Chapter 11 - FIRE ON LAKE SHORE DRIVE
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The muzzle of Luke’s submachine gun did not waver.
For ten agonizing seconds, the private sixty-floor elevator vestibule was silent save for the muted hum of the building's ventilation system. Outside the panoramic windows, Chicago stretched out beneath a ceiling of iron-gray clouds, unaware that its underworld was imploding at the top of the skyline.
"Ten years, Luke," I said, my voice dead, flat, and hollow. "I pulled you out of the Cook County lockup when you were twenty-one. I made you a multimillionaire. I gave you half my kingdom."
"And you’re throwing it away for a girl who used to scrub your baseboards!" Luke snarled, a crack finally appearing in his stone-faced mask. His eyes burned with an ugly mixture of guilt, desperation, and rage. "Look at you, Danny! Look at what you’ve become! You used to be an apex predator. You ruled the five families with fear and iron discipline. Now? You’re buying bankrupt nursing homes! You’re smashing wine decanters in public over street insults! You’re bringing a civilian into the line of fire!"
"She took a bullet for me," I said coldly.
"She’s a distraction!" Luke roared. "Moretti offered me fifty percent of the combined port operations. Total immunity from Hayes’s federal commission. All I had to do was give up the gate codes and deliver you to the industrial yard."
"Where is she, Luke?"
"She's at the old grain silos by the Calumet canal," Luke answered, his finger tightening slightly on the trigger. "Moretti is waiting there. He wants you to come alone, unarmed, in your chair. He wants to watch you crawl before he puts a bullet behind your ear and throws you in the water."
"And you think Moretti will let you live afterward?" I asked, a thin, razor-sharp smile touching my lips. "You really are an idiot, Luke. Moretti never leaves a loose thread. The minute I’m dead, his Detroit shooters will put two rounds into your skull and dump your body in the canal right beside mine."
A flicker of doubt crossed Luke's eyes. It was barely a twitch of the eyelid, but in a gunfight, a fraction of a second is an eternity.
I didn't reach for a gun. I reached for the control console on my wheelchair.
With my thumb, I hit the emergency boost switch wired directly to the high-torque dual motors—a tactical modification designed to breach obstacles. The titanium chair shot forward like an eighty-pound battering ram, launching across the five feet of marble floor at twenty miles per hour.
The footplates of the heavy frame slammed directly into Luke's shins with a sickening *crack*.
Luke screamed as bone gave way. His submachine gun fired wild, sending a burst of 9mm rounds chewing through the acoustic ceiling tiles, raining plaster and copper casings onto our heads. He toppled backward, clutching his fractured leg.
Before he could bring the muzzle back down, I lunged forward out of the seat with all the violent upper-body power I possessed.
My hands locked around his throat.
We crashed onto the marble floor. Luke fought like a rabid animal, punching my ribs, tearing at my injured shoulder, but my grip was an iron vise. The phantom fire in my legs vanished, swallowed completely by the roaring inferno of pure, unfiltered bloodlust.
"Where is Emma?" I hissed, slamming his head against the stone floor. "Tell me the access codes to the silo compound!"
Luke choked, his face turning dark purple, his hands clawing uselessly at my wrists. "T-two... four... nine... nine..." he wheezed through crushed vocal cords. "Main... gate... bypass..."
I didn't kill him. Death was too easy a mercy for a traitor.
I drew my customized Five-seveN from my shoulder holster, brought the heavy steel butt down across his temple with brutal force, and knocked him unconscious.
I dragged myself back into my wheelchair, breathing heavily, wiping Luke's blood from my knuckles with the hem of my silk tie. My shoulder burned with searing agony, but I ignored it.
I picked up Luke's satellite phone from the floor and dialed my private line to Jackson, the security lead at the estate.
The phone rang twice.
"Jackson," I barked into the receiver.
"Boss!" Jackson answered, panting, sirens wailing in the background. "I’m in the medical van with Mrs. Gable. She took a graze to the arm, but she's stable. Boss, Luke betrayed us—"
"I know," I said. "Luke is neutralized on the sixtieth floor of Vance Tower. Call the loyal tactical squads. Bring every heavy vehicle, every drum magazine, and every body armor plate we have in reserve. We are going to the Calumet grain silos."
"Understood, Mr. Vance. How many men?"
May you like
"All of them," I snarled, rolling toward the private garage elevator. "Burn the city down if you have to. If a single hair on Emma Carter's head is harmed, I will leave nothing alive in Chicago."
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