Chapter 6 - The Weight of Union Station
The wail of federal sirens cutting through the wet Chicago sleet sounded less like rescue and more like the crumbling of the world I had known. Arthur slumped against the shattered mahogany desk, his hand clutching his bleeding shoulder while a low, ragged hiss escaped his lips. Dante didn't check him again. His gray eyes—fierce, urgent, and stripped of every defense he had worn for eight years—locked entirely onto me.
“Victoria has Leo at Union Station,” Dante repeated, the words striking me like physical blows. “She’s trying to leave the country.”
“How?” My voice broke, the terror for my son instantly eclipsing the shock of Arthur’s betrayal and the ruined study. “Commercial flights are grounded in this weather. The interstate is locked up with ice.”
“Private rail car,” Dante said, his hand gripping my shoulder with enough pressure to ground me. “Your father used an old freight line tied to the Carter family’s logistics company to move assets quietly across the Canadian border. Victoria knows the codes. She’s taking my son.”
The horror of it paralyzed me for a fraction of a second. My sister—the woman who had traded marriage to the city’s most dangerous man for power, who had watched me flee to Switzerland with a broken heart while she played a dangerous proxy game—was now dragging a three-year-old boy into the cold to save her own skin.
“We go now,” I said, the maternal panic burning away every trace of hesitation. I racked the slide of the Sig Sauer, checked the chamber with practiced precision, and looked straight into Dante’s eyes. “If she touches a hair on his head, I don’t care about the Outfit, the ledgers, or federal indictments. I will kill her myself.”
Dante didn’t flinch at the threat. Instead, a grim, dark approval flashed across his face.
“Then let’s go get our son,” he said.
The drive through the frozen Loop felt like navigating a ghost town. The sleet had turned the asphalt into a glassy sheet, but Dante drove the SUV with reckless, terrifying mastery, weaving around abandoned snowplows and skidding through yellow lights.
Inside the car, the silence was heavy, charged with all the things we hadn't yet said. The revelation about my father and Arthur had re-engineered our past, but the present was entirely focused on the sprawling, cavernous iron architecture of Union Station looming ahead of us.
“Federal agents will be sweeping the main concourse,” Dante said as he cut the engine and threw the SUV into park near a deserted service loading bay. “Victoria won’t use the public platforms. She’ll be at the private freight siding on the south wing.”
“How do you know?” I asked, grabbing my coat tighter as I pushed my door open into the biting wind.
“Because I built that siding for your father three years ago,” Dante muttered, stepping out into the sleet and drawing his weapon with practiced ease. “Stay close to me, Elena. Every step of the way.”
We slipped through a rusted side door marked Authorized Personnel Only, plunging into the dim, echoing underbelly of the station. The air smelled of coal dust, old oil, and damp concrete. Overhead, the rhythmic thrum of diesel engines vibrated through the steel beams.
We moved silently down the concrete platform, navigating past stacked wooden crates and rusted freight carts. Ahead of us, sitting on a private spur track, idly hissing steam into the freezing air, was a sleek, dark-paneled private railway carriage.
And standing on the metal boarding steps, holding a bundled-up toddler who was crying softly, was Victoria.
“Victoria!” I screamed, breaking cover before Dante could pull me back.
My sister froze. She turned around sharply, her dark hair pulled back in a severe knot, her expensive cashmere coat splattered with mud. In her arms, Leo was sobbing, his little hands clutching at her collar.
“Elena?” Victoria’s voice echoed off the concrete walls, sharp and brittle. “Stay back, Elena! Don’t take another step!”
Dante stepped out from the shadows beside me, his pistol raised and pointed squarely at the metal deck of the train car.
“Let the boy go, Victoria,” Dante said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. “The federal indictment is already filed. Arthur is bleeding out in the study. You have nowhere left to run.”
Victoria’s eyes darted from Dante to me, panic flaring behind her calculated facade. But instead of dropping her head in defeat, a bitter, hysterical laugh escaped her lips.
“You think I’m running from the feds, Dante?” Victoria sneered, shifting Leo slightly as the little boy cried out for me. “I’m not running. I’m collecting what’s owed to me. Father promised me this empire, and you handed it to an absentee ghost who ran off to Europe!”
“Mommy!” Leo wailed, stretching his small arms toward me from Victoria’s grasp. “Mommy, help!”
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My heart shattered into a million pieces. The distance between us suddenly felt like an ocean. Victoria’s fingers tightened around Leo’s arm, not with crushing violence, but with a desperate, unhinged possessiveness that told me she was entirely unpredictable.
“One step closer and I take the boy across the border,” Victoria hissed, pulling a small silver key fob from her pocket—the manual override for the train’s emergency throttle. “You want your son back, Elena? Then you tell Dante to drop his weapon right now, or I swear to God I’ll leave you both behind forever.”
