Chapter 11 - The Trap at Navy Pier
Don Carmine Romano looked like a patrician senator, draped in an expensive
cashmere overcoat, his silver hair impeccably combed. But beneath the
aristocratic veneer were the dead, reptilian eyes of a sociopath who had ordered
dozens of men into shallow graves.
Beside him stood Isabella.
She had managed to cut her zip-ties, her wrists raw and bleeding, her ruined
gown replaced by an oversized trench coat. Her eyes were burning with rabid,
feral hatred as she glared at me.
“You should have let the girl rot in the gutter, Adrian,” Don Romano rasped, his
voice sounding like dry leaves scraped across stone. “You should have married my
daughter and accepted the peace we offered you.”
Adrian didn't flinch. He casually picked up the leather ledger from the
pedestal, tucking it beneath his left arm, while his right hand hung relaxed by
his side.
“You poisoned my father in the Palmer House, Carmine,” Adrian said, his voice
deceptively calm. “You locked Thomas Morgan in an asylum for fourteen years. You
tried to murder his wife tonight. You have no peace to offer anyone. Only dirt.”
Don Romano sneered, tapping his gold-headed cane against the limestone floor.
“Your father was soft. He wanted to clean our money. He wanted to build
hospitals and endow universities. He forgot that blood built this city, and
blood is the only currency that keeps it in line.”
He gestured with his cane toward the vault door.
“Kill them both,” Don Romano commanded casually, turning his back to walk toward
the elevator. “Burn the ledger. We dump their bodies into the Chicago River
before the breakfast crowd hits the Loop.”
The eight gunmen raised their weapons.
“Claire! Into the vault!” Adrian yelled.
In a single, violent motion, Adrian threw his weight against the massive, open
manganese steel vault door.
The ten-foot circular slab, balanced on precision bearings, swung shut with a
terrifying roar of displaced air just as a deafening storm of automatic gunfire
erupted down the corridor.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Hundreds of high-caliber rounds slammed harmlessly against the exterior of the
vault door, sounding like heavy hail on a tin roof.
The pneumatic seal engaged.
We were inside. Locked safely behind ten feet of impenetrable armor steel.
I collapsed against the teak wood paneling, my hands over my ears, my chest
heaving with panic. “Adrian! We’re trapped! They can hold the outside until we
starve!”
Adrian walked calmly to the rear wall of the teak room. He didn't look worried
in the slightest.
“You think my father built a vault ninety feet beneath the river with only one
way out?” Adrian asked.
He reached up to the decorative teak molding along the ceiling, finding a hidden
brass toggle switch.
He flipped it.
The entire back wall of teak wood swung inward on a counterbalanced hinge,
revealing a concrete staircase leading directly down into an old, brick-lined
utility tunnel.
“The old Chicago freight tunnels,” Adrian explained, pulling his phone from his
coat. The screen showed full signal—relayed through a hardwired fiber-optic
cable running through the conduit.
He brought the phone to his ear.
“Vince. Are the federal marshals in position at Navy Pier?”
A crisp, clear voice came through the speaker. “Full joint-task-force mobilized,
Boss. FBI, ATF, and three tactical squads. The moment Romano’s convoy leaves the
financial district, we have them boxed in on the lower level of the drive.”
“Tell them to initiate the perimeter,” Adrian said. “Romano is heading for his
private yacht at the Navy Pier docks. That’s his escape route to international
waters.”
“Understood. We’re moving.”
Adrian hung up, looking down at me. He held out his hand.
“Come, Claire. Let’s go watch an empire burn.”
I took his hand. He pulled me up, and together we sprinted down into the dark
freight tunnels beneath the city.
We emerged ten minutes later through an old mechanical hatch inside a closed
parking garage near the riverwalk. Waiting at the curb was another DeLuca
pursuit vehicle.
We roared onto Lake Shore Drive, heading north toward the dark expanse of Lake
Michigan.
The sky above the lake was just beginning to turn from pitch black to a bruised,
violet-gray. The first cold rays of dawn were cutting through the low-hanging
clouds over the water.
In the distance, the iconic Ferris wheel of Navy Pier stood outlined against the
sunrise like a giant iron skeleton.
And speeding along the pier’s lower commercial access road was a convoy of three
black Romano sedans, their tires squealing as they broke toward the private
marina at the end of the dock.
Moored at the end of the pier was a 120-foot luxury yacht—the Sirena. Its diesel
engines were already churning the dark water into white froth, preparing to cast
off into the open lake.
“He’s trying to reach Canadian waters,” Adrian said, slamming his foot down on
the accelerator.
Our SUV surged forward, closing the distance at ninety miles per hour.
Suddenly, from every intersecting alley, access ramp, and pier entrance, the
dawn exploded into a blinding constellation of red and blue flashing lights.
Sirens wailed in a deafening, unified chorus.
Dozens of armored federal vehicles, police cruisers, and black tactical vans
swarmed onto the pier, cutting off the entrance, blocking the ramps, and
completely boxing in the Romano sedans.
A megaphone boomed across the concrete, rattling the windows of the pier
pavilion:
“This is the Federal Bureau of Investigation! Carmine Romano, step out of the
vehicle with your hands raised! The harbor is locked down! Turn off your
engines!”
May you like
The Romano sedans skidded to a halt, trapped against the water.
The doors flew open.
