Chapter 2 - Shadows in Pilsen
The late March rain had turned into a freezing sleet by the time my black Maybach pulled up to the curb in Pilsen. The streetlights flickered against the worn brick facades of the low-rise apartment buildings, reflecting off the oily puddles along the sidewalk.
My driver, Frank, a former Marine who had been with me for a decade, looked into the rearview mirror. "Mr. Carver, there’s an unmarked sedan parked half a block down. Black Ford Taurus. Engine’s idling, two men inside. They’ve been here since we pulled up."
I looked out the tinted window. The dark sedan sat under the dripping branch of a leafless oak tree, its headlights turned off.
"Stay with the car, Frank," I ordered, checking the button on my coat. "If they step out, knock them down."
"Got it, sir."
I stepped out into the freezing slush, my expensive leather soles clicking sharply against the cracked pavement. I walked up the worn concrete steps of the four-story brick building and pushed open the heavy wooden outer door.
The hallway smelled of pine cleaner, old frying oil, and damp wool. I walked up the two flights of stairs, my heart pounding against my ribs with a frantic, unaccustomed rhythm. In my corporate life, I faced hostile takeovers involving billions of dollars without my pulse rising past sixty. But standing outside that blue door on the third floor, I felt like an eleven-year-old boy again, standing in a dark hallway, waiting for someone to tell him why the only person who cared about him was gone.
I knocked three times.
From inside, I heard the soft, muffled sound of footsteps, followed by the slide of a heavy brass deadbolt.
The blue door pulled open three inches, held by a thick brass security chain.
Rosa’s dark eyes appeared in the gap. She looked tired, her gray-streaked hair pulled back into a loose bun, a faded wool shawl draped over her narrow shoulders.
"Miles?" she whispered, her voice laced with sudden anxiety. "What are you doing here? It's after ten o'clock."
"Rosa," I said gently. "I need to talk to you. Please."
She looked past my shoulder, down the dark stairwell, her face pale under the dim hallway light. "Did... did someone follow you?"
"I have security outside," I reassured her. "No one is going to hurt you, Rosa. Not anymore."
She hesitated for three agonizing seconds, then unlatched the chain and swung the door open.
The apartment was warm, lit by a single floor lamp in the corner. Little Juny was asleep on a small fold-out couch beneath a thick handmade quilt, her small pink sneakers set neatly beside her drawing markers on the floor.
Rosa walked over to the small kitchen counter, her hands visibly trembling as she poured hot water into two ceramic mugs containing chamomile tea bags. She handed one to me, her fingers brushing mine. They were cold, calloused, and paper-thin.
"You spoke to Charles Bennett," Rosa stated. It wasn't a question.
I set the tea mug down on the formica table. "How do you know that?"
"Because thirty minutes ago, a lawyer named Miller called my landlord," Rosa whispered, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. "He told him that if I didn't vacate this apartment by Friday, the city would file an environmental code violation against the building. He offered my landlord twenty thousand dollars to lock me out tomorrow morning."
A cold, white-hot fury erupted through my chest, burning away the last remnants of my corporate restraint. Charles Bennett was playing dirty, trying to scatter them into the street before I could secure their legal protection.
"They're not locking you out, Rosa," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "In fact, you're packing your bags tonight. You and Juny."
Rosa backed away slightly, her hands crossing over her chest. "Miles, no. I told you yesterday—I do not want your charity. I do not want to be a piece on your father's chessboard again!"
"It isn't charity, Rosa!" I stepped closer, dropping to my knees right there on the worn linoleum floor in front of her, looking up into the face of the woman who had wiped my tears when my mother died. "Look at me. Please."
Rosa looked down at me, her chest heaving with silent sobs.
"My father lied to me for seventeen years," I said, my voice thick with emotion. "He made me believe I wasn't worth staying for. He made me believe that everyone in the world is bought and sold. I spent my entire adult life becoming a monster just like him because I thought that was the only way to survive."
I reached out, taking her trembling hands into mine.
"You are the only real thing left in my life, Rosa," I whispered. "I don't care about the money. I don't care about Carver Enterprises. I care about the fact that my father stole seventeen years of my life from you. Let me protect you. Please."
Rosa looked at me, her dark eyes searching my face, seeing through the sharp, thirty-thousand-dollar suit down to the lonely, heartbroken eleven-year-old boy who used to sit on her kitchen counter eating warm tortillas.
Slowly, she sank onto the small wooden chair beside me, weeping softly into her hands.
"He told me he would destroy you, Miles," Rosa sobbed, her voice breaking the quiet of the room. "The night he fired me... he pulled me into his study. He showed me a file on a federal investigation into your mother's family trust. He said if I ever spoke to you, if I ever answered your letters, he would leak documents that would frame your late mother for financial fraud and leave you with nothing."
My blood ran cold. "My mother?"
"Your mother left you fifty percent of the original Carver holdings in a private trust in Switzerland," Rosa revealed, wiping her eyes with the corner of her shawl. "She gave me the key to the safe-deposit box in Zurich two weeks before she passed away in the hospital. She told me, 'When Miles turns thirty, give him this.' But your father found out. He searched my room while I was at the market. He took the key, but he didn't know about the red notebook."
"The notebook?" I asked, my heart pounding violently.
May you like
Rosa pointed toward the red notebook sitting on the table where I had left it earlier.
"The back cover," Rosa whispered. "It isn't paper. It's double-layered leather. The original bank account registration code for the Swiss trust is sewn inside the lining."
