Chapter 6 - The Fire Rises in the Windy City
While Lorenzo’s team punched through the steam-tunnel hatch, the streets outside The Obsidian became a staging ground for a full-scale urban war.
Police cruisers arrived in waves, their red and blue strobes painting the glass facade of the skyscraper in violent flashes. But the Chicago Police Department’s tactical units were being held back at the perimeter by an invisible wall of political corruption—orders phoned straight from City Hall by judges and aldermen whose campaign funds were tied directly to the Vane family bank accounts.
Inside the building, Celeste Vane paced the length of the private bar, her emerald dress rustling like dry leaves.
“What do you mean they missed him?” she snarled into her phone, her voice shaking with rage. “He’s just a thug with a fancy suit! Find him in the basement and put a bullet through his brain!”
“Miss Vane,” a terrified voice crackled back from the mercenary commander’s radio. “The basement is clear. But... but Moretti isn’t down there. Neither are his men.”
“Then where the hell are they?”
“We found... we found an explosive charge wired to the main structural pillars of the river-facing foundation. It’s counting down.”
Celeste stopped dead. The phone slipped from her fingers, clattering against the marble floor.
At that exact moment, the ground beneath The Obsidian groaned.
It wasn't a gunshot. It was the sickening, metallic screech of high-grade military demolition charges cutting through forty-foot steel support beams embedded deep into the Chicago River bank.
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Across the river, standing safely in the shadows of the abandoned pumping station, Evelyn watched through a cracked wire-mesh window as the glittering, multi-million-dollar crown jewel of downtown Chicago shuddered, listed five degrees to the left, and began to sink gracefully into the dark, freezing water like a dying ship.
Flames erupted from the lower levels in a thunderous roar, turning the night sky the color of bruised plums.
