Chapter 9 - The Sound of Glass Breaking in the Quiet Hours of River North
Back in the River North loft, midnight had come and gone, leaving the massive space bathed in the silver-blue glow of the moon reflecting off the icy Chicago River.
Cara sat cross-legged on the floor near the drafting table, surrounded by scattered sketches, charcoal pencils, and cups of lukewarm coffee. Her hair was pulled back in a loose clip, and a smudge of graphite stained her left cheek.
She hadn't felt this alive in five years.
Every line she drew on the heavy vellum paper felt like an act of reclamation—taking something abandoned, broken, and forgotten, and designing a future for it.
She didn't hear the freight elevator hum.
She didn't hear the muffled footsteps crossing the wide oak floorboards near the far end of the loft.
She only heard the sudden, violent shattering of glass.
Crash!
The sound exploded through the silence of the warehouse, followed immediately by the acrid, stinging stench of gasoline and chemical accelerant.
Cara scrambled to her feet, dropping her charcoal pencil.
From the far corner of the loft, near the exposed brick pillar, a ball of orange flame blossomed across the floorboards, licking greedily upward toward the iron beams.
A Molotov cocktail.
"Fire!" Cara gasped, panic freezing her blood for a single, terrifying second before survival instinct kicked in.
She grabbed the heavy ceramic pitcher of cold coffee from the drafting table and hurled it at the spreading flames, but it was like spitting on a bonfire. The fire hissed, fueled by the fresh stream of gasoline, and surged toward the wall shelving containing her historical surveys.
Footsteps echoed loudly—running toward the freight elevator.
Someone had breached the building, bypassed the security gates, and tried to burn her alive while she slept.
Cara didn't hesitate. She grabbed the fire extinguisher mounted beside the industrial kitchen alcove, pulled the metal pin with trembling fingers, and aimed the nozzle at the base of the fire, sweeping side to side as a choking cloud of white chemical powder filled the air.
The flames hissed, sputtered, and finally died away, leaving behind a charred patch of blackened flooring, a sickening smell of burnt oak, and a trail of soot creeping up the white brick wall.
Cara stood frozen in the white haze of the extinguisher powder, coughing violently, her hands shaking so hard she dropped the red metal cylinder onto the floor.
She walked slowly over to the broken window.
Far down in the dark, sleet-slicked alleyway below, a black town car was peeling away from the loading dock without its headlights on, disappearing into the labyrinth of River North streets.
Her phone buzzed violently on the drafting table.
She stumbled back across the room, snatched up the phone, and swiped to answer.
"Vito," she breathed, her voice cracking.
"Cara," Vito’s voice came through the speaker instantly—not calm, not professional, but edged with a dark, terrifying velocity that made her freeze. "Marcus just alerted me to a perimeter breach at your building. Are you unharmed?"
"Someone... someone threw a bottle through the window," she stammered, tears of adrenaline finally breaking free down her soot-stained cheeks. "A firebomb. I put it out with the extinguisher, but the drafting table... the floor..."
"Listen to me very carefully," Vito interrupted, his voice dropping into that absolute, unyielding register of a warlord preparing for battle. "Do not touch anything. Do not leave the loft. Marcus is three minutes away with an armed detail. I am five minutes behind him."
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"Vito, who was it?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Who would do this?"
"Someone who mistook my architecture for a weakness," Vito said quietly, the line going dead with a sharp click.
