Chapter 8 - The Ghost of Lake MichiganThe rain was coming down in sheets, turning the grey waters of Lake Michigan into a churning, violent abyss.
Frankie Maroni sat behind his expansive marble desk in his penthouse office overlooking the Chicago skyline, pouring himself another glass of scotch. His hands were shaking. The federal indictments had started dropping like tactical nukes an hour ago. Bank accounts frozen. Safe houses raided. Federal marshals swarming his shipping yards.
"Moretti..." Frankie hissed, slamming his glass down so hard the crystal cracked. "The son of a bitch beat us."
The heavy oak doors of his penthouse suddenly blew inward with a deafening crash.
Frankie scrambled for the gold-plated revolver resting in his drawer, but before his fingers could graze the grip, a heavy, polished Italian leather shoe slammed down onto the drawer, crushing it shut with bone-splintering force.
Frankie looked up. Dante Moretti stood over him like the literal angel of death. Behind Dante stood Charles and two massive enforcers, blocking every exit. Dante wasn't wearing his coat; his black dress shirt was soaked from the rain, his sleeves rolled up to reveal corded forearms and the faint, jagged scar of a bullet graze on his shoulder.
"Looking for this, Frankie?" Dante asked calmly, pulling the gold-plated revolver out of the jammed drawer with two fingers and tossing it casually across the room.
Frankie swallowed hard, forcing a desperate, bravado-laced sneer onto his face. "You think you won, Dante? You think killing me or locking me up fixes anything? The city is rotten to the root! Without men like me, the whole syndicate collapses on your head!"
"Let it collapse," Dante said coldly, walking slowly around the desk until he was towering directly over the seated mob boss. "I spent three years letting my empire rot because I thought grief was the only thing I had left. But you... you made a mistake, Frankie."
"What mistake?" Frankie spat defiantly.
"You brought a child into our war," Dante whispered, his voice dropping to a terrifying, lethal register that made Frankie’s blood freeze in his veins. "You threatened a three-year-old girl who only wanted to make her mother smile."
Before Frankie could scream, Dante grabbed him by the lapels of his designer suit, hauled him bodily across the desk, and hurled him through the floor-to-ceiling glass window overlooking Lake Michigan.
CRASH!
The glass shattered outward in a million glittering shards, raining down into the stormy darkness below. Frankie dangled precariously over a three-hundred-foot drop, his fingers clawing desperately at the slick window frame as the howling wind whipped his hair across his face.
"Dante! Dante, no! Wait! PLEASE!" Frankie shrieked, tears of sheer terror streaming down his face as he stared down at the churning black waves far below.
Dante leaned out over the ledge, gripping Frankie by the collar with one iron hand, lifting him effortlessly.
"This is for Elena," Dante whispered.
Closer.
"This is for Claire."
Closer still.
"And this... is for every sleepless night little Emma spent wondering if she’d have a home tomorrow."
Dante loosened his grip just enough for Frankie to slip an inch, the mob boss screaming in absolute, primal terror as the wind tore the breath right out of his lungs.
"Tell the devil I’m not coming down yet," Dante said.
May you like
And with a final, effortless heave, Dante pulled Frankie back inside—not dropping him to his death, but throwing him facedown onto the wet carpet like a discarded rag doll.
"Federal marshals are downstairs, Frankie," Dante said, stepping back and wiping invisible dust from his shirtsleeve. "You'll spend the rest of your natural life in a supermax cell where no one will ever hear your name again."
