Chapter 6 - The Oak Park Sanctuary
The apartment building in Oak Park was a quiet, three-story brick structure built in the 1920s.
When the convoy of three black vehicles pulled up to the curb, six heavily armed men in dark raincoats jumped out first, establishing a defensive perimeter around the entrance before Aleandro and Hannah stepped onto the sidewalk.
Hannah ran up the narrow carpeted stairs to the second floor, her heart in her throat, with Aleandro and Maximus following three paces behind.
She knocked three times on door 2B—their private signal.
The door clicked open on a safety chain. A pale face appeared in the gap. It was Sarah, Hannah's younger sister, her eyes wide with terror as she looked past Hannah at the giant dark dog and the towering man standing in the hallway.
"Hannah?" Sarah whispered. "What is going on? There were men in dark cars parked down the street twenty minutes ago..."
"Sarah, open the door," Hannah said urgently. "Where’s Lily?"
"She’s in the bedroom, sleeping—"
Hannah pushed the door open, stepping inside and pulling her sister into a tight embrace. "We have to pack a bag right now. We’re leaving."
"Leaving? To go where? Who is that?" Sarah pointed a trembling finger at Aleandro, who stood in the entryway, his sharp eyes scanning the small living room with methodical, professional scrutiny.
"My name is Aleandro Vitali," he said smoothly, bowing his head slightly in genuine respect. "Your sister is currently under my protection, Miss Collins. Which means you and your niece are under my protection as well."
Before Sarah could process the name—a name that every resident of Chicagoland had heard whispered on the evening news for a decade—Aleandro walked straight to the living room window overlooking the street. He didn't look through the glass; he stood to the side, looking through the slit between the heavy curtains.
"They were watching this window," Aleandro noted quietly.
"Who?" Hannah asked, coming up behind him.
"Look at the streetlamp across the alley," Aleandro pointed.
Tucked neatly inside the plastic housing of the municipal cobra-head light was a tiny, high-resolution optical lens, wired directly into the city power grid.
"That's a military-grade surveillance relay," Aleandro said. "It costs sixty thousand dollars on the gray market. It isn't used by local street gangs or small-time extortionists."
"Then who uses it?" Hannah asked.
"Federal contractors," Aleandro replied, his voice dropping into an icy register. "Or rival syndicates who bought access from federal contractors."
He turned to Gabriel, who had just entered the apartment behind them, looking wet, disheveled, and pale.
"Gabriel," Aleandro said softly.
Gabriel stood at attention. "Yes, boss?"
"Where were you six months ago when the city replaced the streetlamps on this block?"
Gabriel froze. "I... I don't track municipal utility work in Oak Park, Aleandro."
"No," Aleandro agreed, stepping so close to his security chief that Gabriel had to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact. "But you manage the off-duty Chicago police officers who handle our private logistics security. And the police permit for that utility work was signed by a firm called Vanguard Infrastructure."
Aleandro pulled a folded slip of paper from his pocket—the paper his city tech team had faxed him twenty minutes earlier.
"Vanguard Infrastructure," Aleandro read aloud, "is owned by a shell corporation registered in Delaware. The primary trustee of that shell corporation is your brother-in-law, Gabriel."
The small apartment fell into an absolute, suffocating silence.
Sarah backed slowly into the hallway toward the bedroom where Lily was asleep. Maximus shifted his heavy weight forward, his head dropping low, his ears pinned back against his neck.
Gabriel looked at Aleandro, then at Hannah, and finally at the dog.
May you like
He didn't draw his gun. He knew better.
"They have my son, Aleandro," Gabriel whispered, his voice cracking for the first time in fifteen years. "The Moretti family in New York... they took my boy three months ago. They said if I didn't open a line into your foundation, they’d send him back to me in a box."
