Chapter 4 - The Iron Line
The meatpacking plant on 4th Street sat near the frozen edge of the Detroit River. Rusting iron girders, broken windows, and the dull hum of a diesel generator made it look abandoned, but four armed sentries paced the snow-covered perimeter.
Inside the ice-cold central holding room, Naomi was chained by her wrists to a vertical steel pipe. Her face was bruised, her winter coat torn, but her dark eyes remained defiantly fixed on the young man sitting across from her on a folding chair.
Leo Valenti—twenty-nine years old, wearing a mink coat and smoking an expensive cigar—tapped his leather boot against the floor.
"Where are the kids, Naomi?" Leo asked, blowing a smoke ring toward the ceiling. "My guys searched your apartment three times. They checked the bus station. A girl and a four-year-old boy don't just vanish into thin air in the middle of a blizzard."
Naomi spat a small drop of blood onto the concrete floor. "They're far away from you, Leo. Somewhere you can never touch them."
Leo laughed, a dry, grating sound. "You think some shelter is going to hide them? This is my city. My father runs the docks, and I run these streets. Once I find them, I'll put them in foster care in Upper Michigan—after you sign over the deed to your mother’s house in Ohio to clear your husband’s debt."
"I’ll die before I sign anything," Naomi whispered through cracked lips.
Leo stood up, tossing his cigar onto the floor, and pulled a heavy silver pistol from his belt. "Then today’s your lucky day—"
BOOM!
The heavy steel loading doors of the meatpacking plant were blown off their hinges by a targeted thermite charge! The shockwave shattered every glass window along the northern wall, filling the air with concrete dust and blinding white smoke!
Before the guards could even draw their weapons, red laser sights danced through the fog.
Silenced gunfire erupted in precise, rhythmic bursts. Pfft-pfft-pfft.
Four of Leo’s guards hit the floor instantly. The remaining three panicked, blind-firing into the smoke, but they were cut down with terrifying tactical efficiency by men wearing black body armor and night-vision goggles.
Leo stumbled back, terror tearing through his arrogant composure as he pointed his pistol toward the ruined doorway. "Who the hell are you?! Do you know who my father is?!"
Through the drifting smoke and falling dust, a tall figure stepped into the room.
Julian Blackwood wore a long slate-gray coat, his dark hair dusted with snow, his hands resting casually in his pockets. Behind him stood Marcus, holding a heavy tactical shotgun, flanked by six armed operatives who instantly locked down every exit.
Julian didn't look at Leo. His eyes traveled across the room until they landed on Naomi, chained to the steel pipe.
Julian stopped five feet from Leo.
"Julian... Blackwood?" Leo stammered, his hand shaking so violently that his gun wobbled. "What... what are you doing here?! This is Valenti territory! We have a treaty!"
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Julian slowly turned his head to look at Leo. The look in Julian’s eyes was so utterly devoid of human mercy that Leo instinctively took two steps backward, dropping his gun onto the cold concrete.
"The treaty died thirty minutes ago," Julian said, his voice dropping into a calm, deadly baritone. "When your men dragged a woman out of her home and left her children in the snow."
