Chapter 8 - The Price of Prosperity
The campaign succeeded. Their candidate won in a landslide. For a few months, Chicago enjoyed a period of stability that it hadn't seen in half a century.
But power, as Harper had learned, always had a price.
The old guard didn't just fade away. They organized. They formed a coalition of rival families, corporate interests, and disgruntled political players who were determined to take back what they had lost.
It wasn't a sudden war. It was a siege.
The media began to publish leaks—fake stories about Harper’s past, about Roman’s criminal associations, about the "illegality" of the political campaign.
The law firm she had left, Davies, Croft and Mercer, was at the center of it. They were filing dozens of frivolous lawsuits a day, tying up the terminal operations in endless legal knots.
Harper was back in the courtroom every single day, defending everything they had built. She was exhausted, her professional life a constant battle of attrition.
“They want to wear us down,” she told Roman during a rare dinner together. “They don't have to win; they just have to keep us from moving forward.”
“Then we stop playing defense,” Roman said. “We stop the lawsuits.”
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“How? We’re bound by the law.”
“The law is a tool,” Roman said, his voice cold. “And sometimes, the tool needs to be broken to fix the machinery.”
