Chapter 3 - A Drink with the Guard
The main guardhouse stood fifty yards inside the wrought-iron perimeter gates, surrounded by manicured boxwood hedges and floodlights that cut through the pouring rain.
Inside, the air smelled of stale coffee, heating oil, and rain-soaked wool.
Leo Vance sat behind a console of sixteen high-definition security monitors, his boots propped up on the edge of the desk, a half-eaten sandwich sitting on a paper plate beside his arm. He was a stocky man in his mid-forties with thinning hair, small eyes, and a heavy jaw.
The door opened, letting in a gust of cold, wet wind.
Leo swung his feet off the desk and stood up, his hand dropping toward his sidearm out of habit. But when he saw me standing in the doorway, his posture instantly shifted into a practiced, eager deference.
"Mr. Moretti!" Leo said, straightening his uniform shirt. "I didn't expect you down at the gate tonight, sir. Everything alright up at the main house?"
I walked in slowly, leaving the door slightly ajar behind me. The rain rattled against the reinforced glass windows like handfuls of thrown gravel.
"Just taking a walk, Leo," I said, stepping closer to the desk. "It’s a loud night. Hard to sleep."
"Yes, sir. That storm off the lake is a mean one."
I looked at the bank of monitors. Camera 12 showed the staff corridor. The hallway was empty now, the door to room four firmly shut.
"How are the staff quarters tonight, Leo?" I asked conversationally, leaning one hip against the edge of his control console. "Quiet?"
Leo’s eyes flickered to Camera 12 for a microsecond before returning to my face. "Quiet as a grave, sir. Everyone’s turned in."
"No one sick?"
"Not that I've heard, Mr. Moretti," Leo said smoothly, offering a polite, professional smile. "You know how the girls are—they work hard, they keep to themselves."
"That’s funny," I said, reaching into my heavy overcoat. "Because three hours ago, a three-year-old child was in my private pressing room, trying to iron my shirt with a burning hot iron because her mother was too sick to stand up."
Leo’s smile stiffened slightly. "Ah... that would be Sophia, sir. She mentioned she had a touch of the flu yesterday. I told her to stay in bed and rest. I can have her replaced by morning if her absence is causing an inconvenience to your schedule—"
"I don't care about the shirt, Leo," I interrupted softly.
I pulled my hand out of my coat and set the wrapped glass of water directly onto the center of his security console, right between his coffee cup and his keyboard.
The glass made a sharp clink against the plastic housing.
Leo stared down at the glass. The color slowly drained from his weathered face, leaving his skin the color of wet newsprint.
"What's this, sir?" he asked, his voice losing its easy confidence.
"It’s a glass of water from Sophia’s nightstand," I said, resting my hands in my pockets. "She tells me you brought it to her personally an hour ago. She says you were very particular about her drinking it all."
"I... I was just trying to help the girl out, Mr. Moretti," Leo stammered, his right hand twitching near his belt. "She was dehydrated. I gave her some aspirin from the kit—"
"The kit doesn't contain organophosphates, Leo," I said.
The air in the guardhouse turned deathly still.
Leo took half a step back. "I don't know what you're talking about, sir."
"Dr. Vance took a sample of this water twenty minutes ago," I continued, my tone as calm as if I were discussing maritime freight tariffs. "He also took a sample of Sophia’s blood. Do you know what happens when a person ingests three milligrams of the compound in that glass, Leo?"
Leo’s eyes darted toward the open door behind me.
"They drown in their own lungs," I answered for him. "It takes about forty-eight hours. It’s very painful. Very quiet. And it looks just like an aggressive strain of pneumonia."
"Mr. Moretti, I swear to God—"
"Who paid you, Leo?"
Leo swallowed hard, his throat bobbing frantically. "Nobody! I’ve been loyal to this house for four years!"
"You were hired four years ago through a referral from Arthur Genovese," I said, stepping closer to him until I was standing less than a foot away. "Arthur works for my uncle, Sal. Yesterday at 2:14 PM, a blue Ford transit van registered to a front company in Gary pulled up to Gate 3. You bypassed the security scanner, met the driver by the generator shed, and took an insulated cooler."
Leo’s breath came in fast, shallow hitches. He knew he was caught. He knew the math of the situation, and he knew what men like me did to traitors inside our walls.
With a sudden, violent yell, Leo reached for the Glock 19 holstered at his hip.
He never cleared the leather.
My left hand shot out, pinning his wrist to his belt with crushing force, while my right hand clamped around his throat, driving him backward against the steel frame of the monitor wall. The plastic screens rattled violently as his head cracked against the metal frame.
"Don't be stupid, Leo," I growled into his ear, my fingers tightening on his windpipe until his eyes began to bulge. "You have two choices tonight. You can tell me everything Sal ordered you to do, and I will let Marco put you on a train to California with enough money to buy a grave when you get older."
I leaned in closer, my voice a whisper that carried the cold fury of a hundred years of Moretti blood.
"Or you can drink the rest of that water right now."
Leo choked, his knees buckling beneath him. His free hand clawed uselessly at my wrist, his lungs screaming for air.
"Which... which one... Boss..." he gasped out, tears streaming down his cheeks.
"Talk," I said, loosening my grip on his throat just enough for him to draw a ragged breath.
Leo slumped against the wall, coughing violently, his hand dropping away from his gun. "Sal... Sal called me three weeks ago," he wheezed out, clutching his throat. "He said... he said Sophia was slipping. He put her in the house two years ago to find your private ledger... the one with the offshore shipping accounts."
"And Sophia?" I asked, my jaw set tight.
"She refused to do it!" Leo sobbed, his composure completely shattered. "She found out what Sal was planning... she threatened to come to you! She said you treated her fair, that she wouldn't betray the house that fed her kid! Sal told me to shut her up before she talked to you!"
I stood there in the quiet guardhouse, listening to the rain beat against the glass, feeling a strange, hollow ache in my chest.
A maid who earned eighteen dollars an hour had chosen to face a death sentence from Sal Moretti rather than sell out the man whose shirts she washed.
And I had let her toddler stand on a chair with a hot iron because I was too busy managing my empire to notice my own house was burning.
I stepped back, pulling my phone from my pocket.
"Marco," I said into the speaker.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Bring a cleaning crew to the main gate. Leo has some documents to sign regarding my uncle's operations in Gary. Once he’s finished writing, put him on a boat to North Michigan. He doesn't come back."
"Understood, Boss. What about Sal?"
May you like
I looked out the guardhouse window toward the dark, churning waters of Lake Michigan, my gray eyes turning to ice.
"Tell the boys in Cicero to warm up the engines," I said. "Uncle Sal has been living in the past for too long. Tonight, I'm bringing the past to his door."
