Chapter 7 - The Riverwalk Ambush
The peace of the new year was shattered on the third of January by a phone call from the harbor district. Clara was in the main kitchen helping Martha prepare the evening roast when Silas came down the stairs three at a time, his face dark with a rage that made the kitchen staff drop their knives and step back against the wall.
"They found Briggs," Silas said, his voice flat and hard as a lead pipe. "In the trunk of a Buick on the lower Riverwalk. He’s got two bullets in the back of his head and a note stuffed in his mouth from the Vance family."
Clara’s heart stopped. Briggs—the quiet, gruff driver who had given Leo an old set of spark plugs to play with in the garage last week—was dead. And the name on the note wasn't a stranger’s; it was her ex-fiancé’s family. The people who had dumped her debt onto Roman Thorne’s ledger were back, and they were leaving bodies on his doorstep to prove they weren't afraid of his reputation anymore.
Within ten minutes, the estate transformed into an armed camp. Men arrived in black SUVs from the South Side and the harbor warehouses—enforcers carrying heavy canvas bags of ammunition and tactical shotguns. They gathered in the formal dining room, their voices rising in a violent, chaotic crescendo of oaths and demands for immediate retaliation against the West Side Irish and the Vance crew.
Clara kept Leo upstairs in the west garage, locking the door and pulling the heavy velvet curtains shut so he couldn't see the men with guns patrolling the courtyard below. But at eight o'clock, Silas knocked on her door. He wasn't carrying a gift box this time; he was holding a heavy, black Kevlar vest and a small, snub-nosed .38 revolver.
"The boss wants you in the main house," Silas said, handing her the vest. "Put that on under your coat. Bring the boy. You're sleeping in the south vault tonight."
"Silas, what is happening?" Clara asked, her hands shaking as she tried to fasten the Velcro straps of the vest over her wool sweater. "Is Julian—is my ex-fiancé doing this?"
"Julian Vance is a coward who sold his own woman to pay a gambling tab," Silas spat, his eyes scanning the dark woods beyond the garage window. "He's hiding behind Gatti’s people on the West Side now. They think because Roman didn't kill Gatti over those slot machines in October, the Thorne organization is getting old and soft. They're going to try to take the harbor warehouses tonight. If they get through the perimeter, this estate is going to be a shooting gallery by midnight."
When Clara walked into the south wing ten minutes later with Leo clutched to her chest, the library looked like a military command post. Maps of the Chicago riverfront were spread across the mahogany table, weighted down by spare magazines and field radios. Roman was standing by the desk, dressed in his black tactical gear, his face set in that freezing, absolute mask of command that she hadn't seen since the morning Marcus was shot in the foyer.
He looked up as she entered, his eyes immediately dropping to the bulky outline of the Kevlar vest beneath her coat. He didn't say a word to the six captains arguing over the maps; he walked straight across the room, took Leo out of her arms, and set the boy down on the high-backed leather sofa away from the weapons.
"Sit there," Roman told the boy, his tone firm but stripped of anger. "Don't touch the radios. If you hear loud noises outside, you put your hands over your ears and you don't move until your mother tells you to. Understand?"
Leo looked up at the towering man in black armor, his small face solemn. He reached into his overall pocket, pulled out the three-legged plastic T-Rex, and held it out toward Roman’s chest. "Take Barnaby," the boy whispered. "He's better at the dark than the metal ones. He doesn't let the bad men bite."
Roman stared at the green plastic toy for five long seconds. Around the room, the hardened ward bosses fell silent, watching their ruthless syndicate lord being offered a broken piece of garbage by a four-year-old in the middle of a war council. Gatti’s cousin, a man named Varga, let out a low, snorting laugh from the corner of the map table.
"Jesus, Roman," Varga muttered, shaking his head. "We got three hundred men from the West Side moving on our harbor docks with automatic weapons, and you're playing nursery school with the maid's brat. My brother said you'd lost your stomach for the street, but I didn't think I'd see you taking orders from a toddler."
Roman didn't turn around immediately. He took the green plastic dinosaur from Leo’s hand, slipped it carefully into the breast pocket of his tactical vest right over his heart, and then pivoted on his heel to face Varga. The movement was so fast, so blindingly fluid, that Varga didn't even have time to reach for the automatic clipped to his belt before Roman’s hand was around his throat, driving him backward across the map table until the wood cracked under his weight.
"Your brother is an idiot who runs a two-pump gas station on 47th, Varga," Roman hissed, his lead-colored eyes burning with a cold, blue fire that made the other five captains step away from the table in instant, respectful terror. "I haven't lost my stomach for anything. I just decided I'm done listening to men who think killing drivers makes them kings. You want to see if my stomach is soft? Take your twenty men down to the Riverwalk right now. If a single Vance soldier crosses the Cermak bridge alive tonight, I won't shoot you—I'll let Silas hang you from the harbor crane by your ankles until the gulls finish with you."
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He released Varga with a violent shove that sent the captain sprawling onto the Persian rug, then turned back to Clara. His face was pale, his breathing rapid, but his hand was entirely steady as he reached out and touched the collar of her coat, adjusting the Kevlar vest beneath it to cover her collarbone more securely.
"Stay in the vault until I come back," Roman whispered, his voice dropping so low only she could hear the slight tremor in the syllables. "If I don't come back by dawn... Silas has instructions. There’s a car in the north bay with ten thousand dollars in the glove box and clean papers for you and the boy for a house in Wisconsin. Don't look back. Don't ask questions. Just run."
