Chapter 2 - Bloodlines and Blackmail
The suite on the second floor was larger than the entire apartment building I had fled in Rogers Park. The carpets were plush enough to swallow footsteps, the crib in the nursery was handcrafted from white birch, and the refrigerator was stocked with organic groceries, formula, and imported fruit. It was paradise, but it was also a fortress with armed guards pacing the perimeter under the heavy autumn fog.
For the first two weeks, my life turned into an endless blizzard of numbers and names. Luca worked like a man possessed, barely sleeping four hours a night. I sat across from him in his study until two in the morning, cross-referencing shipping manifests from the Port of Chicago with wire transfers sent to offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.
The deeper I dug into the ledgers, the sicker I felt.
Connor Walsh hadn't just stolen my savings and my name. He had embedded my Social Security number, my signature, and my personal details into an intricate laundering web known in the underworld as the ""Hydra Route."" Every time Luca's family had moved high-value industrial freight through the Midwest over the past three years, Connor had skimmed off two percent, masking the discrepancies by routing them through phantom corporations registered in my name.
""He set you up to be the sacrificial lamb,"" Luca told me late one Tuesday night. We were sitting side by side on the leather Chesterfield sofa in his library, surrounded by dozens of spread-out bank statements. He poured two fingers of dark bourbon into a crystal glass and pushed it toward me. I didn't drink it.
""He knew that if his theft was uncovered,"" Luca continued, swirling his own drink, ""my family's enforcers would track the bank routing numbers directly to your door. In our world, theft of that magnitude carries a summary execution. You and your child would have disappeared into the Chicago River, and Connor would have vanished to South America with forty million dollars of clean syndicate cash.""
My stomach lurched violently. I buried my face in my trembling hands. ""I slept next to him for two years. He rubbed my back when I had morning sickness. He promised we were going to buy a cottage in Michigan.""
""Men who trade in betrayal always sound the sweetest,"" Luca said, his tone devoid of pity, yet strangely grounded. ""It's how they keep you from looking at the knife behind their back.""
""Why didn't you kill me?"" I asked, looking up into those startling amber eyes. ""The night at Obsidian. You knew the accounts led to me. Your family handles liabilities with bullets, not job offers.""
Luca held my gaze for a long moment, the silence stretching so thick I could hear the crackle of the fireplace.
""Because I watched you at that club for three weeks before I approached you,"" he murmured, his voice dropping into that dark, intimate register. ""I saw how you looked at the men who touched you with disgust, and how you looked at your phone between sets with pure terror and devotion. A woman who sells her soul in fifteen-minute increments just to buy baby medicine is not a criminal mastermind. She is prey. And in this city, I decide who the wolves eat.""
Before I could process the strange, electric heat shooting through my veins, the heavy mahogany doors burst open.
Dante Ferrante, Luca’s cousin and the volatile underboss of the syndicate’s North Side operations, stormed into the room. Behind him were two armed capos, their jackets bulging with holstered firearms.
May you like
Dante’s eyes locked onto me like a vulture sighting roadkill.
""Well, well,"" Dante sneered, tossing a glossy manila folder onto Luca's desk. ""The boss keeps a stripper in his personal quarters while the Commission is screaming for blood. Did you forget to tell the elders that this little whore’s name is stamped on forty million dollars of missing cocaine profits, Luca?""
