Chapter 7 - The Final Ambush
The illusion of safety shattered thirty-six hours later.
It was a Tuesday afternoon. Dominic was locked in a high-level summit downtown, transferring the remnants of the Hayes shipping empire into clean logistics corporations.
I had arranged to visit my mother at St. Jude’s Hospital, escorted by four of Dominic’s top personal guards. Elena’s recovery was progressing miraculously; the specialists Dominic hired had stabilized her heart, and she was already walking short distances around the ward.
“You love him, don’t you?” my mother asked, peeling an orange by the sunny window of her private suite.
I looked down at the glittering emerald on my finger, a soft smile curving my lips. “I think I do, Mom. He has darkness in his life, but his heart... he protects the people he loves with everything he has.”
Elena smiled, squeezing my hand. “A woman knows when a man would tear the world apart for her. Just be careful, Lily-bug.”
Ten minutes later, I hugged her goodbye and stepped out into the hospital corridor.
The two guards stationed outside her door were gone.
Cold dread dropped into the pit of my stomach. “Frank?” I called out, taking a cautious step toward the nurses' station.
The corridor was eerily deserted. The lights overhead flickered, then died, plunging the hallway into dim emergency red lighting.
Before I could turn back toward my mother’s room, a gloved hand clamped violently over my mouth, dragging me into the shadows of the fire stairwell.
I fought like a wildcat, thrashing and kicking, my elbow connecting with a heavy jaw. A man cursed in the dark, and a cold metal barrel jammed hard against my temple.
“Stop moving, Carter, or your mother dies in that room right now.”
The voice was venomous, cultured, and terrifyingly familiar.
Marcus Vance.
Dominic’s second-in-command—the man who had stood at Dominic’s right hand for ten years.
“Marcus?” I gasped as he shoved me down the concrete stairs toward the loading dock. “You... you’re working with the Hayes syndicate?”
“The Hayes syndicate were amateurs,” Marcus spat, his grip on my arm like an iron vice. “Victoria was an impatient idiot. She moved too early. But Donald Hayes left behind twenty million dollars in clean offshore bearer bonds. All I had to do was grab Dominic’s little charity case to force him into a swap.”
In the underground loading dock, a black delivery van waited with the back doors open. Two rogue guards—men who had clearly been bought by Marcus—threw me into the cargo hold, binding my wrists with heavy zip-ties.
Marcus stepped in behind me, slamming the van doors shut.
“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, fighting to keep the terror out of my voice. “Dominic will hunt you to the ends of the earth. He knows Chicago better than anyone!”
Marcus laughed, a chilling, hollow sound in the dark van.
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“Dominic Whitmore is a cripple sitting in an office tower downtown,” Marcus mocked. “By the time he realizes you’re gone, we’ll be at the abandoned shipyard on Calumet River. I’m going to bleed him dry of his empire—and then I’m going to make him watch as I put a bullet through that pretty head of yours.”
***
