Chapter 5 - The Ashes of His Kingdom
By the night of Day Two, Chicago was unraveling at the seams.
Sensing that Adrian Morgan was distracted and unhinged, the rival Moretti Syndicate launched a sudden, violent strike on the eastern shipping lanes. Fire raged across three docks, sirens blared through the streets, and millions of dollars in cargo went up in smoke.
In the private vault room beneath the Morgan estate, Adrian didn't even hear the radio updates Marcus was desperately trying to give him.
He stood in front of an open wall safe, surrounded by piles of cash, bearer bonds, and legal deeds worth tens of millions. None of it mattered. None of it could buy back a single second of the time he had wasted.
Adrian’s hands shook violently as he dug through an old wooden box hidden in the back of the safe—a box he hadn't opened in six years.
Inside were small mementos from his past life: his father’s pocket watch, his first gun... and a small stack of printed photographs.
He pulled out the stack.
One photograph was missing.
The frame that had held their honeymoon photo was empty, the glass neatly removed. But taped to the velvet lining of the box was a small yellow sticky note in Eleanor’s delicate handwriting, dated seven months ago:
I took the photo, Adrian. If you ever want to know where your soul went... go look where we left it.
Adrian stared at the note. The world around him went completely deathly quiet.
The ocean. The cold waves. The smell of cedarwood and cheap coffee.
The promise.
"If I ever become a monster you don't recognize... wait for me at the cabin for three days."
"Jesus Christ," Adrian gasped, a sudden, violent sob breaking from his chest.
It hit him like a physical blow. The three days. The date she had circled on the calendar in her sewing room.
Today was Day Two. He had already lost forty-eight hours chasing ghosts across the globe while she was waiting at the place where their story had begun.
"Marcus!" Adrian roared, turning around so fast he nearly knocked over the heavy vault door.
Marcus sprinted down the hall, holding an encrypted radio. "Boss! The Moretti crew just took the warehouse on 5th Street! We need you at the frontline right now or we lose the entire east side!"
"Clear my jet," Adrian commanded, his voice trembling with a frantic, terrifying urgency. "Call the airfield in Bangor, Maine. Tell them to have an all-wheel-drive SUV waiting on the tarmac."
Marcus blinked in absolute disbelief. "Boss, are you crazy?! You can't leave Chicago right now! If you leave tonight, the Morettis will take half our territory by tomorrow morning!"
Adrian stepped up to his chief enforcer, grabbing him by the shoulders with iron strength, his eyes wide and bloodshot.
"Let them take it!" Adrian screamed into Marcus’s face. "Let the Morettis take the docks! Let them burn the warehouses! Let them take the whole damn city! I don't give a damn about Chicago anymore!"
"Boss—"
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"I lost my wife, Marcus!" Adrian sobbed openly, no longer caring about his pride, his reputation, or the empire he had spent a decade building with blood. "I lost my child! If I don't get to Maine before tomorrow night, I will never see them again!"
Without waiting for a response, Adrian threw his guns onto the table, stripped off his expensive tailored jacket, grabbed a plain leather coat, and sprinted out of the estate into the pouring rain.
