Blizzard (Windy City Wolves MC #11)

Chapter 1

The warehouse off Pulaski smelled like rust, motor oil, and fear.

Blizzard stood in the shadow of the loading dock, breath steady, heart rate unchanged, watching the side door where a dealer named Monty Thorne thought he was hiding from a Wolf debt.

Three weeks overdue. Eight thousand dollars.

The kind of money that made men stupid enough to think they could disappear in a city where the Wolves knew every corner.

Fang shifted beside him, a mountain of muscle and silence. "Two inside with him. Armed."

"Saw them through the window." Blizzard's voice came out flat, unhurried. Cold as the November wind cutting through his leather. "Thorne's in the back office. His boys are playing cards by the space heaters."

"You want to wait for them to split up?"

"No."

Blizzard walked toward the loading dock door like he was checking on a delivery.

No rush. No tension in his shoulders. He'd spent eighteen hours in a frozen mountain pass in Afghanistan once, waiting for extraction that came six hours too late for two of his men.

Patience wasn't something he practiced. It was something he was.

The lock gave under his pick in four seconds. The door swung open on silent hinges, and Blizzard stepped into the warehouse's main floor with Fang a half-step behind.

The two men at the card table looked up.

The first one reached for the pistol on the crate beside him, and Blizzard crossed the distance in three strides, caught the man's wrist, and broke it before his fingers touched metal.

The scream echoed off corrugated walls. Blizzard drove his elbow into the man's temple, and he dropped like a sack of concrete.

The second man made it two steps toward the back exit before Fang caught him. The sound of a body hitting a steel support beam rang through the warehouse like a bell.

Blizzard picked up the fallen pistol, checked the chamber, and walked toward the back office. His boots echoed on the concrete floor. No hurry. Thorne wasn't going anywhere.

The office door was locked. Blizzard kicked it open and found Monty Thorne backed against a filing cabinet, eyes wild, hands shaking as he fumbled with a .38 that looked older than he was.

"Don't," Blizzard said.

Thorne pulled the trigger anyway.

The gun jammed. Of course it did. Men who couldn't pay their debts couldn't afford reliable weapons either.

Blizzard crossed the room and took the .38 from Thorne's trembling fingers with the same effort it would take to remove a toy from a child. He set it on the desk, then turned those flat gray eyes on the dealer.

"Eight thousand. Three weeks late."

"I can get it." Thorne's voice cracked. "I just need more time, man. Business has been slow, and—"

"You had time." Blizzard's tone never shifted. He might have been discussing weather. "You used it hiding instead of earning. That was a choice."

"Please. I've got kids, I've got—"

"Everyone's got something." Blizzard reached into Thorne's jacket and pulled out a roll of bills, a bag of product, and a phone. He counted the cash with methodical patience. "Forty-two hundred. Where's the rest?"

"That's all I have. I swear to God, that's everything—"

Blizzard pocketed the cash and dropped the product on the floor, crushing it under his boot. Thorne made a sound like a wounded animal.

"You'll have the rest by Friday." Blizzard leaned close enough that Thorne could see the frostbite scars on his ears, the pale marks from a night that should have killed him. "Or I'll come back when the temperature drops. You know what happens to men who owe Wolves in January."

Thorne knew. Everyone on the South Side knew. The lake didn't give back what the Wolves fed it, and winter meant the bodies stayed cold until spring.

"Friday," Thorne whispered. "I'll have it Friday."

Blizzard straightened and walked out of the office without looking back. Fang had zip-tied the two guards and left them groaning on the concrete. The space heaters were still running, pumping warmth into the warehouse that neither Wolf needed.

Blizzard found the thermostat on the wall and turned it off.

"Leave them locked in," he told Fang. "They can think about their career choices while they get cold."

They rode back to the compound through streets that smelled like exhaust and approaching snow.

The November wind cut through everything, but Blizzard barely felt it.

Never had. The Hindu Kush had taught him that temperature was just another condition, like altitude or darkness.

You adapted or you died, and Victor Cermak had always been built for adaptation.

The compound lights blazed against the night sky when they pulled through the gates—a converted meatpacking plant that still smelled faintly of blood if you knew where to breathe.

Brothers clustered around the fire pit despite the chill, bottles passing between gloved hands, laughter carrying over the rumble of cooling engines.

Fang headed for the group without a word. He'd give Alpha the report, collect whatever drinks were owed him, slide back into the brotherhood's warmth like he'd never left.

Blizzard parked his bike and walked inside.

The clubhouse was loud and warm, a Friday night in full swing.

Stockyard had the pool table locked down against Lakeshore, both of them talking trash while old ladies watched from the bar.

The jukebox played something with heavy bass that Blizzard didn't recognize.

Brothers called greetings as he passed, and he nodded back without stopping.

He found his spot at the end of the bar, where the shadows cut deeper and the noise faded to background static. The prospect working taps tonight—a kid named Vargas who'd been around six months—set a whiskey in front of him without being asked.

Blizzard pulled a paperback from inside his jacket. Creased spine, dog-eared pages, a military history he'd been working through for two weeks. He opened it to his bookmark and started reading.

The clubhouse breathed around him. Brothers moved through his peripheral vision, gave him the comfortable distance they'd learned he preferred. Not rejection—respect for a man who kept to himself in ways that had nothing to do with temperature.

The whiskey warmed his chest. The book held his attention. The brotherhood existed around him without demanding he join it, and that was exactly how Blizzard liked his nights.

Tomorrow there'd be more debts to collect, more men to remind that Wolves didn't forget and winter was coming.

Tonight, there was whiskey and silence and the particular peace of a man who'd made his peace with the cold a long time ago.