Chapter 5 - THE ROOFTOP RECKONINGThe roof of the Drake Hotel was a battleground of wind and freezing rain.
The roaring rotors of a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter deafened the air, throwing sheets of water across the wet asphalt deck. The aircraft’s floodlights sliced through the heavy darkness, casting harsh, moving shadows over the brick chimneys and air intake units.
Marco Falcone stood near the open side door of the helicopter, wrapped in a heavy camel-hair coat, his dark hat held tight against his head against the gale-force downwash of the blades. Beside him were his two personal bodyguards, heavy-set men carrying automatic pistols.
“Get the bags in!” Marco screamed over the roar of the engine. “We leave in sixty seconds!”
“You’re not going anywhere, Marco!”
The voice didn’t carry through the noise of the helicopter, but the sudden collapse of Marco’s chief bodyguard made the point clear enough. The man dropped to his knees, clutching his leg where a round had shattered his kneecap.
Marco spun around, drawing a pearl-handled revolver from his coat.
Standing at the edge of the roof structure, bathed in the blinding white light of the helicopter’s floodlamp, was Chase Donovan.
His trench coat was soaked, his hair plastered to his forehead, his face bleeding from a glass scrape he had sustained during the breaching of floor sixteen. But his eyes were terrifyingly alive—burning with a fierce, cold light that made Marco Falcone take a step backward into the downwash of the blades.
“Donovan!” Marco yelled, his voice thin against the wind. “You can’t win this! My lawyers are filing the receivership papers right now! My men control your docks!”
“Your men are dead or in handcuffs, Marco!” Chase shouted back, stepping forward onto the slick roof deck, his weapon lowered at his side. “And Daniel Bass is currently sitting in the US Attorney’s office with five years of your private financial records!”
Marco’s face twisted in rage. “You think some paper is going to stop me?! I own this city! I built the infrastructure that feeds your entire worthless empire!”
“You didn’t build anything,” Chase said, taking another step closer. “You stole it. You bought off weak men like Vince because you were too cowardly to build something of your own.”
Marco raised his revolver, his hand trembling with rage. “I’ll kill you myself!”
CRACK!
A shot rang out—not from Chase’s gun, and not from Sparrow’s sniper rifle.
It came from the shadow of the rooftop access door.
Marco gasped, dropping his pearl-handled revolver as a bullet tore through his shoulder. He staggered backward, slamming against the side of the helicopter fuselage.
Stepping out from the shadows of the doorway was Vincent Caro.
Vince looked like a walking corpse. His navy suit was drenched in blood and rain, his right arm hung uselessly at his side from the gunshot Chase had delivered in the laundry room hours before, and his face was pale as chalk. In his left hand, he held a cheap, snub-nosed handgun he had taken from one of Falcone’s downed men in the stairwell.
“Vince?” Marco gasped, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “What... what are you doing?!”
“You promised me...” Vince wheezed, his voice ragged, coughing up dark blood into the icy rain. “You promised me... I’d get the family... You said Chase would be in prison... You made me... turn on my own blood...”
“You idiot!” Marco screamed. “You failed! You left the server open! You let a seven-year-old girl ruin the entire operation!”
Vince’s eyes filled with a terrifying, hollow madness. “I gave you thirty years of loyalty, Marco... and you left me... to die in a basement...”
Vince raised the gun with his shaking left hand and fired twice into Marco Falcone’s chest.
Marco’s eyes widened in horror. He slumped down the side of the helicopter, falling onto the wet roof deck as the life drained out of him.
The helicopter pilot, seeing his employer killed, immediately pulled the collective lever. The heavy aircraft lifted off the roof deck with a deafening roar, veering sharply out over the dark, churning waters of Lake Michigan, leaving the two wounded mobsters and Chase alone on the high roof.
Vince collapsed to his knees, dropping the gun onto the asphalt. He looked up at Chase, his chest heaving with shallow, rattling breaths.
“Chase...” Vince choked out, blood flowing freely from his lips. “Chase... I... I held you... when you were a baby...”
Chase stood over him, looking down at his father’s brother in all but blood. The anger that had sustained Chase across nine hundred miles of rain and highways suddenly vanished, leaving only a deep, profound sadness for the hollow waste of a man sitting before him.
“Why, Vince?” Chase asked softly. “You had everything. Respect. Wealth. A family.”
“It... it was never... mine...” Vince whispered, his head drooping forward. “It was always... Jonathan’s... then yours... I wanted... to be the one... who held the keys...”
Vince slumped forward, his face resting against the wet asphalt of the roof. The gold signet ring on his pinky glinted one last time under the city lights before his hand went still forever.
Chase stood alone on the roof of the Drake Hotel as the Chicago police sirens began to wail in the streets far below.
May you like
He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out the small, plastic pink butterfly.
He looked at it for a long moment, then turned his back on the bodies, the blood, and the empire that had almost destroyed him, and walked back down into the light.
