Chapter 6 - THE RAT AT THE GATES
Matteo Lombardi did not share his cousin’s predatory stillness. He was lean, jittery, and wore his arrogance like cheap cologne.
He walked into the grand library of the estate with three bodyguards trailing him, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of an Italian leather coat, chewing on an unlit toothpick. When he saw Oliver sitting on the floor by the floor-to-ceiling windows, assembling a Lego set with Yuri standing guard over him, Matteo’s thin eyebrows shot up.
"What is this, Sebastian?" Matteo called out, his voice sharp and nasal. "A day-care center? We run the South Side logistics, not an orphanage."
Sebastian sat behind his desk in his wheelchair, fully dressed in a fresh black suit, his hands folded neatly over a silver-headed cane that rested across his lap. His face was entirely serene, showing not a trace of the brutal agony that had torn through his body three hours earlier.
"The boy is the guest of my physical therapist," Sebastian said, his tone casual, almost bored. "And this is my home, Matteo. Not the boardroom. You came through my gates without calling ahead. Why?"
Matteo stopped five feet from the desk, glancing suspiciously at me as I stood near the bookshelf, holding a leather folder of clinical charts.
"Dr. Julian called me," Matteo said, crossing his arms. "He told me you've brought some back-alley quack into the compound. He said she’s doing experimental treatments on your spine that could trigger autonomic dysreflexia. The commission is worried, Seb. If you take a stroke because some West Side broad wants to play doctor, the whole syndicate gets thrown into chaos."
"Dr. Julian is very concerned with my health," Sebastian remarked, his eyes tracking the slight twitch in Matteo's left cheek. "It touches my heart how much he cares about my spine. Almost as much as he cares about the pharmaceutical supply routes running through the Calumet river terminal."
Matteo stiffened. The toothpick stopped moving in his mouth.
"What do the Calumet terminals have to do with anything?" Matteo asked, his voice tightening.
"Nothing," Sebastian replied with a cold, terrifying smile. "Just thinking out loud. Like you were, when you approved the redirection of the Cicero freight lines last week without my seal."
"That was an operational emergency! We had federal agents sniffing around the rail yards—"
"Federal agents who happen to be on Dr. Julian's private payroll?" Sebastian asked softly.
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. Yuri took half a step forward from the window, his hand dropping casually onto the grip of the submachine gun concealed beneath his wool coat. The three men behind Matteo tensed, their coats parting slightly.
Oliver looked up from his Lego set, sensing the sudden, sharp spike in danger.
"Mom?" he called out, his voice small and frightened.
"Stay there, baby," I said quietly, keeping my eyes locked on Matteo's men. "Keep building the tower."
Matteo leaned over the desk, dropping his voice into a vicious whisper. "Listen to me, cousin. You’ve been sitting in that chair for twenty years while the rest of us took the bullets, paid off the judges, and ran the streets. We respected you because you were the brain. But if the brain is rotting—if you’re letting some washed-up, disgraced physical therapist feed you fairy tales about walking again—then maybe it's time for the family to put you out to pasture."
Sebastian didn't flinch. He didn't reach for a gun.
Instead, he did something that made every man in that room freeze in absolute, gut-wrenching terror.
He took his right hand, gripped the edge of the heavy walnut desk, and planted both leather shoes firmly onto the hardwood floor.
Then, with an agonizing, deliberate slowness that made the joints in his knees creak like old timber, Sebastian shifted his weight forward.
His hips lifted three inches off the cushion of the wheelchair.
It was not a walk. It was barely a stand. His legs were shaking violently, the quadriceps spasming under the catastrophic strain of an electrical circuit that had been dead for two decades suddenly being forced to bear two hundred and ten pounds of bone and muscle.
The cane in his lap slipped, clattering against the floor with a sound like a thunderclap.
Matteo stumbled backward two full steps, his face turning the color of skim milk. His bodyguards reached for their firearms, their eyes bulging in disbelief.
"You..." Matteo stammered, his jaw hanging loose. "You're... you can't..."
Sebastian hung there between heaven and earth for three full seconds, defying the laws of neurology, defying twenty years of lies, defying the grave they had dug for him. His eyes burned into Matteo’s skull with the intensity of an industrial laser.
"Get out of my house," Sebastian growled, the vibration of his voice rattling the whiskey tumblers on the side table. "And tell Paul Julian that if he wants to check my reflexes... he should come do it himself."
With a short, controlled drop, Sebastian lowered himself back into the wheelchair.
His face was slick with sweat, his breath shallow, but his posture was absolute royalty. He picked up his pen with a hand that did not shake in the slightest.
Matteo didn't say another word. He turned on his heel, stumbling over his own feet in his haste to reach the double doors, his bodyguards practically running behind him down the marble hallway.
The front doors slammed shut. The roar of the Lincolns accelerating down the private drive echoed through the glass.
I rushed forward, dropping to my knees beside Sebastian's chair, grabbing his wrist to check his pulse.
His heart was hammering at one hundred and sixty beats per minute. His blood pressure was soaring.
"You idiot," I whispered, tears of terror and professional awe blurring my vision. "You could have torn the femoral artery. The connective tissue hasn't remodeled yet! What were you thinking?"
Sebastian looked down at me.
His hand moved, his rough, calloused fingers brushing against my cheek, catching a tear that had slipped past my lash. His touch was warm. Shockingly gentle for a man who had built an empire on corpses.
"I had to know, Clare," he murmured, his chest heaving.
"Know what?"
"That you weren't an angel sent to torture me with dreams," he said, his voice dropping so low only I could hear it over the hum of Oliver's Lego pieces clattering in the corner. "Now I know. The wire is still hot."
"The wire is barely sparking," I snapped, trying to hide the wild flutter in my own chest at his touch. "And you just showed your hand to a traitor."
"No," Sebastian said, his eyes turning back toward the door with lethal certainty. "I didn't show my hand. I showed him the executioner's block. Frank!"
Frank stepped into the doorway, his face pale from what he had witnessed through the cracked entrance. "Boss?"
"Call Dr. Peter Mercer in Munich," Sebastian ordered. "Tell him to pack his micro-neuro tools, hire a private Gulfstream, and land at Gary Airport by midnight. Cash up front. Two million dollars."
"You're taking the clip out?" Frank asked, his eyes wide.
May you like
"Tonight," Sebastian said. "Because by tomorrow morning... Matteo and Julian will have the entire Chicago syndicate outside those gates to burn this house to the ground."
***
