Chapter 4 - The Ghost of the North Side
Across the city, inside a heavily fortified penthouse overlooking the dark, churning waters of Lake Michigan, Damian Voss poured himself a glass of neat vodka and stared at the silent computer screen on his desk.
The green light of the surveillance repeater in the Moretti chapel had blinked out at 11:42 PM.
Ten minutes later, his encrypted audio feed had gone dead.
"She failed," a cold voice murmured from the shadows near the floor-to-ceiling windows.
A tall man stepped forward into the dim light of the penthouse. Viktor Vance—Marcus’s uncle and Damian’s primary enforcer—wore a tailored charcoal suit that concealed a tactical vest beneath the fabric. His face was scarred by a knife wound he had received during the dock wars of '08, and his eyes were dead, flat stones.
"Valentina didn't fail," Damian said slowly, swirling the vodka in his crystal glass. "She got greedy. Or worse, she fell for the romantic tragedy of Lorenzo Moretti."
"Does she have the key?" Viktor asked.
"She had it. Whether Lorenzo found it is another question entirely," Damian replied, setting his glass down with enough force to crack the crystal rim. "The wedding was supposed to be our entry point. With the chapel doors unlocked from the inside, we could have taken the entire estate before sunrise without firing a single shot that would alert the commission."
"And now?"
"Now we change the rules," Damian said, a dangerous, razor-thin smile cutting across his face. "If we can't walk through the front door as family, we go through it as a storm. Gather the strike team. Call the contacts we have inside the harbor police to ensure our perimeter routes are clear."
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Viktor didn't move immediately. "Lorenzo Moretti isn't a man who gets caught napping twice, Damian. He’s got half the North Side paying tribute and the other half terrified of him. If we hit the estate openly, it’s an act of war that will bring every family down on us."
"Let them come," Damian laughed softly, the sound devoid of all human warmth. "War is the only language Lorenzo understands. And it’s time I taught him how to speak it fluently."
