Chapter 8 - THE PRESIDENTIAL SUITE
The Drake Hotel stood like an ancient limestone mountain at the top of the Magnificent Mile.
Snow swirled around its grand marquee, coating the black sedans lining the curb in layers of white frost.
At four-fifteen in the morning, the lobby was silent, lit by dim crystal chandeliers and the hushed murmurs of the night concierge.
The private service elevator on the basement level chimed softly.
The brass doors slid open.
Gabriel stepped out first.
He wore a tailored charcoal wool overcoat over his tactical vest, his collar turned up against the cold.
His MK18 carbine was broken down, concealed within a black leather garment bag slung over his shoulder.
Beside him walked Clare.
She wore a long, heavy camel-hair coat provided by the boathouse lockers, the left sleeve hanging loose over her splinted arm.
Her posture was tall, upright, radiating an icy, aristocratic confidence that made the night porter look away in instinctive submission.
Marcus and four elite operators in plain dark suits followed, their hands buried deep in their overcoat pockets.
They took the private executive lift straight to the twenty-fourth floor.
No card key was required.
Marcus inserted an override keycard seized from Leo’s office an hour earlier.
The elevator climbed silently.
Floor twelve.
Floor eighteen.
Floor twenty-four.
The doors opened onto a plush, carpeted foyer lined with gilded mirrors and oil paintings of Old Chicago.
Two armed guards in gray suits stood outside Suite 2400.
They saw Gabriel.
Their jaws dropped.
Their hands moved toward their armpits.
They never cleared leather.
Marcus and Paul stepped forward with suppressed automatic pistols.
Phut. Phut.
Two soft, pneumatic coughs echoed through the hallway.
The guards slumped silently against the wallpaper, caught by the operators before their heels could strike the floor, and dragged into the housekeeping closet.
Gabriel stepped up to the double mahogany doors of Suite 2400.
He did not knock.
He did not pick the lock.
He planted his heavy combat boot directly beside the brass deadbolt with the force of an artillery shell.
CRACK.
The solid oak doors burst inward, the door frame splintering into matchsticks.
Inside, the suite was bathed in the warm, golden light of floor lamps.
A crystal ice bucket sat on the mahogany bar, three bottles of Dom Pérignon uncorked and sweating.
Sitting at the grand dining table was Carlo Moretti.
Sixty-five years old.
Silver hair slicked back, wearing a silk dressing gown, a fat Havana cigar burning between his fingers.
Standing beside the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lake Michigan was Leo Vain.
Leo held a champagne flute in his hand.
He was laughing.
The laugh died in his throat.
The crystal flute slipped from Leo’s fingers, crashing onto the hardwood floor in a shower of foaming champagne and glass.
Carlo Moretti choked on his cigar smoke, leaping to his feet so fast he knocked his high-backed armchair backward onto the carpet.
“G-Gabriel...?” Carlo stammered, his wrinkled hands shaking violently.
“You burned,” Leo whispered, his voice cracking into high-pitched hysteria.
“The whole north wing collapsed into the cellar!”
Gabriel stepped into the suite.
His heavy overcoat fell open, revealing the black tactical armor beneath.
He did not draw a weapon.
He simply walked across the room with long, deliberate, predatory strides.
Each step was measured.
Unrushed.
Absolute.
Clare walked in behind him, stopping in the center of the doorway.
She looked at Leo.
Her hazel eyes were devoid of fear, devoid of sorrow, burning with cold, pure judgment.
Leo saw her left arm in the synthetic splint.
He saw the gold wedding band gleaming on her right hand.
The blood drained from Leo’s face until he looked like a corpse standing in front of the window.
“Clare...” Leo choked out, backing into the glass.
“You brought the girl,” Carlo Moretti stammered, trying to reach for the drawer of the side credenza.
Gabriel moved.
The speed of an awakened Alpha predator was terrifying.
Gabriel crossed fifteen feet in half a second.
His left hand caught Carlo Moretti by the throat, hoisting the two-hundred-pound mob boss off the floor and slamming him face-first onto the mahogany dining table.
The crystal decanters shattered.
Wine and blood mingled across the white linen cloth.
Gabriel drew a nine-inch combat blade from his thigh sheath.
With one brutal stroke, he drove the blade through Carlo Moretti’s right palm, pinning the old man’s hand three inches deep into the solid mahogany tabletop.
Moretti shrieked in agony, his legs kicking frantically against the chairs.
“Do not touch that drawer, Carlo,” Gabriel said softly.
His voice was conversational.
Deadly.
Gabriel turned his back on the screaming patriarch.
He looked at Leo Vain.
Leo was pressed flat against the floor-to-ceiling glass, his hands raised in front of his chest like a child pleading with an executioner.
“Gabriel, listen to me!” Leo begged, tears streaming down his face.
“Carlo forced me!”
“He had my sister in Palermo!”
“He was going to kill my family if I didn't set the shipyard fire!”
“Your sister died six years ago of leukemia in Milan, Leo,” Clare said from the doorway.
Her voice rang clear and cold through the suite.
“I managed Gabriel’s private charitable foundations for two years.”
“I paid her funeral expenses from our family trust.”
Leo’s eyes bulged in horror.
The lie died in his throat.
“You took forty million dollars from the Moretti syndicate to betray my husband,” Clare continued, stepping forward into the light.
“You stood in the burning shipyard and watched him pin beneath the gantry.”
“You left an old deaf man to die on the service road tonight.”
She stopped three feet from Leo.
She did not flinch from the sweat and terror rolling off him.
“You are not a soldier, Leo.”
“You are a scavenger feeding on the scraps of men who have honor.”
Leo’s eyes darted toward the open balcony door three feet to his left.
The winter wind was howling through the gap, billowing the sheer white drapes into the room.
Twenty-four stories above the freezing concrete of Michigan Avenue.
In a split second of blind, animal desperation, Leo reached inside his silk vest for a concealed snub-nosed revolver.
“DIE, YOU BITCH!” Leo screamed, leveling the barrel at Clare’s chest.
Gabriel did not draw his gun.
He did not take aim.
Gabriel launched his entire six-foot-four frame across the room like a charging locomotive.
May you like
He caught Leo by the throat and waist, their combined momentum shattering the plate-glass balcony door into a thousand flying shards.
They tumbled out onto the narrow, snow-covered stone terrace twenty-four stories above the city.
