Chapter 7 - Ambush in the Winter Rain
The warehouse on 47th Street was a cathedral of rusted iron, peeling paint, and frozen mud.
Rain had replaced the snow, coming down in cold, gray sheets that turned the Chicago streets into black mirrors. Inside the cavernous industrial space, three black SUVs were parked in a semi-circle, their headlights cutting through the darkness, illuminating the exhaust rising from idling engines.
Mitchell Vance stood near the hood of a Ford Explorer, wearing a tactical jacket with the police patches stripped off. He was checking the slide on an unregistered Glock 19.
At thirty-six, Vance was broad-shouldered, thick-necked, with a face that might have been handsome before heavy drinking and unchecked cruelty had bloated the skin around his eyes.
"Petrov's crew is ten minutes out," one of Vance’s dirty tactical partners, an officer named Miller, muttered nervously, checking his watch. "Vance, I don't like this. Going after Rossi's personal transport? The man owns half the city council! If this blows back on us—"
"Shut your mouth," Vance snarled, slamming the magazine home with a vicious *slap*. "Rossi is a guinea gangster who got lucky. He took my girl. He think he can take my property and hide behind his lawyers?"
Vance shoved the Glock into his tactical holster, his eyes burning with frantic, manic rage.
"Harper is mine. She doesn't breathe without my permission. When we hit that car on Lake Shore Drive, you put two in Rossi's head and pull her out of the back seat. I'm going to make her watch him bleed out on the asphalt, and then she’s going to learn what happens when she runs."
A low, mechanical creak echoed through the warehouse.
The massive metal roll-up doors at the far end of the facility slowly began to grind upward.
Vance spun around, hand on his weapon. "Petrov?"
The headlights of a single vehicle cut through the rising exhaust.
It wasn't Petrov's battered conversion van.
It was a heavy, armored Maybach, gliding silently across the oil-slicked concrete floor like a black ghost. It stopped thirty feet from Vance's SUV.
The engine cut out.
Silence fell over the warehouse, save for the drum of rain on the corrugated tin roof.
Vance pulled his weapon, stepping forward, his heart pounding in his throat. "Miller, cover the flank!"
The driver's door of the Maybach opened. Marco stepped out, dressed in a long wool overcoat, his hands empty at his sides. He didn't draw a gun. He didn't take cover. He simply stood by the driver's door, watching Vance with cold amusement.
"Where is she, you son of a bitch?" Vance bellowed, aiming his pistol directly at Marco’s chest. "Where is Harper?"
The rear door of the Maybach swung open.
Gabriel Rossi stepped out.
He wore a bespoke charcoal three-piece suit, pristine and entirely out of place in the derelict warehouse. He buttoned his jacket with one hand, his posture relaxed, almost bored.
Then he turned and extended his other hand into the vehicle.
A slender, trembling hand took his.
Harper stepped out into the harsh glare of the SUV headlights.
She was wearing a thick black wool coat that Gabriel had bought for her that morning, a cream-colored cashmere scarf wrapped around her neck, hiding the fading bruises. Her hair was pulled back, her face scrubbed clean of makeup.
She was pale, but she wasn't hiding.
She stood beside Gabriel Rossi, her shoulder brushing his arm, her eyes fixed entirely on Mitchell Vance.
Vance froze. The sight of her—not beaten, not begging on the floor of their kitchen, but standing beside the most powerful man in Chicago, wearing clothes that cost more than Vance made in a year—shattered something inside his mind.
"Harper?" Vance stammered, his gun wavering for a fraction of a second. "Harper, get the hell away from him! Get over here! Now!"
Harper didn't flinch. For the first time in three years, the sound of Mitchell’s screaming voice didn't make her drop to her knees.
She looked at him, and through the roaring silence in her head, she realized something astonishing.
He looked small.
Without his badge, without his heavy boots, without the locked door of their apartment to protect him from the world, Mitchell Vance was nothing more than a frightened, violent little boy holding a piece of cold steel.
"No, Mitchell," Harper said.
Her voice wasn't loud, but in the echoing expanse of the warehouse, it carried like a bell.
"You bitch—" Vance roared, raising the weapon to aim directly at her chest.
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Before his finger could even tighten on the trigger, the high-vaulted glass skylights thirty feet above exploded outward in a hail of shattering glass and flashing strobes.
***
