Chapter 3 - The Price of DefianceThe tablet screen glowed with an eerie, cold blue light in the dim library.
On the display, an industrial warehouse interior flickered into view. Rows of stacked shipping containers stretched into the shadows, and tied securely to a rusted steel pillar in the center of the room was Sarah—my younger sister, who worked as a pediatric nurse at Mercy General downtown.
A heavy-set man with a jagged scar running down his cheek—Viktor Vance’s chief enforcer—stood grinning maliciously beside her, pressing the cold barrel of a silencer pistol against her temple.
Then Viktor himself stepped into the frame. He wore a crisp white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, looking directly into the camera lens with a sickeningly polite smile.
“Good morning, Gabriel,” Viktor’s smooth, gravelly voice echoed through the tablet speakers. “I trust you’re enjoying the quiet morning air at your Lincoln Park estate. I’d love to stay and chat about harbor logistics, but I’m afraid we have a small administrative discrepancy to settle.”
Gabriel didn’t move a muscle, but the veins in his neck stood out like coiled steel cables.
“Name your terms, Viktor,” Gabriel said, his voice terrifyingly steady.
“Simple,” Viktor chuckled on the screen. “Bring me the boy. And bring me the little accountant who thinks she’s clever enough to audit my ledger. You have forty-five minutes. If you’re late, the nurse loses a finger. After that, well... accidents happen in hospitals every day.”
The screen flickered black.
The silence in the library was absolute. I stared at the dark glass of the tablet, my chest heaving as tears of pure rage and terror stung my eyes. Sarah had nothing to do with this. She didn't know about syndicates, ledgers, or billion-dollar turf wars. She was just a girl who spent her weekends volunteering at animal shelters and baking cookies for her patients.
“He’s using her to draw us out,” I whispered, my voice shaking as I stood up from the chair. “He knows you won’t hand over Eli, so he’s using my sister as leverage to force an exchange.”
“He’s not getting the boy,” Gabriel stated flatly, his voice like chipped ice.
“Then we have to go get her,” I shot back, stepping directly into his line of sight. “I’m not sitting here waiting for them to mail her back to me in pieces, Mr. Kane. That’s my sister!”
Gabriel looked down at me, studying the fierce determination burning through my bruised and swollen face. For a moment, the dangerous mob boss seemed to fade, replaced by a man who understood the crushing weight of protecting someone you loved.
“Mason,” Gabriel commanded without breaking eye contact with me.
“Boss?”
“Prep the tactical units. Full gear. No local police flags, no digital traces. We hit the South Chicago rail yards through the underground maintenance tunnels before they even know we’re moving.”
Mason hesitated, glancing nervously at me. “Boss, taking Claire into an active extraction zone with Viktor’s hit squad—it’s suicide. She’s an accountant, not a field operative.”
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“She drove twenty-eight miles with a broken rib and a baby strapped to her chest,” Gabriel replied coldly, walking over to the mahogany cabinet against the wall and unlocking it to reveal a rack of matte-black tactical gear and sidearms. He pulled out a lightweight ballistic vest and tossed it accurately across the room toward me.
“Put that on,” Gabriel ordered. “If you’re coming with me to save your sister, you don’t get to die on my watch.”
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