4. Lorenzo
LORENZO
The glass doesn’t just shatter.
It fucking explodes.
One second the passenger window is intact. The next, it bursts into a white spray across the asphalt. Almost at the same time, something slams into the passenger door with a heavy metallic thunk.
My head snaps toward the sound, my hand already sliding beneath my lapel.
The Kimber drops into my palm, cold and familiar.
I don’t think. I don’t hesitate.
My body moves before my mind has time to catch up.
Two men in dark, mismatched suits are breaking in from the street, cutting off the main road and charging into the alley. The one in front already has his gun up, jaw locked tight as he steadies his aim over the hood of my car.
He isn’t aiming at me.
He’s aiming at the woman in white, scrambling to her knees near my front bumper.
I bring the sight to his chest and pull the trigger.
The Kimber barks once, a hard crack that kicks through my arm. The round hits him square in the chest. His body jerks backwards, momentum dead on impact, and then his knees give out.
He drops like wet weight.
His gun skids across the oil-stained concrete toward the gutter. Blood starts spreading beneath his coat in a thick, dark pool.
He’s done.
The second man catches the muzzle flash and dives sideways, throwing himself behind the limestone corner where the alley meets the avenue.
Then I hear the sharp metallic click of the passenger door.
The woman throws herself into the car.
Throws herself in, dragging silk and tulle and panic with her. She lands in the bucket seat in a rush of white fabric, perfume, rain, and smoke flooding the cabin with her. Her breathing comes in ragged, desperate pulls as she yanks the door shut behind her.
She doesn’t scream.
Doesn’t beg.
Just gets the fuck inside.
Pop. Pop.
Two more rounds crack through the air from the street. One hits the rear quarter panel. The other slams lower, right near the trunk seam with a dense metallic thud.
The trunk.
Where the bastard from the parking garage is currently taped up and folded beside the spare tyre.
The car rocks from the force, but the steel holds.
I slam the gear into reverse and wrench the wheel, tyres biting into grit as I back us out of the alley. The sedan jerks hard as I clear the concrete pillar, and my gaze cuts to the passenger seat for half a second.
Even half wrecked, she’s fucking stunning.
Her chest rises in short, broken breaths. Her hair, once pinned up, is falling loose in dark, ruined coils beneath a torn veil. Dirt stains the hem of her gown. Soot streaks one bare shoulder where the lace has ripped away. But none of it ruins her.
If anything, it makes her harder to look away from.
Her face is sharp and elegant, her eyes dark and wide, still bright with adrenaline. There’s fear there, yes. Anyone would have it. But underneath it, I catch something else.
Steel.
She doesn’t belong in an alley with bullets flying around her head.
But she isn’t falling apart either.
Our eyes lock for a single beat.
Then I throw the car into drive.
The engine roars, exhaust bouncing off the alley walls as I clear the block and head south toward the industrial stretch near the river.
Neither of us says a word during the drive.
Chicago keeps moving around us like nothing happened. By three-thirty-five, the city is waking into evening traffic, commuters flooding the streets without a clue that blood is drying on the Gold Coast behind us.
I take the lower levels of Wacker, where the light stays dim, and the concrete always smells damp, then cut west and pull into an abandoned gravel lot along the river.
The water is murky green, slicked with oil that catches the grey sky. Rusting warehouses line the opposite bank; their windows boarded with warped plywood and rot.
No cameras.
No pedestrians.
No witnesses.
I shift into park but leave the engine running. Its low hum fills the silence between us.
“Stay here.”
My voice comes out flat. Cold.
She doesn’t answer.
Her hands are gripping the edge of the dashboard tight.
I step out into the cold afternoon air, the wind off the river cutting through my coat. Gravel crunches beneath my shoes as I move to the back of the sedan and hit the trunk release.
The lid clicks open.
The man inside is shivering now.
The cold from the garage and the ride here have settled into him. His eyes fly to mine, wild and glassy with panic, as he struggles against the tape around his jaw and the silk handkerchief still stuffed down his throat.
I reach in, grab him by the collar, and drag him out over the bumper.
He hits the gravel hard with an ugly grunt, his legs kicking as he tries to get purchase on the loose stones.
I don’t give him the chance.
I haul him five feet closer to the rotting timber edge of the old dock and leave him there—right in the line of sight of the driver’s side window.
From the corner of my eye, I catch movement inside the car.
She’s shifted across the console, close to the driver’s side, pale face near the glass. Her hands are on the steering wheel now. Her eyes are locked on us.
If she’s caught in my world, she may as well understand what kind of world it is.
Blood is currency here.
Fear is leverage.
Mercy is a fucking luxury.
I crouch and rip the tape off the man’s mouth in one hard pull.
He cries out, spitting the soaked handkerchief onto the gravel before coughing so violently he nearly folds in half. A thin line of blood trails from his lip where the skin has split.
“Please,” he chokes out. “Please, Don Lorenzo. I was just the hand. Just the hand.”
I stay standing over him, hands sliding into my coat pockets.
