Chapter 6 - The Blood Trade
Aurelio chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. “You’ve gone soft, Cormack. Love makes men stupid. It makes them weak. You really want a war over a woman?”
“I don’t want a war,” Cormack replied smoothly. “I want to buy you out.”
Aurelio’s smile vanished. “Excuse me?”
“You’re angry because you lost the shipping routes that came with my alliance,” Cormack said, his mind calculating faster than a supercomputer. “I’m giving them to you. The Hammond docks. The trucking lines down I-65. The casino laundering streams. All of it.”
Royce gasped behind him. “Boss, you can’t—”
“Shut up, Royce,” Cormack snapped. He kept his eyes locked on Aurelio. “I am stepping down. I am ceding the southern and eastern territories to the Salcedo family. I will keep my legitimate real estate holdings, and I am out of the life. But in exchange, this hospital, my son, and Brin Holloway are off-limits forever. If you ever breathe in their direction, the deal is void, and I kill you.”
Aurelio looked stunned. Cormack was handing over an empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It was a king abdicating his throne for a single peasant.
“You’re trading the city for a girl who won’t even look at you?” Aurelio asked, genuinely bewildered.
“I’m trading the city for my soul,” Cormack corrected. “Do we have a deal?”
Aurelio slowly extended his hand. “You have a deal, Mr. Hale. Enjoy civilian life.”
As the Salcedo men got back into the elevator, Cormack leaned against the wall, running a shaking hand through his hair. He was no longer the boss of the Chicago underworld. He was just a man.
He turned around and saw Brin standing in the doorway of her ICU room, leaning heavily on an IV pole. She had heard everything.
Tears were streaming down her pale face, her eyes wide with shock. “You gave it all away,” she whispered. “Your power. Your money.”
May you like
Cormack walked slowly toward her, stopping a few feet away, respecting her space. “It was never worth as much as you. I am so sorry, Brin. For all of it. I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it to you, even if you never let me hold your hand again.”
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