Chapter 7 - The Unmarked Sedan in Cicero: When Camille’s Thugs Came Knocking for Wes
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At 10:15 AM, while the tense standoff in the master suite was still reverberating through the walls, my personal phone began to vibrate violently inside the thigh pocket of my scrubs.
It was a call from Cicero. Not Mrs. Gable’s number, but the landline belonging to Mr. Henderson, the retired butcher who lived across the alley from our apartment.
My stomach seized with immediate, sickening terror.
I backed into the adjoining bathroom, turned the brass lock, and pressed the phone to my ear. "Mr. Henderson?"
"Adeline! Thank God you picked up," the old man’s voice wheezed through the speaker, ragged with breathless panic. "There’s trouble on 24th Street. Big trouble."
"What happened? Is Wes okay?"
"Two men in an unmarked black sedan with tinted windows parked right in front of your stoop twenty minutes ago," Henderson whispered hurriedly. "Big guys. Dark suits, earpieces, looking like muscle from downtown. One of them kicked your front door open. Mrs. Gable screamed. She grabbed Wes and ran out through the back alley into my basement before they could reach the stairs!"
The bathroom around me seemed to tilt on its axis. The blood roared in my ears like a freight train.
*Camille.*
She knew I wasn't backing down. She knew the termination letter hadn't worked, and she knew I had caught her red-handed on video last night. Instead of coming after me inside the fortified estate where Nico could protect me, she had sent her syndicate enforcers straight to Cicero to grab my dying little brother.
"Where is Wes right now?" I demanded, my fingernails digging into my palms so hard they drew blood.
"He’s in my coal cellar behind the furnace," Henderson said, his breath hitching. "He’s shivering, Adeline. His lips... they look blue. He’s having trouble catching his breath. The stress... you know his heart can’t take excitement like this."
"Listen to me, Mr. Henderson," I commanded, forcing every drop of my emergency trauma training into my voice to keep from screaming. "In my bathroom cabinet, behind the mirror, there is a red pediatric rescue inhaler with albuterol and a bottle of sublingual nitroglycerin tablets. Did Mrs. Gable grab his emergency kit?"
"Yes, she has the bag."
"Give him two puffs of the inhaler right now. Keep him lying down on his left side. Do not call the local police precinct—the 10th District is in the Ashcroft family’s pocket. Keep the cellar door barred from the inside. I will handle this."
"Adeline, these men aren't leaving," Henderson whispered in terror. "One of them is standing on your back porch right now, talking into a phone. He’s holding a crowbar."
"Give me three minutes," I said and hung up.
I threw open the bathroom door and marched directly into Nico’s room.
Nico was sitting by the desk, reviewing the photographs of the severed brake lines on his tablet. When he looked up and saw my face, his expression hardened instantly. He knew the look of a person pushed beyond the brink of human endurance.
"What is it?" Nico asked, his voice dropping into a low, lethal register.
"Camille sent men to my apartment," I said. My voice was shaking, not with fear, but with a blind, homicidal rage that made my vision blur with red edges. "Two enforcers. They kicked my door in. Wes and my neighbor are hiding in an old butcher’s coal cellar across the alley. Wes’s lips are turning blue, Nico. His heart is failing from the shock."
I stepped toward the desk, slamming both hands down onto the mahogany surface.
"I need your car. I need your driver. And if your men won't help me, I will steal one of your vehicles and drive down the Kennedy expressway myself, and God help whoever is standing on my porch when I get there."
Nico didn't hesitate. Not for half a second.
He reached beneath his desk, pressed a hidden button mounted under the central drawer, and pulled out an encrypted satellite phone that hadn't been touched since his accident. He dialed a three-digit speed dial.
"Rocco," Nico spoke into the receiver.
A gravelly, deep voice answered instantly on speakerphone: *"Boss. We’ve been waiting for your call for eight months."*
"Activate the Cicero crew," Nico commanded, his slate eyes locked onto mine, burning with the cold authority of an emperor ordering a massacre. "24th Street and Austin Boulevard. Two Ashcroft enforcers are trespassing on private property belonging to my medical officer. They are terrifying a sick child."
*"Orders, Boss?"*
"Break their legs," Nico said without a trace of emotion. "Strip their phones, take their weapons, and dump them into the sanitation canal behind the rail yard. If a single hair on that little boy's head is harmed, bring their driver to the Lake Forest boathouse so I can question him personally."
*"Consider it done. We’re four blocks away."*
The line went dead.
Nico set the satellite phone on the desk and looked up at me.
"Rocco was my father’s personal head of tactical security," Nico said quietly. "He doesn't answer to Marco. He doesn't answer to my mother. He took an oath to protect the direct heir of the Alfieri line, and he has thirty men stationed in Berwyn who have been waiting for me to wake up from this nightmare."
I sank into the leather chair opposite him, my legs trembling so violently they could barely hold my weight. I covered my face with my hands, letting out a ragged, shuddering breath.
"He's only seven, Nico," I sobbed, the tears finally breaking through my defenses. "He has never hurt anyone in his life. He folds paper cranes out of grocery store flyers. He thinks people are good."
Nico watched me. Slowly, deliberately, he wheeled his chair around the edge of the desk until he was sitting directly beside me.
He didn't offer hollow platitudes. He didn't offer empty comfort.
Instead, he reached out and placed his large, calloused hand over mine, his grip warm, solid, and immovable as granite.
"He will never have to hide in a coal cellar again, Adeline," Nico murmured, his voice rich and deep, vibrating with a promise that carried the full weight of his bloodline. "I swear that to you on my father’s grave. Today, we put an end to Camille Ashcroft. Today, we take back the city."
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed again.
A text message appeared on the screen from an unknown number:
*[Photo attached: Two men in dark suits kneeling on the asphalt of an alley, their hands zip-tied behind their backs, guarded by four heavily armed men in leather jackets.]*
*Message: Cicero secure. The boy and the old woman are in an armored Suburban heading to Northwestern Children's Hospital private wing under Dr. Morrison's personal protection. Boss's orders.*
A massive, overwhelming wave of relief washed over me, so intense that my vision swirled.
Wes was safe. He was at Northwestern, surrounded by Nico’s most loyal guards, under the direct care of the surgeon who was going to save his life.
I looked at Nico. The tear tracks on my cheeks were still wet, but underneath the exhaustion, something new had ignited inside me.
May you like
"Now," I said, wiping my face with the back of my scrub sleeve, my jaw tightening into stone. "Let's go down to that library and tear Judge Ashcroft to pieces."
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