Chapter 3 - The Trap is Set
Back at the memorial hall, the classical music had stopped.
The crystal chandeliers illuminated a room that had grown entirely too tense.
Marcus Reed stood near the exit, checking his watch.
It had been an hour since Adrian walked out with the housekeeper and her kid.
Marcus pulled a phone from his pocket and dialed Adrian’s primary number.
It went straight to voicemail.
He dialed Grace Miller’s number.
Disconnected.
A cold bead of sweat trickled down the back of Marcus’s neck.
He walked briskly to the security perimeter outside the hall. Four men in dark suits stood by a line of black SUVs.
“Where did he go?” Marcus demanded.
“He took the unmarked sedan, sir,” one of the men replied. “Didn’t want a driver.”
“Track the GPS.”
The guard pulled out a tablet, his fingers flying across the screen.
“Sir... the GPS on that vehicle has been manually disabled. It went offline five minutes after he left the venue.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
Adrian never disabled his own GPS unless he was going off-grid for a kill.
Marcus realized his mistake.
The little girl.
He remembered the way Emma had looked at him. He remembered the whisper.
What did that kid say to him?
Marcus turned to his lieutenant, a heavily scarred man named Vance.
“Send a team to Grace Miller’s apartment. Tear it apart. Find out where she’s been hiding on her days off. And find Adrian.”
“What if Mr. Vale resists?” Vance asked.
Marcus looked at the rain pouring onto the asphalt.
“If you find him,” Marcus said coldly, “make sure he doesn’t come back.”
Meanwhile, across the city, Adrian was already making his moves.
He sat in the dimly lit back office of an abandoned meatpacking plant on the West Side.
Lily was asleep in a portable crib next to him, guarded by Elias and three men who looked like they had crawled out of a war zone.
Adrian was looking at a map of Chicago spread across a rusty metal table.
He had fifty men loyal only to him—men he paid directly, outside of the organization’s books. Men who had served his father and hated Marcus Reed’s modern, corporate approach to their bloody business.
He began making calls.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t threaten.
He simply gave addresses.
“Warehouse 4 on the South Docks. Burn it.”
“The casino in Rosemont. Clear the civilians, then take the vault. Shoot anyone wearing Marcus’s pin.”
“The shipping yards. Lock them down.”
Within two hours, the city’s underworld was bleeding.
Marcus’s network was being dismantled with terrifying precision.
Adrian knew every weak point, every hidden vault, every corrupt official Marcus relied on.
By midnight, Marcus was sitting in the penthouse of the Vale Corporation tower, watching the news reports of mysterious fires breaking out across the city.
Vance walked in, bleeding from a cut above his eye.
“We lost the docks,” Vance panted. “And the Rosemont crew is gone. They were ambushed. It’s Elias Thorne’s people. Adrian brought back the old guard.”
Marcus slammed his fist onto the glass desk, shattering the surface.
“He knows,” Marcus hissed.
“What do we do?”
“We bait him.”
Marcus walked to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city.
“Adrian is emotional right now. He thinks he’s invincible because he’s angry. But he’s predictable. He’ll want to look me in the eye before he finishes this.”
Marcus turned around.
“Send a message through the channels. Tell him I’m waiting at the South Branch project. The riverfront.”
Vance hesitated. “Sir, that’s where you sent him on the day...”
“I know,” Marcus smiled darkly. “It’s poetic. He won’t be able to resist. Set the snipers on the rooftops. Rig the warehouse doors. When he walks in, we end the Vale bloodline for good.”
What Marcus didn’t know was that Adrian was already three steps ahead.
Adrian wasn’t fighting an emotional war.
May you like
He was fighting a mathematical one.
And Marcus had just given him the exact coordinates to the finish line.
