Chapter 96 – The Burning Skyline
“Vincent?”
Emma’s voice cut through the dark, small and strained.
“I’m here,” Vincent’s deep voice answered instantly.
A second later, the soft amber glow of a tactical chem-light illuminated the darkness as he cracked it against his knee.
The vault door was blackened, warped, and welded shut from the extreme electrical discharge.
But through the cracked, heat-stressed viewing port, the catwalk outside was gone.
The breach in the cavern ceiling was still open, framed by smoke and falling flakes of winter snow.
Above them, the heavy gunship had pulled up out of the blast radius, hovering fifty yards higher in the freezing Chicago sky.
“The door is fused,” Vincent assessed, checking his sidearm’s slide.
“They can’t get in through the hatch.
But Jonathan didn’t die.
Men like him don’t die that easily.”
Suddenly, the secondary emergency transmitter on the desk crackled to life.
It wasn’t Jonathan Vance this time.
It was the voice of Michael Kane, Vincent’s trusted head of security on the surface.
“Boss!
Vincent, do you copy?!”
Kane’s voice was distorted by heavy static and the distinct sound of automatic gunfire in the background.
Vincent snatched the handheld transceiver.
“Kane.
Status.
What is happening up there?”
“All hell is breaking loose downtown!”
Kane shouted over the deafening rattle of a mounted machine gun.
“Multiple assault teams hit the Moretti Tower ten minutes ago!
They have surface-to-air coverage over the Loop.
They’ve shut down the city’s power grid—half of Cook County is completely blacked out!
The Mayor has declared a state of emergency, but CPD dispatch is compromised.
They’re trying to burn the empire to the ground from the outside!”
Emma stepped closer to the radio, her face pale.
“They’re trying to force us out by destroying everything else.”
“Kane,” Vincent ordered, his voice icy and controlled.
“Where is my grandmother?
Where is Elena?”
A brief, terrifying pause hung over the radio.
When Kane spoke again, his breath was ragged.
“The private residence in Gold Coast was targeted first, boss.
We repelled the initial breach, but Mrs.
Moretti… she refused to evacuate to the bunker without you.
She’s holding the estate with twelve loyal men.
They’re surrounded.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened until the muscles in his cheek twitching like taut steel wires.
Elena Moretti was the matriarch who had raised him after his father’s murder, the woman whose honor Emma Ward had defended with her bare hands at that fateful gala weeks ago.
“Listen to me, Kane,” Vincent said, every word clipped and lethal.
“Activate Protocol Omega.
Blow the eastern retaining wall of the subterranean vault.
We are coming up through the auxiliary rail tunnel under Michigan Avenue.
Be there with the convoy.”
Chapter 97 – The Council of Ash
While the underground complex smoldered, seventy floors above the snow-swept streets of Chicago, the grand penthouse of the historic Drake Hotel had been turned into a forward command post.
Jonathan Vance stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, sipping black coffee from a bone china cup.
His bespoke suit was stained with soot, and a small cut on his temple was freshly bandaged, but his composure had completely returned.
Behind him, seated around an antique mahogany table, were four individuals who represented the hidden machinery of the American Midwest: the state’s deputy attorney general, the regional director of federal intelligence, the chief executive of the third-largest commercial bank in the country, and the commander of the state national guard’s tactical reserve.
“The vault was fused,” Jonathan said without looking back at them.
“Moretti used Marcus Ward’s failsafe.
We lost eight operators.”
“Jonathan, this has gone too far,” the bank executive whispered, sweating through his silk shirt.
“The blackout is already making national headlines.
Wall Street futures are plummeting.
If the federal reserve traces the liquidity freeze back to our shell accounts—”
Jonathan turned slowly, his eyes narrowing into cold slits.
He placed his coffee cup onto the saucer with a sharp, delicate clink that made the banker flinch.
“If we do not capture Emma Ward and secure the master cipher by sunrise,” Jonathan said in a dead, quiet voice, “your bank will not exist by noon tomorrow.
Neither will your family’s trust funds, your offshore estates, or your immunity agreements.
You agreed to sit on this Council because you wanted the wealth of kings.
Kings do not panic when a candle flickers out.”
The commander of the tactical reserve cleared his throat.
“The Moretti Tower is holding.
Their private security is military-grade.
And our spotters at the lakefront report that the auxiliary blast doors near the river have just been detonated from the inside.
Vincent is on the surface.”
A dark, cold smile crept back across Jonathan Vance’s face.
“Of course he is.
He is a Moretti.
He believes in honor, blood, and territory.
