Chapter 9 - The Wolf at the Door
Forty-eight hours later, the storm that Adrian had predicted finally broke.
Adrian sat in his penthouse office thirty floors above the city, studying surveillance photographs spread across his mahogany desk. Marcus stood opposite him, holding a tablet displaying encrypted cellular data.
"Julian Mercer wasn't running from Frank Vance," Marcus said grimly. "That was just chump change to keep him in beer money. Julian was working as a courier for the Castiglione family."
Adrian’s eyes narrowed into slits.
The Castigliones were Adrian's only true rivals in the northeast—an old-blood syndicate operating out of South Boston, known for their sheer brutality and complete disregard for the old rules. Adrian had kept them boxed north of the state line for five years through a fragile, bloody peace treaty.
"What did Julian take?" Adrian asked.
"A ledger containing the Castiglione's off-shore laundering accounts. Julian tried to sell it to federal prosecutors for a witness protection deal," Marcus explained. "The feds rejected him. But the Castigliones found out."
Adrian leaned back in his leather chair, a sickening realization crystallizing in his mind.
"They tracked Julian to Clara," Adrian stated.
"Worse, sir," Marcus swallowed hard. "Julian got picked up by Castiglione's men at a bus station in Maine three hours ago. Before they put a bullet in his head, Julian told them he hid the thumb drive containing the ledger in his ex-girlfriend’s apartment. In Leo’s toy chest."
Adrian stood up so violently his heavy executive chair slammed back into the floor-to-ceiling glass window behind him.
"Where is Clara right now?" Adrian’s voice was a low, terrifying roar.
Marcus checked the GPS monitor on his tablet. "She picked up Leo from daycare twenty minutes ago. She’s walking home down 4th Avenue."
"How many men did Castiglione send?"
"A strike team. Six hitmen, led by Viktor Ross. They’re already in the neighborhood."
Adrian pulled his customized Kimber .45 pistol from his desk drawer, racked the slide with a deafening metallic *clack*, and shoved it into his shoulder holster. He grabbed his heavy coat from the stand.
May you like
"Mobilize the entire detail," Adrian commanded, his eyes blazing with a feral, murderous light that Marcus had not seen in a decade. "Every car. Every rifle. If a single hair on that boy’s head or his mother’s is touched, I will turn this city into a graveyard."
***
