Chapter 6 - The Red Room Protocol
The Red Room smelled of old iron, expensive brandy, and the wet linen of thirty men sweating under heavy wool overcoats.
Leo Marcone sat behind a long oak table that had once been used to skin beef carcasses, his fat fingers covered in heavy gold rings, his hair slicked back with rosewater oil. He had twelve men behind him, all of them carrying short-barreled submachine guns under their jackets.
Dominic walked down the center of the room alone. He hadn't brought Hawk. He hadn't brought Briggs. Felix was waiting in the SUV outside with the engine running and an M60 machine gun mounted on a swivel joint in the rear cargo space, but inside the room, Dominic was a solitary figure in a black trench coat.
“Dominic,” Leo said, his voice greasy as lard. “You look thin. The North Side must be giving you an ulcer. Or maybe it’s the legal bills from the port authority?”
Dominic stopped six feet from the table. He didn't take off his coat. He didn't look at the twelve men with the guns. “You left a silver case in my lieutenant’s car, Leo. That’s a five-thousand-dollar fine for trespassing on Reyes property. I’ll expect the wire transfer by Monday.”
Leo laughed, a wet, rattling sound that ended in a cough. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a photocopy of a document. He slid it across the oak table until it rested under the light of a single bulb.
It was the birth certificate from San Diego.
“I always wondered what you were doing in California back in 2020, Dominic,” Leo murmured, leaning forward until his gold teeth glinted. “We thought you were buying into the fruit shipping lines. But it turns out you were planting a little seed in a girl named Vasquez. A very pretty girl. Shame about the lungs.”
The room went so quiet that the dripping of a leaky valve in the corner of the old plant sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil.
Dominic didn't look at the paper. His face remained as expressionless as a granite block on the lakefront. “Elena Vasquez is dead, Leo. Her affairs are settled.”
“But the kid isn't,” Leo whispered, his eyes narrowing until they looked like two grease spots on a clean plate. “A little girl. Sophia. Five years old. Green eyes. Just like your old man’s eyes before he took that swim in the river back in ninety-eight. My people tell me she’s staying on the top floor of Reyes Tower. They tell me she goes to that fancy school on the Gold Coast in a car with three bulletproof panels.”
Dominic reached into his coat pocket. Two of Marcone’s men instantly reached for their weapons, but Dominic didn't pull a gun. He pulled out a small, old-fashioned pocket watch that had belonged to his grandfather—the only item of value he carried that didn't have a serial number.
He clicked the latched open. “It’s ten-fifteen, Leo.”
“So what?”
“At ten-ten, a fire broke out at your primary distribution warehouse in Gary, Indiana,” Dominic said, his voice entirely conversational. “At ten-twelve, the gas mains beneath your private club in Rosemont suffered a sudden, catastrophic pressure failure. If my phone vibrates within the next sixty seconds, the third warehouse in Aurora goes up as well.”
Leo’s face turned the color of old pork. He reached for his phone on the table, but before his fingers could touch the glass, the screen lit up with an incoming call from his brother in Gary.
“You’re a businessman, Leo,” Dominic said, stepping closer to the table until he was leaning over the photocopy of his daughter’s birth certificate. “So you understand the concept of a total loss. You think the girl is a weakness. You think because I have a child, you have a handle on my leash.”
He slammed his hand down onto the table, the wood groaning under the force of his palm. His face was no longer calm; it was the mask of the man who had cleared the Chicago West Side with an iron pipe and a box of matches twenty years ago.
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“She isn't my weakness, Leo. She’s my replacement,” Dominic hissed. “If you touch a single hair on her head, I won't just kill you. I’ll spend every dollar in the Reyes ledger to ensure your family name is removed from every cemetery stone in Illinois. I will dig your father up and throw him in the lake. Do you understand me?”
Leo didn't answer. He couldn't. His phone was vibrating against the oak table, its rhythmic buzzing the only sound left in the room as Dominic turned his back on the twelve guns and walked out into the cold Chicago rain.
