Chapter 5 - The Obsidian Crest
"Where did you get that ring?"
The man’s voice had lost all its conversational warmth. It dropped an octave, turning sharp, rigid, and charged with a sudden, violent tension that made the surrounding syndicate guards instantly tense their weapons.
"It... it was my father's," I stammered, trying to pull my hand back, though his grip was like an iron shackle. "Thomas Hayes. He gave it to me before he died."
The boss stared at the obsidian crest, his thumb brushing slowly over the engraved wolf's head. A muscle twitched tightly along his jawline, and when he finally raised his eyes back to my face, they were burning with a dark, terrifying intensity.
"Thomas," he murmured, tasting the name like something bitter and long-buried. "The great Thomas Hayes, playing suburban shipping magnate in Chicago."
He looked up at the corporate goons still pinned against the SUV by his men, then back down at me.
"Listen to me, little bird," the syndicate boss said, his voice dropping to a low, fierce growl that vibrated straight through my chest. "Your father didn't die in a car crash on a wet highway. He was executed by the very men you were supposed to marry this afternoon."
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. The rain, the alley, the cold iron gates—everything dissolved into a sickening hum.
"How... how do you know that?" I whispered, tears finally breaking through, hot against my freezing cheeks.
May you like
The boss released my wrist, sliding his hand into his heavy wool coat, pulling out a battered, silver-plated cigarette case. He popped it open, retrieved a single cigarette without lighting it, and looked back down the dark, rain-swept alley toward the distant lights of Michigan Avenue.
"Because," he said quietly, a grim, humorless smile touching the corner of his scarred mouth, "before Thomas Hayes became your father, he was the only man in this city who ever managed to look Lawrence Blackwood in the eye and live to tell the tale. And now that they've killed him... they inherit his daughter."
