Chapter 6 - The Cicero Standoff
The Cicero rail yard was a graveyard of rusted iron and rotting wood, surrounded by a chain-link fence that rattled against the freezing Chicago wind. Inside an old, converted locomotive warehouse, the air was freezing, identical to the night Serena had thrown Lily into the snow.
Lily was tied to a heavy iron chair in the center of the concrete floor. Her face was bruised where Serena’s guard had struck her during the abduction, but her eyes were clear, fixed on the woman pacing in front of her.
Serena Vale looked haggard, her beautiful hair tangled, her fingers stained with grease and gun oil. She held a heavy silver revolver in her right hand, tapping the barrel against her thigh.
"He threw away everything for you," Serena hissed, stopping in front of Lily, her face twisting into a mask of pure jealousy. "An empire. My family. My reputation. He made me a fugitive for a rat who cleans floors!"
"He didn't do it for me, Serena," Lily said, her voice steady despite the terror thumping in her veins. "He did it because you're a monster. You would have killed him eventually, just like your father was stealing from his allies. He saw through you."
Serena screamed, raising her hand to strike Lily across the face.
"Touch her again, Serena, and I’ll peel the skin off your fingers one by one," a voice boomed from the shadows of the warehouse entrance.
The heavy steel doors of the rail yard were torn open by a massive armored truck. Adrian Hawthorne stepped out of the vehicle, his long black overcoat blowing in the wind. Behind him stood fifty fully armed Hawthorne soldiers, their weapons raised, outnumbering the Moretti crew three to one.
Don Camillo Moretti, a middle-aged New York mobster with a heavy gold chain, stepped out from behind a line of rusted train cars, his hands raised in a mock gesture of peace. "Hawthorne! Let's be reasonable here. The girl means nothing to me. Serena brought me the shipping codes, but honestly? They’re useless without your signature. Let's make a trade. You give me forty percent of the northern pipeline, and you can take your little maid back to your castle."
Adrian didn't look at Moretti. His eyes were fixed on Lily, taking note of the bruise on her cheek. The cold, analytical industrialist was gone; the Wolf of Chicago had broken out of his cage.
"Moretti," Adrian said, his voice dropping into a register that made even the New York soldiers flinch. "You brought twenty men into my city. You touched the only thing in this world that belongs to me. There is no trade. There is only a funeral."
Adrian raised his left hand and dropped it.
The warehouse erupted into a symphony of violence. Adrian’s snipers, positioned on the roof of the adjacent buildings, took out Moretti’s perimeter guards in a fraction of a second. Marcus led the ground assault, a storm of kinetic energy that tore through the New York faction with terrifying efficiency.
Serena panicked, spinning around and pointing her revolver directly at Lily's head. "Stay back, Adrian! I’ll blow her brains out! I swear to God I will!"
Adrian didn't stay back. He walked forward through the crossfire, his eyes locked onto Serena’s shaking hand. A bullet grazed his shoulder, tearing through his wool coat, but he didn't even blink.
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"You don't have the courage, Serena," Adrian said, his voice echoing over the gunfire. "You're a coward who hides behind guards and wealth. Pull the trigger on me. Leave the girl out of it."
Serena’s eyes darted from Adrian to the slaughter of her men around her. In a moment of pure, unadulterated madness, she shifted her aim from Lily to Adrian’s chest and pulled the trigger.
