Chapter 3 - The Gathering Storm
The South Side docks were shrouded in a thick, sulfurous fog rolling off Lake Michigan.
Inside the two-story brick administrative building overlooking Pier 4, Julian Cavallaro sat behind a glass desk, counting stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills. He was thirty years old, handsome, with the same sharp jawline and dark hair as Dante, but his eyes lacked Dante’s stillness. They were twitchy, ambitious, and small.
Across from him sat Silas Vane—a heavy-set man in his fifties with a scarred neck, wearing a white fur-collared coat, smoking a thick cigar.
"Your brother is smarter than you think, Julian," Silas growled, blowing smoke toward the ceiling. "The warehouse meeting was supposed to keep him occupied until my boys cleared out the trash behind Pier 9. But my team in the alley hasn't checked in for two hours."
Julian sneered, waving his hand dismissively. "Dante is a dinosaur, Silas. He thinks like our father did—loyalty, honor, family. He’s been soft ever since that little blond maid started smiling at him last year. For six months, he’s been moping around like a wounded dog because he thought she betrayed him."
"If he finds out she’s alive..."
"He won't," Julian snapped, sliding a stack of cash across the desk. "She’s probably frozen solid by now. And even if he finds her body, the brand on her arm points straight to you. He’ll start a war with your crew, you’ll eliminate each other, and I step in as the sole heir to the Cavallaro territory."
Silas chuckled, a greasy, rumbling sound. "You're a cold bastard, Julian. Doing that to a girl who used to bring you espresso in the mornings."
"She was a nobody," Julian spat. "A penniless orphan from the suburbs who thought she could look at my brother like he was a human being. She belonged in the trash."
BOOM.
The heavy steel reinforced doors downstairs didn't open. They exploded inward with a deafening blast of breaching charges.
The lights in the building instantly flickered and died, plunging the office into pitch-black shadow, illuminated only by the red emergency backup strips along the baseboards.
Silas jumped out of his chair, reaching for the heavy revolver beneath his coat. "What the hell was that?!"
Automatic gunfire echoed from the lower lobby—short, disciplined three-round bursts. No screaming. No chaos. Just the methodical, terrifying sound of professional executioners clearing a floor.
Julian’s face went white as chalk. "That’s not the police..."
The heavy double doors of the office splintered open.
Two smoke grenades clattered across the hardwood floor, instantly filling the room with thick, blinding grey fog. Silas fired three blind shots into the doorframe before a silenced rifle shot cracked through the air.
Silas gasped, dropping his revolver as a heavy bullet tore through his shoulder, pinning him against the glass window.
Through the rolling smoke stepped Dante Cavallaro.
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He wore a dark charcoal wool coat over a black tactical vest. He held a silenced submachine gun in his left hand, his right hand resting casually in his coat pocket. Behind him stood Rocco and ten heavily armed men in black gear.
"Good evening, brother," Dante said softly.
