Epilogue #4
"Claire." The big one smiled, and it didn't reach anywhere near his eyes. "Mr. Daszak sends his regards."
She kept her hands on the register, steady through sheer force of will. "I paid this month. You got your money."
"This month, sure." He wandered toward the display case, examining the remaining pastries like he was considering a purchase. "But Mr. Daszak's been thinking about the future. Costs are going up. Economy's tough. You understand."
"I understand you're bleeding me dry."
The younger one laughed. It was an ugly sound.
"Fifteen hundred's the old rate," the big one continued, ignoring her. "Starting next month, it's two thousand."
The number hit her like a physical blow. Two thousand a month. On top of everything else—rent, utilities, supplies, the hospital bills she was helping Tomasz with because it was her fault he'd been hurt.
"I can't—"
"Can't's a dangerous word." The big one picked up a kolaczki and bit into it, chewing slowly. "Your grandmother made these, right? Recipe passed down? Be a shame if something happened to the recipe."
He let that hang in the air while powdered sugar dusted his stubbled chin.
"Two thousand," he repeated. "Mr. Daszak's being generous. Some businesses, he's charging three."
Claire's hands had started shaking. She clenched them into fists behind the register.
"I need to talk to him. Work out a payment plan, something—"
"Mr. Daszak doesn't negotiate with shopkeepers." The big one finished the pastry and wiped his hands on his jeans. "Two thousand. First of the month. Don't be late."
He started toward the door, then paused. Reached into his jacket pocket.
The straight razor gleamed under the deli's fluorescent lights as he set it on the counter. Old-fashioned. Pearl handle. The kind of blade a barber might use, or a man who wanted to leave a mark.
"That's for you to keep," he said. "Reminder that Mr. Daszak always collects. One way or another."
They left without another word.
Claire stood frozen behind the register, staring at the razor. Her reflection warped in the blade—a pale face, dark circles under the eyes, light brown hair escaping from its pins.
She looked like a woman who hadn't slept in weeks.
She looked like prey.
The thought snapped something loose in her chest—anger or fear, she couldn't tell the difference anymore.
She grabbed the razor and threw it in the trash, then immediately fished it out because evidence, because proof, because she didn't know what she was doing except that throwing it away felt like giving up.
She locked the front door with hands that wouldn't stop trembling. Drew the blinds. Checked the back door twice, three times, even though she knew the locks wouldn't stop anyone who really wanted in.
Then she pressed her back against the door and slid down until she was sitting on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, grandmother's razor clutched in her flour-dusted fingers.
Two thousand dollars a month.
Her margins were already razor-thin. Tomasz needed surgery follow-ups she was helping pay for. The freezer needed repairs. The building's landlord had been making noises about raising rent, and she couldn't shake the suspicion that Victor had something to do with that too.
The math didn't work. Hadn't worked for months now.
But stubbornness had carried her this far. Stubbornness and the memory of her grandmother's hands shaping dough, her mother's voice teaching her the recipes, three generations of Jankowski women who'd never backed down from anything.
Nie poddawaj si? , her grandmother used to say. Don't give up.
But her grandmother had never faced anything like Victor Daszak.
Claire sat on the floor of her deli as the light faded outside, and for the first time in eleven years, she let herself wonder if stubbornness alone was enough.
The straight razor caught the last of the sunset through the blinds, and the blade looked like a promise.
Or a threat.
She couldn't tell the difference anymore.
Chapter 3
Alpha was on his second cup of coffee when Razor walked into the clubhouse kitchen looking like he hadn't slept.
"Church," Razor said. "Now."
Alpha set down his mug. Razor wasn't a man who wasted words, and the tension in his shoulders said everything his mouth didn't.
"What happened?"
"Victor Daszak happened. Three more blocks last night."
The words landed like a grenade in the quiet kitchen. Alpha was already moving, coffee forgotten, boots heavy on the concrete floor as he headed for the chapel.
The compound was barely awake—a few brothers in the garage working on bikes, prospects sweeping the lot, the smell of motor oil and last night's bonfire still hanging in the morning air.
Alpha pushed through the clubhouse common room where Stockyard was nursing a hangover on the leather couch, and Lakeshore sat cleaning a pistol with the methodical calm of a man who'd done it a thousand times.
"Church," Alpha called out. "Five minutes."
Both men were on their feet before he finished the sentence.
The chapel filled fast. Razor took his seat at Alpha's right hand, Scout sliding in next with a folder thick enough to suggest he'd been working all night.
Fang materialized from somewhere—the man moved like smoke, appearing when needed—and claimed the chair at the far end of the table.
Stockyard and Lakeshore rounded out the core, the six of them forming the beating heart of the Windy City Wolves.
Alpha stood at the head of the table, palms flat on the scarred wood.
"Talk to me, Scout."
Scout opened his folder and spread photographs across the table. Storefronts. Shattered windows. A man on a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance.
"Victor Daszak's crew hit three more businesses last night," Scout said. "Dry cleaner on 35th, a bodega on Halsted, and the auto shop on Loomis. That's three blocks deeper into Bridgeport than they were last week."
Alpha studied the photographs. The bodega's front window had been smashed in, shelves visible through the jagged hole. The auto shop showed scorch marks around the garage door—fire damage, contained but deliberate.
"Casualties?"
"The bodega owner tried to fight back. He's at Mercy with a fractured skull and a collapsed lung." Scout's voice stayed flat, but his jaw tightened. "His wife watched the whole thing."
Razor leaned forward. "These aren't random targets. Victor's drawing a line straight through the heart of our neighborhood. The blocks we grew up on."
"Your grandmother's church is four streets from that bodega," Stockyard said quietly.
"I know where my grandmother's church is."
