Chapter 7 - THE WOLF AT THE DOOR
The retaliation was swift, violent, and desperate.
Within forty-eight hours of Daniel leaking Vera’s archival ledgers, federal indictments dropped like falling masonry across Chicago. Three city councilmen were arrested on live television, two real estate developers fled to the Cayman Islands, and Dominic Moretti found federal agents swarming his Little Village gambling dens with RICO warrants.
Cornered, humiliated, and realizing his empire was crumbling around him, Dominic Moretti decided on a final, suicidal act of vengeance.
If Daniel Choi was going to burn down the city's corrupt power structure, Dominic would strike the one thing keeping the king vulnerable: the child and her grandmother.
It was Thursday evening. Vera Castillo’s heart surgery at Northwestern Memorial had been an overwhelming success; she was resting comfortably in her private, heavily guarded recovery suite on the eighth floor. Kaya was sitting by her grandmother's bed, coloring in a picture book provided by one of Daniel's nurses, completely unaware of the storm gathering outside.
Down in the hospital lobby, a man in a maintenance uniform pushed a heavy utility cart through the sliding glass doors.
It wasn't a maintenance worker. It was one of Moretti’s most trusted hitmen, carrying a suppressed pistol hidden beneath a pile of linen towels.
The two private security guards standing outside the elevator bank didn't even have time to draw their weapons. The fake worker raised his arm with chilling efficiency, firing two suppressed shots that dropped both guards silently to the tile floor.
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The hitman stepped over their bodies, pressed the button for the eighth floor, and smiled a cold, predatory smile.
"Let's see how invincible Choi is when his little pet project is gone," he muttered to himself.
