Chapter 5 - The Crow’s Nest
The war with the Falco family did not stay at the docks. By Thursday night, the city’s concrete veins were running hot with rumors that Cain Brennan had locked his wife away and taken the North Side logistics by force.
At the Falco headquarters—a sprawling, windowless compound disguised as a commercial fish processing plant near the Calumet River—the air smelled of dead trout and diesel oil. Julian Falco sat at a stainless-steel table, his dark cashmere coat stained with gray grease from the scales on the floor. His silver crow pin glinted under the harsh industrial lights.
"The girl didn't show," Julian said, his fingers tapping against a heavy iron wrench. "Delphine was supposed to bring the secondary encryption keys by midnight. Her phone is dead. Her father’s banks are refusing our calls."
Across from him sat his uncle, Old Silvio Falco, a man whose skin looked like cured leather and whose left arm had been useless since a turf war in the nineties.
"Moretti’s people say Brennan found a rat," Silvio muttered, chewing on an unlit cigar. "He cleared the 45th floor. He’s got some civilian woman and her kid tucked into the executive residence. The kid was the one who saw you at the hotel, Julian. You were careless. You let a janitor’s brat see your face."
Julian’s eyes narrowed into long, lethal slits. "The kid is five years old, Uncle. She doesn't know a manifest from a coloring book."
"She knows your face," Silvio snapped, slamming his good hand against the metal table until the plates rattled. "And Brennan is using her to justify an all-out seizure of our transport licenses. If that kid talks to the federal grand jury on Tuesday, we lose the docks permanently. We lose the line to Detroit."
Julian stood up, pulling his coat straight. "The Halcyon has forty floors of glass, Uncle. It’s a pretty building, but glass breaks very easily if you hit it with enough pressure."
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"Brennan’s got his personal detail on the elevators, Julian. You can’t get six men past Bishop."
"I don't need six men," Julian said, reaching into his pocket to pull out a small, magnetic device with a blinking red light—a secondary military-grade override key that Delphine had given him during their first night at the Gold Coast townhouse. "I have the old service codes for the freight elevators. The ones they use for the laundry carts at four in the morning. Let’s see how well Brennan protects his new family when the lights go out."
