Chapter 6 - The Trap at the TerminalMoving into the downtown penthouse felt like stepping into an alternate universe. Within forty-eight hours, Dante’s men had packed up her meager belongings from the South Side apartment, relocated her cat, and settled her into a secure, luxurious suite two floors below his own.
Yet Sheree refused to stop working at St. Jude’s. True to her stubborn nature, she insisted on maintaining her shifts in the emergency room, much to the quiet frustration of Dante’s security detail, who shadowed her every step in unmarked sedans.
Two weeks after the night in the alley, the inevitable collision arrived.
It was a freezing Friday evening when Dante’s chief enforcer, a hulking man named Paulie, burst into the St. Jude ER waiting room while Sheree was wrapping a patient’s wrist.
“Miss Nolan, you need to come with us now,” Paulie said, his face grim and pale.
“I’m in the middle of a shift, Paulie—”
“Mr. Moretti went to the Dunsmuir shipping terminal alone to flush out the remaining rats,” Paulie interrupted, his voice urgent. “It’s a trap. They’ve locked the perimeter, and our comms are jammed. He’s bleeding out from his stitches, and you’re the only person he wants there.”
Sheree didn't hesitate. She ripped off her surgical gloves, grabbed her medical trauma bag from her locker, and sprinted out to waiting black SUV.
Twenty minutes later, the SUV crashed through the rusted security gates of the Dunsmuir shipping yard down by the freezing harbor. Massive, towering shipping containers cast long, menacing shadows across the snowy concrete yards under the harsh glare of halogen floodlights.
Inside the cavernous central warehouse, the air smelled of diesel fuel, rust, and fresh cordite.
Dante Moretti was leaning heavily against a steel crate near the center of the loading bay. His dark coat was once again soaked—not with melted snow this time, but with fresh, bright blood seeping through his shirt where his previous stitches had violently ruptured during hand-to-hand combat. Three armed men lay unconscious on the concrete around him, but standing ten paces away, holding a suppressed 9mm pistol aimed directly at Dante’s chest, was Marcus Vance—one of Dante’s senior vice presidents and the mastermind behind the betrayal.
“Well, well, well,” Marcus sneered, his face twisted in manic triumph as he saw Dante weakening from blood loss. “Looks like your luck finally ran out, boss. And right on cue, your little nurse friend arrives to watch you die.”
Marcus swung his pistol toward the doorway, locking his sights directly on Sheree as she stepped out of the shadows with her medical bag in hand.
“Stop right there, sweetheart,” Marcus hissed, his finger tightening on the trigger. “End of the line for both of you.”
Dante let out a harsh, pained breath, his dark eyes locking onto Sheree with a silent warning not to move. But Sheree didn't panic. Her ER training, combined with two weeks of living under the shadow of the city’s most dangerous syndicate, had forged nerves of pure steel.
“Marcus,” Sheree said, her voice ringing out steady and clear across the cavernous warehouse. “You really should have checked who was backing your boss before you decided to betray him.”
Marcus laughed derisively. “And who’s that? A broke nurse from the South Side?”
“No,” a cold, metallic voice echoed from the shadows behind Marcus. “Rhodes Capital and the federal Department of Justice.”
Before Marcus could spin around, heavy tactical boots slammed against the concrete from every corner of the warehouse. Red laser sights illuminated Marcus’s chest from a dozen different angles as federal agents and Moretti’s elite security force swarmed the catwalks and containers, weapons drawn and ready.
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Marcus’s face drained of all color. His pistol clattered uselessly against the concrete floor as Paulie and two federal marshals slammed him face-first into the steel crate, slapping heavy steel handcuffs onto his wrists.
The trap had been a double trap all along.
