Chapter 12 #2
The coordinator's mouth opened and closed. No more arguments. No more negotiations. Just the raw, animal understanding that logistics couldn't save him from the thing standing in front of him.
"Razor," Union said without turning. "We clear?"
"Clear. No witnesses. Stockyard's en route to Kowalski's."
Union looked into Novotny's eyes.
The coordinator was crying now. Tears cutting through the blood on his face, his hands clawing weakly at Union's wrist. A man who'd spent his career behind screens and spreadsheets, finally understanding what happened at the end of the supply chain he'd managed so efficiently.
Union squeezed.
Novotny's legs kicked against the Lexus's quarter panel. His hands dropped from Union's wrist. His face went from red to dark purple in the sodium glow of the streetlight.
Union held on.
He thought about Diane running south on Halsted toward her shop. Alone. Again. Because she couldn't stop herself from fighting for what her father built, even when the smart move was to stay behind.
He thought about Novotny's phone, with its three active conversations directing three crews to destroy three businesses that had committed the sin of working with the Wolves.
He thought about his father's union, dismantled by men in offices who managed the logistics of breaking workers without ever getting their hands dirty.
Novotny stopped moving.
Union held on for another thirty seconds.
Then he let go, and the coordinator's body crumpled against the Lexus's rear tire.
"Done," Union said.
Razor was already wiping prints. "Go. I'll handle cleanup. Your woman's at the shop alone."
Union didn't need to be told twice.
He covered six blocks in under a minute, the Harley screaming through red lights, his heart hammering with a fury that had nothing to do with what he'd just done and everything to do with what might be happening at Kowalski's.
He heard the fight before he saw it.
Crashing metal. Shouting. The distinctive bang of something heavy hitting a bay door from the inside.
Union skidded into the lot and was off the bike before it stopped rocking on its kickstand.
The front bay door was closed and shaking—something braced against it from the inside, holding it shut against men trying to force their way out. Through the gap beneath the door, Union could see boots—four sets, all on the interior side, all trying to push outward.
Someone had locked Eddie's crew inside.
Union ran around to the side entrance.
Diane stood in the office doorway, breathing hard, a floor jack wedged against the bay door's interior track. She'd shoved the jack's arm into the door's guide rail, jamming the mechanism, turning the bay door into a cage wall.
Four men beat against the metal from the other side, trapped between the jammed door and the back wall where Diane had herded them by pulling the fire alarm and flooding the bays with noise and flashing lights.
She looked at Union.
Blood on her knuckle. A bruise already forming on her forearm. And in her hand, a three-foot breaker bar from her father's tool bench—the only tool that had survived Kev Duda's first rampage, heavy enough to discourage anyone from testing the woman holding it.
"Took you long enough," she said.
Union stared at her. At the jammed door. At four men trapped behind it because a mechanic had used her knowledge of her own shop's infrastructure to turn the building into a prison.
"You jammed the bay door."
"I jammed the bay door." She set down the breaker bar. "They came in through the back. I hit the fire alarm to disorient them, then ran for the front bay and jammed the track while they were covering their ears."
"With a floor jack."
"Best tool for the job." She flexed her bleeding knuckle. "One of them grabbed me before I got the jack in place. I disagreed."
Something swelled in Union's chest that had nothing to do with adrenaline and everything to do with the woman standing in front of him.
She'd run six blocks alone. Entered a shop full of hostiles. Used her knowledge of every hinge, track, and mechanism in her father's building to trap four armed men behind their own demolition site.
And she'd done it with a breaker bar and a floor jack.
Stockyard's bike roared into the lot, followed by two prospects. The big enforcer took one look at the shaking bay door and raised an eyebrow at Union.
"She locked them in?"
"She locked them in."
Stockyard's grin was slow, dangerous, and deeply impressed. "I'll take it from here."
Union let him. Stockyard and the prospects would handle the four men behind the door. Razor was cleaning up Novotny's scene on Halsted. Lakeshore and Scout had the other two targets secured.
The operation was over.
Novotny's coordinated assault—his carefully managed, logistically precise attack on three Wolf-connected businesses—had failed on every front. His crews were down. His targets were intact. His phone was in Razor's pocket, loaded with eighteen years of contacts and network data.
And the coordinator himself was cooling against the rear tire of his silver Lexus.
Union pulled Diane against his chest.
She came willingly, her hands fisting in his cut, her face pressed against the leather. She was shaking—not from fear, he realized, but from the crash. Adrenaline leaving her system in waves, her body catching up to what her mind had already processed.
"You ran six blocks to fight four men with a breaker bar," he said against her hair.
"It's my shop."
"It's our shop."
She pulled back to look at him. Blood on her knuckle. Bruise on her forearm. Grease under her nails from the floor jack.
"Novotny?" she asked.
"Done."
She nodded once. No questions. No hesitation.
"Good."
Behind them, Stockyard opened the bay door. The sounds that followed were brief and decisive, and neither Union nor Diane turned around to watch.
Some things didn't need witnesses.
They needed results.