Chapter 8 - The Siege of Michigan Avenue
The black Suburban did not take the highway.
With twelve inches of snow already choking the Kennedy Expressway and jackknifed tractor-trailers blocking the outbound lanes at North Avenue, Marcus drove the heavy four-wheel-drive tank through the lower service levels—the subterranean maze of Lower Wacker Drive, running through the steam pipes, the concrete pillars, and the yellow-lit tunnels where the city’s garbage and meat were delivered while the world above slept.
In the back seat, Vincent Caruso watched the GPS map on his encrypted phone.
Three icons—red blips running on the Caruso tactical frequency—were moving north along Sheridan Road toward the Lake Forest estate. They were the security teams he had dispatched from the south-side motor pool.
Then, at 4:15 PM, the middle icon went dark.
Five seconds later, the second icon flickered, drifted into the blue space representing the lake, and vanished.
Marcus saw it in the rear-view mirror. His hands tightened on the leather-wrapped steering wheel until his knuckles showed white through his skin. “Boss. Sheridan Road is compromised.”
Vincent didn't move. “How many?”
“Donati didn't just have Jimmy Rizzolo,” Marcus said, his voice dropping into the low, mechanical drone of an officer calling in an airstrike. “He hired the Mercenaries from the Serbian crew in Milwaukee. The ones who ran the cigarette runs out of Kenosha. They’ve got heavy weapons, night vision, and they know the north shore terrain.”
Vincent pulled his phone from his coat. He dialed the direct hardline to the Lake Forest house.
It rang six times. Then Teresa’s voice came through, steady, cold, but with the sharp edge of iron underlying the syllables.
“They’re at the gate, Vincent,” she said.
“How many, Aunt Teresa?”
“Two trucks. They rammed the stone pillars with a snowplow. Karl and Stefan held them at the lower garden for five minutes, but Stefan is down. Karl fell back to the conservatory. They have automatic rifles, Vincent. Heavy ones.”
“Where is the girl?”
“In the cold cellar behind the wine vaults,” Teresa replied. “With the boy. Noah is sitting in a laundry basket with his rabbit. Elena has a kitchen knife. She’s shaking so hard she can barely breathe, but she told me if anyone touches that door she’ll cut their throat.”
A ghost of a smile touched Vincent’s lips. “Good girl. Where are you?”
“I’m in your father’s library,” Teresa said, and Vincent heard the distinct, heavy *clack-slide* of a 12-gauge Remington shotgun being racked. “With the old Ithaca. If they come up the central stairs, they will find that Carmelo’s sister still remembers how to lead a duck.”
“Hold the basement, Teresa. We are eight minutes out.”
“Don't hurry on my account, Vincent,” the old woman said, and hung up.
Vincent looked at Marcus. “The lower tunnel. The lake gate.”
Marcus didn't answer. He dropped the Suburban’s transmission into low gear, slammed his foot to the floorboards, and swung the three-ton vehicle through an illegal maintenance turnaround on Lower Wacker, its snow tires screaming against the wet, greasy concrete as they launched toward the northbound ramp.
The drive through the northern suburbs was a blur of gray drifts, spinning red tail lights, and the shriek of the supercharged V8 engine fighting through sixteen inches of unplowed powder. By the time they reached the southern perimeter of the Lake Forest property, the sun had died completely behind the blizzard, leaving the estate submerged in an ink-blue, howling darkness punctuated only by the orange flicker of a fire burning near the carriage house.
Karl’s body lay near the shattered wrought-iron gates, his snow-covered coat half-buried under the drift thrown up by the attackers' plow truck.
Marcus killed the Suburban’s headlights five hundred yards before the gate. He cut the engine, letting the heavy truck coast through the smashed brick entrance on its own momentum, crunching softly over the broken iron before coming to a rest behind a row of ancient, snow-laden yew hedges.
Vincent reached into the rear footwell. He did not pull out a pistol.
He lifted an HK416 carbine—ten-and-a-half-inch barrel, suppressed, fitted with an EOTech holographic sight and a thermal imaging module. It had been cleaned, lubricated, and zeroed by Marcus every month for four years, kept in a climate-controlled vault behind the Suburban’s third-row seating.
“Four on the terrace,” Marcus whispered, looking through a handheld thermal scanner. “Two more at the conservatory doors. They’re trying to set a breaching charge on the reinforced cellar entrance beneath the pantry.”
Vincent clicked the carbine’s selector switch from *SAFE* to *SEMI.*
“The ones on the terrace first,” Vincent said. “They have the high ground.”
“Snow is fifteen inches deep,” Marcus noted, pulling his own rifle from the rack. “Thermal signatures are bleeding because of the wind-chill. Aim for the center mass—their jackets are thick.”
Vincent opened his door.
The freezing November wind hit him like a wet sheet of lead. The sleet stung his eyes, but his breath was steady, his heartbeat sitting at that same, unyielding sixty beats per minute.
He was not an executive now. He was not a man who signed freight leases or decided which judge received an envelope in the locker room of the Chicago Athletic Association.
May you like
He was Carmelo Caruso’s son, standing on the soil his father had bought with blood, defending the only three people left in the world who had never lied to him: an old woman with a shotgun, a cleaning woman with a kitchen knife, and a three-year-old boy who had pointed at a red light.
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