The tension in Razor's voice could've cut glass. Alpha let it hang for a moment, watching his VP wrestle the anger back under control. Razor was the patient one, the strategist who thought three moves ahead—but everyone had limits.
"What do we know about Victor's operation?" Alpha asked.
Scout pulled another sheet from his folder.
"Twenty-two men confirmed, maybe more. He inherited the racket from his uncle fifteen years ago and expanded it through arson, beatings, and strategic connections.
Half the retired cops in the precinct have some tie to his family—poker games, union favors, the usual South Side bullshit. "
"Police protection?"
"Not official, but enough that complaints disappear. Business owners file reports, nothing happens. After a while, they stop filing."
Fang spoke for the first time, his voice like gravel scraping concrete. "How many businesses has he squeezed?"
"Twenty-three confirmed. Eight probable. A dozen more closed rather than pay—moved out or shut down entirely." Scout paused. "And then there's Jankowski's Deli."
Alpha's head came up. "What about it?"
"Claire Jankowski. Thirty-six. Took over the deli from her mother eleven years ago.
She's been paying Victor's protection money for the past eight months, but it's bleeding her dry.
" Scout consulted his notes. "Her dishwasher—a guy named Tomasz—got put in the hospital three weeks ago.
Broken ribs, shattered wrist, spleen damage. He's still in intensive care."
"Message?"
"Loud and clear. She was late on a payment."
Alpha's fingers curled against the table.
He remembered Jankowski's Deli. His mother used to drag him there every Sunday after Mass, buying rye bread so dense and dark it lasted the whole week.
He'd eaten Claire's pierogi more times than he could count, back before the Wolves were anything more than a group of angry young men looking for something to believe in.
"Victor's pushing her hard," Scout continued. "My contact says his guys visited again yesterday. Raised her rate to two thousand a month and left a straight razor on her counter."
"Jesus Christ," Stockyard muttered.
"She's running the place alone now. No help, no backup, and the cops who used to stop by every morning haven't shown their faces in over a week." Scout closed his folder. "She's tough—everyone in the neighborhood says so—but tough doesn't stop a protection racket with twenty-two enforcers."
Alpha stared at the map on the wall, at the blocks that belonged to the Wolves and the creeping expansion of Victor's territory pushing closer every week.
Bridgeport wasn't just geography. It was history.
It was the streets where his father had worked the mills, where his mother had raised him on kielbasa and stubbornness, where three generations of South Side families had built something worth protecting.
And Victor Daszak thought he could carve it up like it was his to take.
"This isn't just about the deli," Alpha said, turning back to the table. "This is about territory. About what we let happen on blocks we've bled for."
"Victor's never crossed us directly," Lakeshore pointed out. "No Wolf businesses hit, no brothers threatened."
"Not yet." Alpha's voice dropped into something cold. "But if we let him swallow Bridgeport block by block, how long before he decides our territory's next?"
The question hung in the air. Every man at the table knew the answer.
"We push back now, it's war," Razor said. "Victor's got numbers and connections. We'd be picking a fight with a man who's been doing this for fifteen years."
"And if we don't push back?" Alpha met his VP's eyes. "We watch our neighborhood burn while a man who puts grandmothers out of business laughs all the way to the bank."
Razor held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "Then we don't let him laugh."
Alpha looked around the table. "Vote. Do we move on Victor Daszak?"
"Aye." Razor's voice was iron.
"Aye." Scout, quiet but certain.
"Aye." Fang, one word carrying the weight of inevitable violence.
"Aye." Stockyard, knuckles cracking as he made a fist.
"Aye." Lakeshore, steady as lake water before a storm.
Unanimous. The way it should be.
"Then it's decided." Alpha straightened, feeling the familiar weight of command settle onto his shoulders. "Victor Daszak's been operating on borrowed time, and the bill just came due."
"What's the play?" Razor asked.
"We start with intel. I want to know everything about his operation—where his money goes, where his men sleep, who he's paying off and who's paying him. Scout, you're on surveillance. Map his movements, his lieutenants, his weak points."
Scout nodded. "Already started. I'll have a full workup by end of week."
"Fang, reach out to your contacts. Anyone who's had trouble with Victor's crew, anyone who might talk if they knew someone was finally pushing back."
Fang's dead eyes flickered with something that might have been anticipation. "Consider it done."
"And Claire Jankowski?"
The question came from Razor, and Alpha heard the real inquiry beneath it. Are we doing this for territory, or for her?
Both. The answer was both, even if Alpha wasn't ready to say it out loud.
"She's been holding out longer than most," Alpha said. "Running that deli alone, refusing to fold even with Victor's blade at her throat. That's the kind of backbone this neighborhood needs."
"She won't ask for help," Scout said. "Talked to a few of her regulars. They say she's stubborn as hell, won't take charity, won't show weakness."
"Then we don't offer help. We show up and make it clear that Victor's not the only predator in Bridgeport anymore."
Stockyard grinned, the expression sharp-edged and hungry. "About damn time someone reminded him."
Alpha turned to Razor. "Tomorrow. You and me. We take a walk through Bridgeport, see what we see."
"And if Victor's men are watching?"
"Let them watch." Alpha's voice carried the quiet certainty of a man who'd learned long ago that hesitation got people killed. "Let them run back and tell Victor that the Wolves just marked their territory."
The meeting broke with the scrape of chairs and the rumble of brothers' voices, the energy in the room shifting from tension to anticipation. War was coming. They all felt it, the way animals feel a storm building on the horizon.
Alpha stayed behind as the chapel emptied, staring at the map on the wall. His eyes traced the blocks between the compound and Jankowski's Deli—streets he'd known since childhood, alleys where he'd fought and bled and learned what it meant to protect something worth protecting.
Claire Jankowski had been fighting alone for too long.
That ended tomorrow.