The porcelain cup trembled in Elena Cruz’s hands before it ever touched the mahogany desk.

Down in the concrete underbelly of Chicago’s industrial district, three miles south of the Reyes estate, an engine roared to life inside an abandoned meatpacking warehouse.

Marcus Vance sat in the passenger seat of an unmarked van, both of his arms encased in thick white plaster casts from his knuckles to his elbows. Pain throbbed through his shattered bones with every heartbeat, but the agony in his arms was nothing compared to the venomous hatred burning in his gut.

The side door of the van slid open. A man wearing a bespoke Italian silk suit stepped inside, accompanied by two bodyguards carrying heavy automatic weapons.

It was Dominic Moretti—the younger, volatile underboss of the Moretti crime syndicate, Damian Reyes’s fiercest rival for control of the Great Lakes shipping corridors.

“Look at you, Marcus,” Moretti mocked, a cruel smirk playing across his lips as he lit a cigar. “Damian Reyes broke your little toys, did he? Word on the street is the King of Chicago put you on your knees in a tenement kitchen over a two-bit cleaning girl.”

Vance gritted his teeth through the pain. “She’s not just a cleaning girl, Dominic. Reyes brought her into his private estate. He took her crippled sister in, too. He moved heaven and earth to wipe out her father’s paper trail.”

Moretti’s smirk faded, replaced by cold, calculating intrigue. “The Ice King has a soft spot? Damian has lived like a monk since his father died. He never keeps women around. He trusts no one.”

“He threatened to burn me alive if I touched her,” Vance hissed, leaning forward. “He put his entire organization on notice for her. You wanted a lever against Damian Reyes? She’s your lever. You take the Cruz girl, and Damian will walk straight into whatever trap you set.”

Moretti took a long drag of his cigar, blowing thick smoke into the enclosed van. A predatory gleam sparked in his eyes.

“Damian controls the northern docks because nobody can touch his inner circle,” Moretti mused softly. “If he’s opened the gate for a pretty little stray from the slums, he’s made his first mistake in ten years.”

Moretti reached into his coat and tossed a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills onto Vance’s lap.