Chapter 4 - The Threshold of Fire
Marcus Vance kicked the dented front door of Apartment 3B open with enough force to splinter the wooden frame.
The lock gave way with a pathetic crack. Vance stepped inside, a cigarette dangling from his thin, scarred lips, flanked by his two primary enforcers, a pair of hulking street-brawlers nicknamed Hammer and Twitch.
“Elena!” Vance barked, his voice nasal and thick with bourbon. “Where the hell are you? The first of the month was yesterday, you little bitch! Get your ass out here before I take that television out of the kid’s room!”
Silence answered him. Only the faint ticking of a cheap plastic wall clock broke the quiet.
Vance walked down the narrow, peeling hallway, his sneer deepening into a scowl. He kicked open the bedroom door. The twin beds were made, but the sheets had been stripped bare. The plastic pill organizers Sofia used for her daily immune suppressants were missing from the counter. The closet doors stood wide open, clothes hangers dangling empty like rib bones.
“What the fuck is this?” Vance snarled, spinning around. “Hammer! Check the drawers!”
Hammer rummaged through the bureau, tossing empty shoeboxes across the floor. “Nothing, boss. No cash. No papers. Looks like they skipped town.”
“Skipped town?” Vance’s veins bulged against his thick neck. He stormed to the window, staring down into the courtyard. “She owes me four hundred grand! She doesn’t take a shit in this city without my permission! Find her! Check the bus station, check the airports, check that damn laundromat—!”
“She’s not at the bus station, Vance.”
The calm, icy voice came from the apartment doorway.
Marcus whipped around, his hand instinctively diving beneath his leather jacket toward the grip of his nine-millimeter pistol.
He froze.
Standing in the small, dingy kitchen of the tenement were four men. They didn't look like street muscle. They wore tailored black overcoats, earpieces, and carried themselves with the lethal, silent posture of military operators. Their silenced submachine guns were raised, pointing dead-center at Vance and his men.
Through the doorway stepped Damian Reyes.
In the peeling, water-damaged apartment, Damian looked like a visiting god of war. His tailored charcoal suit was spotless; his polished Italian leather shoes stepped cleanly over the chipped linoleum floor. He didn't carry a weapon. He didn't need to. The entire atmosphere in the room shifted, the air thinning until Vance found it difficult to breathe.
“Who the hell are you?” Vance blustered, trying to mask his rising panic with bravado. “This is private property! I’m the landlord here! You got ten seconds to back the fuck out before I call the Twelfth Precinct!”
Damian smiled. It was a cold, humorless movement of his lips that sent a chill straight down Vance’s spine.
“Captain Miller at the Twelfth Precinct?” Damian asked softly, pulling a silver cigarette case from his pocket, taking a single clove cigarette, and lighting it with a gold lighter. “You won’t be reaching him today, Marcus. Captain Miller was relieved of his badge three hours ago by the federal prosecutor’s office. It seems his off-the-books payroll records were anonymously delivered to the Department of Justice.”
Vance’s face lost all color. Captain Miller had been his primary shield, the man who buried domestic violence reports and looked the other way when tenants vanished.
“I don't know who you think you are—” Vance started.
“I am Damian Reyes.”
The name fell like an anvil onto the floor.
Behind Vance, Hammer visibly flinched, his eyes darting toward the fire escape in sheer panic. Everyone in the Chicago underworld knew the Reyes family. They controlled the docks, the shipping lanes, the unions, and the private security firms that guarded the city’s billionaires. Marcus Vance was a tick feeding on stray dogs; Damian Reyes owned the entire forest.
“Mr... Mr. Reyes,” Vance stuttered, his bravado evaporating like mist under the sun. “There’s been a mistake. I didn't know the Cruz girl had friends in high places. If she belongs to you, you should have just called. We could have worked out a settlement on her father’s debt—”
Damian crossed the room in three strides. Before Vance could even register the movement, Damian’s left hand shot out like an iron vise, locking around Vance’s throat and slamming him backward against the wall.
Plaster cracked behind Vance’s skull. His feet dangled two inches above the linoleum. He clawed frantically at Damian’s fingers, but the mafia boss’s grip was unyielding as stone.
“Her father’s debt is dead,” Damian whispered, his face inches from Vance’s bulging eyes. “And you are living on borrowed seconds. You laid your hands on Elena Cruz. You broke her skin. You made her bleed.”
“Please—” Vance wheezed, his face turning dark purple.
“If you speak her name again, I will cut out your tongue,” Damian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “If you step within five miles of her or her sister, I will burn down every building you own with you chained inside the basement. Am I clear?”
Vance nodded frantically, his hands flailing.
Damian dropped him like a sack of wet garbage. Vance hit the floor, coughing violently, gasping for air while clutching his bruised throat.
Damian took a pristine silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiped his hands, and tossed the cloth onto Vance’s chest.
“Christian,” Damian said without looking back as he walked toward the door.
“Yes, Boss?”
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“Break both his wrists. Let him see how clumsy he feels for the next six months.”
***
