They Called Her the Fat Cook Until One Flying Cleaver Made Chicago’s Most Feared Crime Boss Realize Who She Really Was

The South Dock warehouse smelled of salt water, diesel exhaust, and wet rust.

At 1:15 AM on Friday night, the rain had turned into a thick, freezing sleet that rattled against the corrugated iron roof like bursts of light machine-gun fire.

Adrian Vale stood near a stack of wooden crates, a dark tailored trench coat buttoned to his throat, his hands resting casually inside his pockets. Four of his men stood around him, their hands tucked beneath their jackets, nervously watching the shadowed gantries above.

Frank Rossi, a thick-necked man with a broken nose and a scar across his chin, checked his heavy gold watch.

“They’re late, boss,” Rossi said, his voice echoing slightly against the high steel girders. “Moretti’s convoy should have been here twenty minutes ago.”

“Patience, Frank,” Adrian said smoothly, his eyes scanning the dark catwalks high above the floor. “Good deals take time.”

“Yeah, well, bad ones take even less,” Rossi muttered, shifting his footing.

High above them, hidden inside the shadow of a disused crane assembly, Mara Sullivan adjusted her grip on a heavy tactical cross-bow she had retrieved from her hidden floorboard box at home. She wore a dark insulated jumpsuit, her heavy boots wedged firmly against the iron crossbeams.

Through her thermal scope, she wasn't looking at Adrian Vale. She was looking at the surrounding high girders.

Four thermal signatures were crouching behind the ventilation ducts on the eastern roof. Mercenaries armed with silenced sniper rifles.

And down on the ground, Frank Rossi’s left hand was twitching behind his back, tapping out a rhythmic signal against his belt.

“He’s giving the signal,” Mara murmured into her throat mic, her voice carrying across an encrypted civilian channel she had forced Adrian to set up.

Down below, Adrian’s subtle earpiece hummed.

“Four shooters on the eastern catwalk, Adrian,” Mara’s voice cut through his earpiece. “Frank is your rat. Step left behind the steel pillar on my mark.”

Adrian didn't hesitate. He took two fast steps to his left.

THWACK!

A silent round tore through the exact spot where Adrian’s chest had been a fraction of a second earlier, shattering a glass lantern on the floor.

“Ambush!” Rossi screamed, instantly drawing his Glock and firing two shots—not at the catwalks, but directly at Adrian’s bodyguards. Two of Adrian’s men dropped to the concrete floor before they could draw their weapons.

The remaining bodyguard reached for his gun, but Rossi executed him with a cold round to the temple.

Rossi turned his pistol toward Adrian, who was pressed flat against the I-beam.

“Sorry, boss!” Rossi yelled over the suddenly echoing gunfire from the roof shooters. “Moretti pays three times what you do!”

Before Rossi could squeeze the trigger, a three-inch steel rebar dart dropped from forty feet in the air like a bolt of lightning.

PLUNG!

The heavy steel spike pinned Rossi’s right hand directly to the wooden crate beside him, shattering his metacarpal bones with a sickening crunch.

Rossi shrieked in agony, dropping his gun as blood sprayed across the crates.

A second later, a three-hundred-pound shadow dropped from the high gantry, landing on the concrete floor with a heavy, thunderous thud that shook the wooden pallets.