Epilogue #5
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.