Chapter 7 - THE SECOND TRAP
Vivian took two steps back, her spine coming up against the cold steel frame of Server Rack 04. Her hand slid instinctively into her parka pocket, her thumb pressing hard against the small panic button Gabriel had given her.
Reed’s eyes followed her movement. He chuckled softly—a dry, chilling sound that echoed off the metal walls of the server room.
“Don't bother, Vivian,” Reed said, stepping closer, his hands tucked casually into his suit trousers. “The room is lined with a copper Faraday cage to protect the servers from electrical interference. No radio signal is getting out of here. Your mob friends outside are currently listening to static.”
Vivian felt the ice return to her stomach, but she did not drop her chin. She stood tall against the metal rack, her pale eyes locking onto her fiancé’s face with a coldness that matched his own.
“Nathan,” she said, her voice steady, despite the pulse hammering in her ears.
“You look terrible, my dear,” Reed said, examining the purple bruise on her cheek with mock pity. “I was hoping you’d have the decency to stay in Rossi’s bed until tomorrow morning. It would have made the narrative so much simpler for your father.”
“My father knows what you are,” she lied, keeping her voice flat.
Reed laughed aloud this time—a short, barking sound that held no humor at all. “Your father is currently sitting in his office upstairs with a glass of scotch, weeping on the shoulder of a state police captain because he thinks Gabriel Rossi has dragged his precious daughter into an alley and executed her.”
He took another step forward, stopping five feet from her. The two tactical men stayed by the door, their hands resting on the grips of their holstered weapons.
“Do you have any idea how easy you made this for me?” Reed whispered, leaning in slightly. “I leave you outside the Onyx Room. Rossi takes you inside like the predictable, heroic fool he is. I issue an emergency federal warrant for a search of his properties at midnight, claiming we have reliable intelligence that a high-profile kidnapping victim is being held on the premises.”
His smile widened, turning into something entirely predatory.
“And then,” Reed continued, “my men find you inside Terminal 4... shot by a Rossi soldier while attempting to retrieve evidence against the family that abducted you.”
Vivian looked at the two men standing by the door. They weren't police officers. Their eyes were flat, dead, their faces marked by the hard, broken lines of men who did their work in back alleys for cash. Morello crew enforcers.
“They won't believe you, Nathan,” Vivian said, her fingers clutching the hard drive inside her pocket. “The drive in my coat has the bypass codes. It logs every transfer your office made to Dominic Vane.”
Reed’s smile didn't fade. It simply hardened into stone.
“The drive in your coat is going to be destroyed in about four minutes, Vivian,” Reed said. “Along with the rest of this server room. A unfortunate electrical fire caused by damaged wiring during the storm. Tragic, really. The Hayes Atlantic records wiped clean in the same night Arthur loses his daughter.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small black silver object—a sleek, silenced 9mm pistol.
“I really did intend to marry you, Vivian,” Reed said softly, raising the barrel until it pointed directly at her chest. “Your father’s docks would have made me governor by thirty-eight. But you always were entirely too curious for your own good.”
Vivian closed her eyes.
She didn't scream. She didn't beg. She thought of her father sitting upstairs in his broken silence, and then she thought of Gabriel Rossi standing beneath the awning in the rain, looking at her not with pity, but with a cold, absolute willingness to stand between her and the world.
Gabriel, she thought.
A sudden, deafening explosion rocked the entire administrative building.
The floor beneath their feet buckled violently as a wave of concussive force tore through the south wall of the server room. Heavy concrete blocks, dust, and electrical sparks exploded inward, filling the air with a choking grey cloud of pulverized masonry and smoke.
The two Morello enforcers were thrown off their feet by the blast, crashing violently into the rows of server racks as steel frames collapsed like falling dominoes.
Reed was knocked sideways, his pistol flying from his hand and skidding across the polished floor into the cloud of dust.
Through the ragged six-foot hole in the ruined brick wall, three dark shapes emerged through the smoke—clad in black tactical gear, helmets, and carrying short-barreled automatic weapons.
At the head of the group was Gabriel Rossi.
He didn't have a helmet on. His dark hair was covered in white plaster dust, his charcoal suit ruined, but his eyes were burning with a lethal, terrifying fury that filled the smoke-filled room like an open flame.
Before Reed could reach for his fallen gun, Gabriel stepped across the rubble, grabbed Reed by the lapels of his navy suit, and slammed him backward against an upright server rack hard enough to shatter the steel paneling behind his head.
Reed gasped, blood spraying from his lip as Gabriel’s left hand pinned his throat against the metal frame, lifting him two inches off the floor.
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Gabriel did not speak immediately. He held the chief prosecutor of Chicago suspended against the ruined rack, his grip like a vice forged in iron, his dark eyes staring into Reed’s wide, terrified pupils from three inches away.
“You left her in my rain,” Gabriel whispered, his voice dangerously soft, vibrating with a force that made Reed’s knees shake. “Now you get to see what lives in my dark.”
