian bought the debt to keep your cartel from butchering my mother and me in our sleep.”
Rossi’s jaw dropped. The final lie he had clung to as a bargaining chip evaporated into thin air. He raised his machine pistol toward me in a final, desperate act of spite.
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Before he could pull the trigger, Adrian shoved Marcus aside, stepped completely out of cover, and fired twice.
The bullets punched clean through the SUV’s windshield, striking Rossi squarely in the chest. Chicago’s most ruthless cartel leader collapsed backward onto the cold concrete, his weapon clattering harmlessly away into the darkness.
