A horn in the background. Not Chicago traffic. Lower. Repeating. Freight.
Train yard.
Then an overhead announcement, faint but present: track clearance for an outbound line.
She wrote FRT YARD? SOUTH? on the pad.
“You sound tired, Roman,” she said. “Are you hiding near the tracks, or is that just how guilt echoes?”
The line went dead.
Frank was at her side seconds later, awakened by her raised voice and the look on her face.
By morning, Nico had the location narrowed to an abandoned freight depot near Back of the Yards.
Paulie wanted to storm it with twenty men.
Ava Monroe wanted federal tactical teams in place.
Nico wanted Roman alive.
“For court?” Ava asked over speakerphone.
“For Sophie,” he said.
Roman had shot at her through a hedge like she was a bargaining chip.
Nico wanted his daughter to know the man who had done it did not vanish into legend. He wanted her to know evil could be named, faced, and ended without becoming theater.
The raid happened at dawn under a sky the color of cold steel.
Federal teams moved first, silent and fast through the warehouse perimeter. Nico was not supposed to be there. Ava had made that explicit. He arrived anyway, dressed in black, wearing no badge and no illusion that he belonged among lawful men.
Roman saw the breach and ran.
He made it to the upper catwalk before cornering himself above old rail equipment and rusted beams. One hand held a pistol. The other clutched a duffel bag full of cash that had become meaningless sometime during the night.
When he saw Nico below, he laughed.
“Look at you,” Roman called down. “Standing with the government.”
“I’m standing,” Nico said, “because Leah Hart stayed alive.”
Roman’s smile vanished. “You think this makes you clean?”
“No.”
