Chapter 6 - FLOOR ZERO
The man turned, and I recognized him instantly.
It wasn't an orderly. It was Dominic Vance—Felix Cavallo’s personal cleaner. A sociopath who had made witnesses disappear from federal holding cells in three different states.
Vance sneered, his hand clearing his waistband with a suppressed Glock.
I didn't hesitate.
I squeezed the trigger twice.
*Pop. Pop.*
The subsonic rounds hit Vance high in the chest. Kevlar stopped the penetration, but the kinetic energy knocked him backward against the wall. Before he could recover his aim, I closed the twenty-foot gap like a predator, slamming my forearm into his throat and pinning his skull against the industrial drywall.
With my free hand, I twisted his wrist until bone popped. His Glock clattered across the linoleum.
"Felix sent you to kill an infant?" I whispered, pressing the warm barrel of my SIG against the soft flesh under his chin. "Has the old bastard gotten that desperate?"
Vance choked, blood bubbling between his teeth from a cracked rib. "You're already dead, Falk. Petra... she was the one who pulled the trigger. She found the medical records... called Felix an hour ago."
"Where are the others?"
Vance spat blood onto my lapel. "Already downstairs... cleaning up the mother."
I broke his neck with a single, brutal twist of my hands.
His body slumped limp onto the floor.
I didn't look at him. I turned to the incubator.
Inside the clear plastic dome, the tiny boy was sleeping, blissfully unaware of the gunshots, the blood, and the monster who had tried to extinguish his life before it even started. He had a tuft of jet-black hair and hands no bigger than quarters.
My hands—hands that had beaten men to death, hands that had handled millions in dirty cash—were shaking as I unlocked the transport latch.
I reached in and lifted him gently against my chest.
He felt weightless. Warm. Fragile as spun glass. He let out a soft, mewling whimper, nuzzling against the heavy wool of my suit jacket. A fierce, terrifying instinct roared to life in the pit of my stomach. I would burn Chicago to the waterline before I let anyone harm this child.
I wrapped him inside my jacket, buttoning the coat halfway to shield him from the cold, and drew my weapon once more.
"Let's go get your mother," I whispered.
I took the stairs back down to the third floor, moving in dead silence.
As I neared Room 312, the smell of cordite drifted through the stairwell door.
My blood ran cold.
I kicked the stairwell door open and moved down the hall. Outside Nina’s room, one of my loyal guards lay dead, a neat red hole between his eyes. Crane’s radio was shattered on the floor, buzzing with static.
The door to Room 312 was cracked open.
I approached with weapon raised, slicing the pie around the doorway.
Inside, Crane was on his knees, bleeding heavily from a gunshot wound in his shoulder, his hands zip-tied behind his back. Standing over Nina’s bed was not an anonymous hitman.
It was Petra Cavallo.
She wore a dark trench coat over her designer clothes, her blonde hair pulled tight. In her manicured right hand, she held a snub-nosed revolver, the barrel pressed firmly against Nina’s temple.
Nina was weeping silently, her hands gripping the hospital sheets, her eyes wild with terror.
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"Drop it, Dorian," Petra said without turning around. She had seen my reflection in the dark windowpanes. "Drop the gun, or I blow her brains all over the wallpaper."
***
