Chapter 4 - THE WOLVES OF TAYLOR STREET
The transition from the sticky floor of the Onyx Room to the rear leather seat of Lorenzo Richie’s armored Maybach felt like being shoved into a decompression chamber.
Outside, the Chicago wind was whipping frozen sleet against the tinted ballistic glass with the violence of thrown gravel. Sienna sat pressed against the far door, her bare feet tucked under her, clutching the heavy gold signet ring on her finger so it wouldn't slide off into the floor mat.
The heat in the car was set high, smelling of rich leather, cedarwood, and the faint, bitter tang of gun oil.
Arthur sat in the front passenger seat, an iPad resting on his knees, his fingers tapping across encrypted feeds. Lorenzo sat beside Sienna, his long legs stretched out, an unlit cigar rolling between his knuckles. He had discarded his wine-stained suit jacket, leaving him in his black vest and rolled-up sleeves.
“Marcone isn't going to take this quietly, Enzo,” Arthur said, not looking back. “He had twenty guys waiting at the Taylor Street chop shop to collect on Toby Vane. He was planning to use that forty-thousand-dollar marker to force Toby’s crew to give up the keys to the Teamsters Local 705 warehouse.”
“Toby doesn't have the keys,” Sienna said, her voice sharp, cutting through the low rumble of the twin-turbo V12 engine.
Lorenzo glanced at her, his eyebrow arching slightly. “You know about the warehouse?”
“My brother is an idiot, Mr. Richie, not a logistics manager,” Sienna said coldly, looking out the window at the blurred neon of the Loop. “He works the loading dock three days a week to pay off his bookies. Marcone told him if he left the rear bay door unlocked tonight at two in the morning, the debt would be forgiven.”
Arthur turned his head slowly, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “The pharmaceutical shipment from Montreal.”
“Two million dollars in generic insulin and surgical antibiotics,” Lorenzo deduced, his voice dropping into that lethal, freezing register that made the hairs on Sienna’s arms stand up. “Marcone wasn't trying to collect forty grand. He was staging a hijacking on my docks and using her brother as the inside man to take the fall.”
Lorenzo tapped the privacy glass partition. “Mick.”
The driver, a scarred former Marine who hadn't spoken a word since they left the club, nodded in the rearview mirror. “Boss?”
“Reroute to the Navy Pier freight terminal. Tell the perimeter crew to go dark. No lights, no radios. We catch them inside the wire.”
“Understood.”
Sienna’s stomach dropped. “Wait. What about Toby? If Marcone realizes the play is blown, he’ll kill him!”
Lorenzo turned toward her. He reached out, his large, calloused fingers catching her chin, tilting her face until she was forced to look directly into his terrifying, unblinking eyes.
“Your brother made a deal with hyenas, Sienna,” Lorenzo said softly. “In my world, when you make a deal with hyenas, you don't get to complain about the teeth.”
“He’s my brother!” she cried, slapping his hand away.
The sudden violence of her reaction made Arthur’s hand twitch toward his armpit, but Lorenzo simply lowered his hand, his expression entirely unchanged.
“He is a liability,” Lorenzo said. “He gambled away his mother’s jewelry, ran up tabs in three neighborhoods, and left you to work double shifts in diner grease to keep his kneecaps intact. He doesn't deserve your loyalty.”
“I don't protect him because he deserves it!” Sienna snapped, tears of pure, burning exhaustion stinging her eyes. “I protect him because when that fire took my parents, he was nine years old and he held my hand in the hospital corridor for twelve hours while the social workers decided which group home to ship us to! He is the only piece of my family left on this earth! If you let Marcone put a bullet in his head, your ring means nothing to me!”
She yanked the heavy gold viper ring off her finger and shoved it toward his chest.
Lorenzo looked at the ring in her trembling palm. For three long, agonizing seconds, the interior of the car was dead silent, save for the rhythmic swish of the wipers against the windshield.
Then, slowly, Lorenzo reached out. He didn't take the ring back. Instead, he wrapped his massive hand around hers, closing her fingers tightly over the cold gold.
May you like
“Keep it on,” Lorenzo whispered, his voice carrying a strange, dangerous gravity. “If you want him alive, you stay by my side. But understand this, little bird: tonight, you trade your brother’s leash for mine.”
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