Chapter 5 - The Salerno Threat
While peace bloomed inside the glass walls of the penthouse, storm clouds gathered over the southern district of Chicago.
Marco Salerno was a desperate man.
The Salerno syndicate had been crippled. Gideon Locke’s men had systematically dismantled their supply lines, seized their warehouses, and frozen their offshore accounts in a relentless fourteen-day campaign. Marco knew why it was happening—gossip from Cicero had leaked that Gideon was hiding the girl who belonged to Tyler Grayson.
In a darkened back room of an abandoned meatpacking plant in South Chicago, Marco Salerno sat surrounded by his four remaining lieutenants.
"Locke has gone crazy over a girl," Marco growled, slamming a heavy glass of whiskey onto the scarred wooden table. "He’s burning down thirty years of territory agreements for a nobody."
"Boss," one of his men said nervously. "Locke’s strike teams are everywhere. If we stay in the city, they’ll find us by the weekend. We need to leave for Detroit."
"No!" Marco snarled, his eyes red with fury. "I’m not running from Gideon Locke! He thinks he’s an untouchable god. But he has a weakness now. That girl."
Marco leaned across the table, his face twisted into a cruel grin.
"Tyler Grayson told me before he disappeared that the girl has a sister," Marco whispered. "Sadie Vale. She lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Lincoln Park. She works at a local florist shop."
The lieutenants looked at each other, realizing the terrifying play Marco was planning.
"Locke has the girl locked up in his glass tower," Marco continued, his voice dripping with malice. "We can't breach his penthouse—it’s a fortress. But if we grab the sister, the girl will come out. And when the girl steps out, Locke will follow."
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"And then?" the lieutenant asked.
Marco pulled an iron detonator from his coat pocket, laying it on the table. "And then we end the Locke family once and for all."
