Chapter 2 - THE STEEL BRIEFCASE

The basement of the suburban house felt like a tomb.

Anna stared at the train ticket in her bloody palm, the realization crashing over her like a tidal wave. Dragos wasn't just fleeing; he was taking the only synthesized vials of the chemotherapy with him. The hard drive held the formula, but synthesizing it would take months. Her mother didn't have months. She barely had days.

"Gabriel," Anna said, her voice shaking with a terrifying, cold clarity. "Dragos is on that train."

Gabriel Vance was kneeling beside Helen, applying pressure to a minor scrape on her shoulder from the fall. He looked up at Anna, seeing the dangerous shift in her eyes. The terrified translator was gone. She was her father's daughter now.

"My men are securing the perimeter," Gabriel said, his voice hard. "We are getting Helen to my private medical facility. She will be safe."

"She won't survive without the medicine," Anna stated, gripping the hard drive in one hand and the train ticket in the other. "Dragos leaves in thirty minutes. Union Station."

Gabriel stood up, his massive frame towering over her in the dim light. He reached out and gently wiped a streak of Marcus’s blood from Anna’s cheek with his thumb. The gesture was shockingly tender, a stark contrast to the violence surrounding them.

"I will not let you walk into a cartel extraction point, Anna," Gabriel said softly.

"You don't have a choice," Anna fired back, stepping into his space. She held up the hard drive. "Dragos wants this. I want the vials. He won't trade with you. He wants the bloodline dead. He’ll only trade with me."

Gabriel’s jaw locked. He hated it. He hated that she was right.

Twenty-five minutes later, Gabriel’s SUV roared into the underground drop-off of Union Station. The massive, echoing cathedral of transit was mostly empty at 3:45 AM, save for a few stragglers and the distant, rhythmic hum of idling freight engines.

Gabriel handed Anna a small, sleek earpiece. "Keep this in. My men have the station locked down. I will have a sniper on Dragos the second he steps into the open. If things go wrong, you drop to the floor."

Anna nodded, slipping the earpiece in. She clutched the hard drive to her chest.

She walked into the cavernous main terminal. Her boots clicked loudly against the marble floor.

Answer One, Open Two.

The ticket Marcus carried wasn't a passenger ticket. It was a baggage claim voucher. Dragos hadn't boarded yet. He was waiting at the lockers.

Anna navigated the labyrinth of the station, heading toward the subterranean baggage storage. The air here was damp and smelled of ozone.

She found locker 402. The number on the ticket.

Anna approached it slowly. She slid the barcode under the scanner. The metal door popped open with a heavy click.

Anna pulled the door open.

Inside the locker sat a pristine, temperature-controlled metal lockbox. Through the reinforced glass top, Anna saw six distinct, blue-tinted vials. Her mother's life.

She reached for the box.

"I wouldn't touch that, little bird."

The voice was guttural, accented, and terrifyingly close.

Anna spun around.

Standing at the end of the narrow aisle of lockers was Dragos. He wasn't surrounded by mercenaries this time. He stood alone, wearing a heavy wool coat, his gold-capped teeth glinting in the harsh fluorescent light.

He was holding a small, black electronic device with a single red button. A detonator.

Anna looked back at the locker. Wired to the underside of the metal lockbox containing the vials was a brick of C-4 plastic explosive.

"You touch the box, you blow up," Dragos smiled, stepping closer. "You try to run, I push the button. The vials are destroyed, and your mother dies gasping for breath in a hospital bed."

"You want the drive," Anna said, forcing her voice to remain steady, though her heart was threatening to break her ribs. She held up the pelican case.

"I want my property back," Dragos corrected, his eyes locking onto the case with ravenous hunger. "Your father was a thief. He stole my legacy. Now, hand it over, and I will deactivate the bomb."

"No," a deep, vibrating voice echoed down the aisle.

Dragos froze.

Gabriel Vance stepped out from the shadows behind Anna. He didn't have his gun drawn. His hands were empty, held loosely at his sides. He looked entirely relaxed, which made him infinitely more terrifying.

"You don't want the drive, Dragos," Gabriel said, walking slowly toward the warlord. "You want me. The boy who survived. The insult to your pride."

"Gabriel!" Anna yelled in her earpiece. "What are you doing?!"

"I am offering a trade," Gabriel said, his eyes never leaving Dragos. He stopped five feet away from the bomb. "Let Anna walk out of here with the medicine. You keep the hard drive. And you get to put a bullet in my head, right here, right now. You win the thirty-year war."

Dragos stared at the apex predator of Chicago offering his throat. A cruel, victorious smile spread across his face.

"How poetic," Dragos mocked. "The great Gabriel Vance, dying for a woman he met five hours ago."

"Do we have a deal?" Gabriel asked, his voice dead calm.

Dragos laughed, a harsh, barking sound. He reached out with his free hand and snatched the hard drive from Anna’s grasp.