Chapter 4 - The War for Chicago
For three agonizing hours, the monitors showed a brutal game of chess played with bullets and blood.
Sebastian and Gabriel utilized their knowledge of the mansion's tight corridors to funnel Victor’s men into kill zones. It was a masterclass in defensive guerrilla warfare. But the physical toll on Sebastian was devastatingly obvious. By the second hour, his left leg was visibly buckling. He was forced to lean against walls to fire, his face dripping with sweat and pale with agonizing exhaustion. The scar tissue in his lower back was inflaming rapidly under the extreme stress, threatening to paralyze him mid-fight.
"Move, please move," I found myself praying aloud, my hands pressed against the glass of the monitor. I wasn't praying for a mafia boss; I was praying for the man who had looked at my son and promised him safety.
On the screen, Victor appeared in the main courtyard, surrounded by a tight ring of heavily armed loyalists. He realized the mansion assault was stalling. He pulled out a radio, shouting orders to his remaining men.
"He's going to blow the foundations," I realized, watching two mercenaries carry heavy military-grade explosive crates toward the basement level.
If they blew the foundations, the entire estate would collapse, burying the bunker, Sebastian, and everyone inside alive.
I looked at the security console. My training as a physical therapist didn't cover tactical warfare, but I knew anatomy, and I knew how to read maps. I saw the blueprint of the basement ventilation system displayed on a secondary screen. The mercenaries were setting the charges directly adjacent to the main water main—a structural weak point.
There was a public address system override switch on the console. My hand trembled as I hovered over it. If I used it, I would reveal our location to anyone listening, but if I didn't, we were dead anyway.
I flipped the switch. "Sebastian!" my voice echoed through the mansion's internal comms, sharp and desperate. "The basement! They’re setting explosives by the primary water main under the east wing! They're going to collapse the house!"
On the monitor, Sebastian’s head snapped toward the wall speaker. He didn't waste a second. He signaled to Gabriel, and the two men turned back, abandoning their high-ground advantage to sprint—or in Sebastian's case, a heavy, agonizing shuffle—down toward the concrete lower levels.
Through the camera feed of the basement, I watched the confrontation. Gabriel initiated the attack with a flashbang, blinding the two demolition tech mercenaries. Sebastian followed through, clearing the room. But as the last mercenary fell, Victor stepped out from behind a concrete pillar.
He didn't fire at Sebastian. He fired directly at the main water valve.
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The pipe ruptured under immense pressure, unleashing a blinding, scalding torrent of high-pressure water and steam that flooded the chamber instantly, obscuring the camera feed into a wall of white static.
The monitors went dead.