“The hand moves because the brain gives the order,” I say, my tone almost conversational. “But the hand still chose to pull the trigger. That’s where your mistake begins.”
His shoulders shake. “I didn’t have a choice. They said you’d be alone. Said security would be on eighteen.”
I bend slightly, bracing one forearm over my knee so I can bring my face closer to his.
“There is always a choice, my friend.” My voice stays quiet. Calm. “You chose to enter territory that doesn’t belong to you. You chose to raise a weapon at a man who has done nothing to your bloodline. That isn’t business.”
I hold his stare.
“That’s disrespect.”
He swallows hard and glances toward the river, then toward the car where a blur of white silk is visible through the tinted glass.
“I can give you names,” he says quickly. “I can give you the crew.”
“I don’t need your crew.” My tone stays soft. “I need the name that put the contract in your pocket. Give me that, and I’ll put you in the water instead of breaking you against the concrete. Quick. No pain.”
He hesitates.
I let the silence stretch.
The wind shifts over the river. Somewhere in the distance, a barge horn sounds, low and hollow.
“The world is very small,” I murmur. “And it gets a hell of a lot smaller when you lose the ability to speak. If I have to use iron to make you talk, you’ll die in over three hours, and you’ll feel every second of it. Don’t die for a man who won’t remember your name by dinner.”
A tear cuts through the dirt on his cheek.
“Volkov,” he whispers at last, the word dragged out in a rough American Russian accent. “The Volkov Bratva. The Pakhan himself signed the voucher.”
My hands tighten inside my pockets.
The Russians.
“And Francesco Ricardo?”
“They have a treaty,” he gasps. “The Ricardos promised them the North Atlantic ports once you were dead. Francesco needed the Nero Syndicate broken before the wedding vows were finished. It was all a setup. The whole fucking thing.”
I straighten slowly, smoothing a hand over the front of my coat.
Everything clicks into place.
The peace talks upstairs.
The convenient delay.
The attack at the garage.
The convoy ambush.
None of it was business. None of it was negotiation.
It was cover.
Francesco sat upstairs, pretending to talk terms, while the Bratva moved into my territory and his men tried to wipe out everyone who carried my name.
The bastard thought he could smile like a prince and let wolves do his killing for him.
“La ringrazio,” I say.
He looks up at me, hope flickering across his face like he’s stupid enough to believe gratitude means mercy.
“You said…” His voice shakes. “You said quickly. Peaceful.”
“The problem isn’t that you came to kill me,” I tell him quietly. “Men die every day in this city.”
I look down at him.
“The problem is that you thought there’d be no consequence for touching my name.”
I pull the Kimber from its holster.
His eyes go wide. “No—wait?—”
The bullet takes him in the centre of the forehead before he can finish the word.
The shot cracks through the lot, sharp and final. His body jerks once, then goes slack and topples backwards off the dock edge into the river below.
The green water swallows him almost instantly.
Behind me, the driver’s side door of the sedan opens a few inches, then stops.
A soft, strangled sound reaches me through the gap.
I turn, gun lowered at my side.
The woman in the wedding dress is slumped toward the centre console, her head tipped against the passenger headrest. Her face has gone white, almost translucent in the afternoon light.
The crash.
The chase.
The blood.
The execution.
It’s finally taken the last of what she had left.
She’s out cold.
Dark lashes rest against her cheeks. Her mouth is parted slightly. Even unconscious, she looks too elegant for the violence surrounding her, like the brutality of the last hour hasn’t fully managed to stain her yet.
My phone vibrates in my inner pocket.
I pull it out and answer as I walk back to the car. “Lorenzo.”
“Boss.” Mateo’s voice is rough and urgent. “We hit a blockade two blocks from the garage exit. Three vehicles. Heavy calibre. Francesco’s men were waiting for the convoy.”
“Are you clear?”
“We broke through, but Silas took a fragment to the shoulder.” His breathing is heavy over the line. “They wanted everyone dead. This wasn’t about the cargo. It was a clean wipe attempt.”
“They failed.”
I reach the open driver’s door and glance at the woman sprawled across my passenger seat, silk and lace spread around her like the wreckage of another man’s wedding.
“They used the Volkov Bratva at the parking deck,” I tell him. “The alliance is already active.”
Silence hangs on the line for two beats.
Then Mateo asks, “What are your orders?”
“Bring the men back to the estate,” I say, sliding into the driver’s seat. “Lock down the perimeter. Let the street know the Ricardo name no longer carries protection in this city.”
I pull the door shut against the wind.
“Every port they touch is now an active zone.”
“Understood.”
I end the call and drop the phone into the console.
Then I look at the stranger unconscious in my passenger seat.
A bruise is already forming where she hit the front of my car, purple blooming against pale skin. She looks completely defenceless now. Stripped of whatever life she ran from. Stripped of whatever protection used to surround her.
A runaway bride.
Unconscious in the car of a man who doesn’t even know her name.
I shift into drive and turn away from the river, heading for the private road that leads back to the Nero estate.
The real war has just begun.
And the groom’s bride is sleeping in my front seat.