Chapter 8 - The Price of Loyalty
The victory at the Obsidian Gala was total, but the cost was devastatingly steep.
With the Chicago Council turning against Julian Whitmore, the patriarch was officially declared *persona non grata*. His assets were frozen; his shipping licenses were revoked by order of the council. Isabella was formally recognized as the sovereign heir to the Castile-Whitmore empire.
Yet within the Rowan organization, a rot was festering.
Marco, Vincent’s trusted lieutenant of eight years—a man who had stood by him during their rise to power—could not stomach the idea of an outsider taking the crown. Unknown to Vincent, Julian Whitmore had promised Marco absolute control of the city’s narcotics trade in exchange for one final, desperate trade: Isabella Vance.
The betrayal came at 3:00 AM on the eve of Isabella’s twenty-fifth birthday.
Vincent had been called away to the Port of Chicago to handle an alleged Coast Guard raid on their primary warehouse. Isabella remained in the penthouse, protected by what she believed was Vincent’s most loyal security detail.
She woke to the smell of smoke and the muffled *thwip* of silenced pistols.
Before she could reach the panic room, the bedroom doors were kicked open. Marco stepped through the threshold, a bloody suppressor in his hand, flanked by four of Julian Whitmore’s personal mercenaries.
“I’m sorry, Little Princess,” Marco said, his eyes devoid of remorse. “Business is business. And Rowan is losing his mind over a pretty face.”
Isabella fought like a wild animal. She smashed a crystal bedside lamp across the first man’s face, tearing open his cheek, but the second mercenary drove the butt of his rifle into her stomach. The breath exploded from her lungs. She fell to her knees, gasping for air, as a chloroformed cloth was pressed brutally against her mouth and nose.
Her vision blurred into blackness. The last thing she heard was Marco’s cold voice on a satellite phone: *“We have her, Julian. Meet us at the abandoned railyard in Gary.”*
Forty miles away, Vincent Rowan stood inside an empty, silent warehouse at the port. There was no Coast Guard raid. There were no federal agents.
His phone buzzed. A single image illuminated the screen: Isabella, bound and bleeding from a cut on her temple, held at gunpoint by Julian Whitmore in a derelict steel mill.
Beneath the image was a short message: *Come alone, Rowan. Or her head arrives at your door before dawn.*
Vincent’s face did not contort in anger. It went completely, terrifyingly still. The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees. He crushed the phone in his bare hand until the glass splintered, slicing into his skin, his blood dripping onto the cold warehouse floor.
He turned to his remaining men, who stood in terrifying silence.
May you like
“Call every crew,” Vincent ordered, his voice a lethal whisper that sounded like the end of the world. “Bring the heavy armor. Burn the city if you have to. Tonight, the Whitmore bloodline ends.”
***
