Chapter 6 - THE SLEEPING LION WAKES
The screen of Clare’s phone glowed like a curse in the dim room.
Her breath left her body in a strangled gasp.
"Oliver," she whimpered.
Her knees buckled.
It was Sebastian who caught her.
The paralyzed mob boss, standing on trembling legs, locked his arm around her waist and held her upright against his chest.
His strength was raw, unpolished, but unyielding.
"Sebastian," she wept, her fingers digging into his forearms.
"They have him. They took my baby."
"They will not keep him," Sebastian said.
His voice was no longer that of an invalid.
It was the voice of a warlord who had conquered the Chicago underworld before he was thirty.
He lowered himself carefully back into the titanium chair.
His legs were shaking from the exertion, but his eyes burned with lethal clarity.
"Gabriel!" Sebastian barked into his satellite radio.
The radio crackled.
"Boss. I have the pawnshop owner in the trunk."
"Forget the pawnshop," Sebastian ordered.
"Corrado’s crew took Clare’s son."
"They're holding him at the old grain silo on Navy Pier."
"Mobilize the Iron Guard."
"Every soldier who took my father's oath."
A heavy silence followed on the channel.
Then Gabriel’s voice answered, thick with reverence:
"They've been waiting twelve years for this order, Mr. Lombardi."
"Tell them the wait is over," Sebastian said.
He rolled his chair to the gun safe behind the tapestry.
He punched in an eight-digit sequence.
The steel door swung open.
Inside hung customized assault weapons, body armor, and tactical radios.
Sebastian strapped a Kevlar vest over his dress shirt.
He picked up a modified MP5 submachine gun and racked the bolt.
"You can't go like this," Clare said, wiping tears from her cheeks.
"You can barely stand for ten seconds."
"I don't need to dance, Clare," Sebastian replied, clicking two spare magazines into his vest.
"I only need to pull a trigger."
He looked at her.
He reached out and took her trembling hand.
His grip was warm, solid, and absolute.
"I swear to you on my father’s grave," Sebastian murmured.
"Oliver will sleep in his own bed tonight."
"Or Chicago will burn to the ground."
Twenty minutes later, four black armored Suburbans roared down Lake Shore Drive in the pouring rain.
No sirens.
No headlights.
Just forty tons of reinforced steel slicing through the midnight fog.
Navy Pier sat like a dark, decaying tooth jutting into the black waves of Lake Michigan.
The abandoned grain silo towered eighty feet into the stormy sky.
Inside the rusted corrugated metal structure, yellow halogen work lights hummed.
Oliver sat tied to a wooden chair in the center of the concrete floor.
His lips were blue.
His small chest heaved in shallow, ragged gasps without his machine.
Standing over him was Corrado Lombardi.
Thirty-eight years old, wearing an Italian leather jacket and smoking a cigar.
Flanking Corrado were eight heavily armed mercenaries in tactical gear.
"He's getting cold, boss," one of the mercenaries said, checking Oliver's pulse.
"He's got ten minutes before his lungs fill up."
"I don't give a damn about the brat," Corrado sneered, tossing his cigar into a puddle.
"I want the watch."
"The micro-film inside that watch has the ledger of every politician I bribed to kill my uncle."
"Once Sebastian brings it, kill the girl, kill the kid, and push the cripple into the lake."
Suddenly, the massive steel roll-up door of the silo imploded inward.
A customized armored Suburban smashed through the iron frame at fifty miles an hour.
Concrete pulverized.
Mercenaries dove for cover.
Flash-bang grenades erupted from the roof vents in deafening sequence.
Blinding white light stripped the darkness away.
Concussive thunder rattled the rusted rafters.
Corrado scrambled behind a concrete pillar, drawing his weapon.
"Fire! Kill them!" Corrado screamed.
The rear doors of the SUV kicked open.
Smoke poured into the cavernous hall.
Through the white haze, a silhouette emerged.
Not in a wheelchair.
Walking.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Each step heavy as an executioner's tread.
Sebastian Lombardi stepped into the halogen glare, an assault rifle tucked against his shoulder.
Corrado’s eyes bulged from their sockets.
His jaw dropped in absolute, paralyzing horror.
"No..." Corrado choked out, stumbling backward.
"You... you can't walk!"
Sebastian raised the rifle.
May you like
His voice cut through the ringing alarms like a steel blade:
"You should have used more poison, cousin."
