🐾 The Black Dog Who Guarded Her From the Mafia Boss’s Betrayal

Chapter 10 - What a Man Chooses

August’s face did not change.

That was how Hannah knew he was terrified.

Silas had named the bakery. Milo was there. Shepherd was there. Celeste was there. Every life Hannah had left in one place now stood inside one sentence from a man who knew exactly where to cut.

Mara drew a weapon from beneath her coat.

Hannah stared at her. “Does every older woman in this city carry a gun?”

“Only the interesting ones,” Mara said.

August moved to the wall vent. “Silas.”

“August,” came the voice, amused. “You sound better than expected. The river always was dramatic.”

“You shot me yourself.”

“I considered it intimate.”

Hannah felt sick.

August’s tone stayed flat. “If your men touch the bakery, I burn every account you’ve hidden from here to Vancouver.”

“You need time for that. I need one phone call.”

Silas paused.

Then, softer: “Send the woman out with the ledger. I let the boy live.”

“No,” August said.

Hannah looked at him. His answer came too quickly to be strategy. It was instinct.

Something shifted between them, frightening in its quietness.

Mara was already opening cabinets, searching for another exit. Hannah forced herself to think. Old customs house. Built before modern fire codes. River access. Smuggling routes. Her father had worked here. Her father had planned for failure.

She returned to the desk and searched beneath it.

There.

A floor ring.

She pulled. Nothing.

August joined her, jaw tight with pain, and together they lifted the hatch.

Cold air rose from below.

A tunnel.

Mara looked impressed despite herself. “Thomas Reed, you beautiful paranoid man.”

They went down into darkness.

The tunnel led beneath the pier, narrow and wet. Hannah carried the ledger beneath her coat. August moved behind her, one hand on the wall, breath controlled but rough. Mara covered the rear.

Halfway through, Hannah stopped.

“What?” August whispered.

She pointed.

A trip wire stretched ankle-high across the passage.

August stared at it, then at her.

“How did you see that?”

“Poor people look down. We’re always checking what might trip us.”

He almost smiled.

Almost.

They stepped over it and continued until the tunnel opened near the river under the pier. A small boat waited, old but usable.

Then a man emerged from the shadows.

Dale.

Hannah’s relief died when she saw the gun in his hand.

It was pointed at August.

“I’m sorry,” Dale said.

Hannah felt the betrayal like cold water in her lungs.

August did not look surprised. That hurt worse.

“How long?” he asked.

Dale’s eyes shone. “Since Blue Lantern. Silas had my granddaughter.”

Mara’s weapon rose.

Dale shook his head. “Please. Don’t make me choose wrong twice.”

“You already did,” Hannah said.

He flinched as if she had struck him.

Dale looked at her. “I called Silas from the lodge, but I warned you before they came. I dropped hints because I wanted both things. Her alive. You safe. Cowards always want both.”

Hannah thought of him fixing her porch, bringing firewood, teaching Milo to whistle through grass. She wanted simple hatred and could not find it.

August’s voice was quiet. “Where is the girl?”

“Warehouse on Archer.”

“Name.”

“Lena.”

August nodded once.

Then he lowered his hands, exposing himself fully to the gun.

“Shoot me, Dale, or help me get her back.”

Dale’s hand trembled.

Above them, footsteps thundered on the pier.

Silas’s men had found the hatch.

Hannah stepped between August and Dale’s gun.

Shepherd would have been proud.

“Decide,” she said.

Dale broke.

He turned the gun toward the tunnel and fired at the lock mechanism behind them, collapsing rusted metal across the entrance just as the first man reached it.

“Boat,” Dale shouted.

They fled onto the river, four people and one ledger in a boat made for two.

As Chicago’s lights shook on the black water, August looked at Hannah with something raw in his eyes.

“You stood in front of a gun for me.”