Chapter 3 - The Cold Ledger
The 2:17 a.m. attack hit me before I could make it back to the second floor.
I collapsed on the third step of the hidden service stairwell, my back pressed against the cold brick wall, my knees pulled up to my chest in a desperate attempt to retain a single degree of body heat. My lungs felt as if they were filling with liquid nitrogen. Every breath was a rasping, hollow sound that echoed up the narrow stone shaft.
Above me, I heard the faint, muffled sound of footsteps.
Not Elena. Not the child.
These footsteps were heavy, measured, and wearing the custom steel-shank boots worn by my head of personal security, Frank Torrio.
Frank had been my late uncle’s right-hand man for twenty years. When I took over the outfit after the North Side war, Frank was the one who placed the silver signet ring on my finger in front of fifty crew bosses at the Italian American Club on Taylor Street. He was family. Or as close to family as a man in my business was allowed to have.
I kept silent, pulling my dark velvet robe over my face, sinking deeper into the shadows of the unlit landing.
Frank’s voice drifted down through the ventilation grate three feet above my head. He was talking to someone on an encrypted satellite phone.
"He's getting worse," Frank said, his deep, gravelly voice flat and emotionless. "The doctor was here tonight asking questions. Wanting Maryland labs."
A pause as the person on the other end spoke.
"No," Frank continued, clicking his brass lighter—clack-flick—a sound I had heard ten thousand times in cigar lounges across the city. "The girl has it under control. She says another three weeks and his heart will give out naturally. The coroner will sign off on acute congestive heart failure. No autopsies, no police."
Another pause.
"The Senator is getting impatient," Frank grunted. "He wants the dock leases transferred to the Vale Development Group before the autumn budget hearing. Tell him to keep his trousers on. If we rush it, Callahan’s captains will smell a rat and start a street war. Let the sickness finish him."
The footsteps moved away toward the east wing.
I sat in the dark stairwell, the cold burning through my blood, but my mind was suddenly crystal clear.
It wasn't just Vanessa.
It was Vanessa, her father Senator Vale, and my own head of security. A three-way alliance designed to strip my empire of its legal assets—the multi-million-dollar shipping terminals along Lake Michigan—while using a slow, untraceable poison to make my death look like a sudden, tragedy-driven illness.
They didn't just want me dead. They wanted me to die slowly enough that I would sign over power-of-attorney documents to Vanessa out of sheer exhaustion.
I pulled myself up using the iron handrail, my nails digging into the cold metal until two of them split and bled. I didn't feel the pain. The cold in my nerve endings was too deep for surface pain.
I dragged myself up to the fourth floor—the attic level above the grand ballroom where my uncle had stored forty years of paper records before the federal government forced us to go digital.
The attic smelled of old leather, dust, and dry cedar.
I walked to the far corner, behind a stack of framed oil paintings of Chicago mayors who had taken Callahan money, and pushed a small bronze rivet on the wall moulding.
A narrow panel popped open.
Inside was my private emergency stash: three hundred thousand dollars in unmarked hundred-dollar bills, two Swiss passports under the name Michael O'Brien, an unregistered Sig Sauer P226 pistol with three loaded magazines, and a small, leather-bound black notebook.
This notebook wasn't my uncle's. It was mine.
For five years, every time Senator Vale had asked for an illegal campaign contribution, every time Frank Torrio had taken a kickback from the dock unions, I had written down dates, bank account numbers, and wire transfers.
I took the Sig Sauer, checked the chamber with a quiet clack, and slipped it into the deep interior pocket of my robe. Then I wrapped the leather notebook in waterproof plastic and tucked it against my chest.
If I died tonight, Frank and Vanessa would burn this house to the ground to find this book.
I crept back down to my bedroom, slipping through the door just as the first grey light of a chilly Chicago dawn began to streak across the lake horizon.
The blue tumbler was still sitting on my nightstand—half-empty, as I had left it.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, pulled my heavy blankets around my shoulders, and held the loaded Sig Sauer beneath the fabric.
At 6:30 a.m., the bedroom door opened softly.
Vanessa stepped inside, wearing a silk dressing gown, her hair tied back in a flawless knot. She carried a fresh glass of orange juice on a silver tray.
"Good morning, Jack," she said sweetly, walking toward the bed. Her eyes instantly flicked to the nightstand, checking the level of the blue tumbler.
She noticed it was half empty.
A tiny, almost imperceptible flash of satisfaction crossed her face.
"You drank some of your tonic," she noted, setting the orange juice down. "How do you feel?"
I looked up at her, letting my eyelids droop, letting my jaw sag just enough to look like a man whose nervous system was failing him.
"Cold, Vanessa," I slurred, making my voice sound thin and weak. "So cold... I can't feel my fingers."
She reached out and patted my cheek with her soft, warm hand—a touch that felt like venom against my skin.
"Don't worry, darling," she whispered, leaning down to kiss my forehead. "It will all be over soon. Just rest."
"Where... where is Frank?" I asked, blinking heavily. "I need... I need to review the dock leases."
"Frank is handling everything, Jack," she said, her voice dropping into the soothing tone one uses with a dying child. "You don't need to worry about the docks anymore. I spoke to my father this morning. His lawyers are drafting the transfer papers now. You just need to sign them when they arrive this afternoon."
"Yes," I mumbled, closing my eyes and letting my head fall back onto the pillows. "Whatever... whatever you say, Vanessa."
She stayed beside the bed for another two minutes, watching my breathing settle into a slow, shallow rhythm. Satisfied that the poison was doing its work, she turned on her heel and walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar.
The second the door clicked shut, my eyes opened.
I pulled the Sig Sauer out from under the blankets.
My hands were still cold. My body was still failing.
But as I looked at the black steel of the gun, I realized something Frank and Vanessa had forgotten:
May you like
They had trained themselves to fight a sick man.
They had forgotten that before I was sick, I was the man who took Chicago.
