Chapter 20 - The Vow of Iron
Clara grabbed Vincent’s arm, her fingernails digging through his dress shirt into his muscle. “Toby! Vincent, Toby is at the academy!”
“Julian!” Vincent roared, already moving toward the door like a hurricane of wrath. “Mobilize every car! Clear Michigan Avenue! Dominic, contact the academy security detail—tell them to pull the fire alarm and evacuate every child onto the athletic fields immediately!”
“On it, Boss!” Dominic sprinted out the door, his radio barking emergency codes.
Clara ran beside Vincent as they rushed down the corridor to the underground parking garage. Her heart was beating in her throat, terror threatening to swallow her whole, but she forced herself to breathe. She forced herself to think like the woman who had walked into the Union Club and brought an empire to heel.
“Vincent, wait!” Clara shouted, pulling him by his lapels as they reached the armored Suburban.
Vincent looked at her, his eyes wild with a father’s frantic, murderous desperation. “Clara, I have to get Toby!”
“Listen to me!” Clara commanded, her hazel eyes blazing with fierce, sharp clarity. “Damien Voss is a sadist, but he is not stupid! If he detonates a bomb in a school full of senators’ and judges’ children, the entire United States government will hunt him down with drones! It’s a bluff to make you panic! The bomb isn't at the school!”
Vincent froze, his chest heaving, his sharp mind catching up to her logic. “What?”
“Think, Vincent!” Clara pleaded, her mind racing through the financial ledgers and dossiers she had studied. “Damien Voss survived ten years in Europe by operating in the shadows! He doesn't want the FBI crawling all over Chicago! He wants you divided! He wants your enforcers rushing to the school so the harbor is left undefended!”
At that moment, Dominic’s voice crackled through Vincent’s earpiece: *“Boss! Bravo team reached the academy! Toby is safe in the principal’s office under six armed guards! We checked his locker—there is no bomb! Only a carved wooden wolf head with a mocking note!”*
Vincent let out a ragged breath, closing his eyes for a split second as the terrifying weight lifted from his chest. Toby was safe.
Then, Vincent opened his eyes. The fear was gone. The panic was gone.
What remained was an absolute, terrifying thirst for retribution that would swallow Damien Voss whole.
Vincent looked down at Clara, cupping her face in his large, trembling hands, pulling her against his forehead.
“You saw through him,” Vincent whispered, his voice thick with reverence and awe. “You saved our family again.”
“Now we finish this, Vincent,” Clara said, her voice dropping into a lethal, steady rhythm that matched his own. “He tried to use our child against us. He tried to tear apart what we bled to build.”
Clara reached to Vincent’s shoulder holster, her small, delicate hand resting over the grip of his matte-black pistol.
“No more games,” Clara whispered, her hazel eyes locking onto his with terrifying determination. “Tonight at Navy Pier, we do not negotiate. Tonight, we bury the last of the Voss family forever.”
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Vincent’s lips curled into a slow, devastating smile—a smile of a Don who had found not only a lover, but an invincible queen to conquer the world by his side.
“Lock and load, Clara,” Vincent commanded softly, kissing her lips with fierce, unbreakable promise. “Tonight, Chicago watches the wolves hunt.”