Chapter 3 - The Cold House
The snow was falling heavier when I stepped out of the hospital entrance. My driver, Marco—a man who had served my father for twenty years and knew every alleyway between Michigan Avenue and the Indiana border—had the black Cadillac running at the curb, steam rising from its exhaust like a living breath.
I climbed into the back seat. The leather was cold.
“Where to, Boss?” Marco asked, watching me in the rearview mirror. His dark eyes were cautious, picking up on the lethal stillness that had settled over my posture.
“Back to the estate,” I said. “Drive fast. And call Viktor. Tell him to bring four men from the South Side docks. I want the perimeter secured, no one leaves the gates, and I want Celeste’s private quarters swept from floor to ceiling.”
Marco didn't ask questions. He simply nodded, put the car in gear, and pulled out into the swirling white storm.
The drive back to the North Shore usually took forty minutes. We made it in twenty-five. The heavy iron gates of the Moretti estate loomed out of the snowstorm like the jaws of a trap. As the Cadillac swept up the winding driveway flanked by frozen oak trees, I looked at the dark stone facade of the house I had grown up in.
It was a fortress built by my grandfather in 1948—three stories of hand-cut limestone, slate roofs, and reinforced lead glass windows. It was designed to keep the world out. I had never considered that the danger was already sitting at my dining table, drinking my wine, wearing silk gowns paid for with my family’s money.
The car slammed to a halt before the front portico. I didn't wait for Marco to open my door. I shoved it open and walked up the wide stone steps, kicking the heavy oak front door open into the grand foyer.
The house was dead silent. The smell of copper polish, old rug wool, and faint woodsmoke hung in the air.
From the top of the marble staircase, a figure emerged from the shadows.
Celeste.
She had changed out of her torn evening gown. She was wearing a cream-colored cashmere sweater, tailored trousers, and leather boots. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a flawless, tight chignon. In her right hand, she held a crystal glass filled with amber scotch. In her left, tucked casually into her pocket, I could see the distinct outline of a small velvet pouch.
“You were at the hospital a long time, Leo,” she said, her voice smooth, dripping with the practiced warmth of an aristocrat. She descended the stairs with measured, graceful steps. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten you have a wedding to plan.”
I stood at the foot of the stairs, my coat dripping melting snow onto the checkered marble floor. I didn't move. I didn't smile. I looked at her with the cold, unyielding evaluation I usually reserved for men bound to chairs in unheated warehouses.
“Where is the silver chain, Celeste?” I asked softly.
She paused on the third stair from the bottom. Her smile faltered for a fraction of a second—so fast that a lesser man would have missed it—before setting back into place like porcelain.
“I’m sure I don't know what you mean, darling,” she laughed quietly, taking a small sip of her scotch. “If you’re talking about that dreadful girl from last night, I’ve already spoken to the agency. I told them she was stealing silver from your mother’s collection. I caught her red-handed in the conservatory, Leo. She attacked me when I confronted her. I had to defend myself.”
“She has two splinted fingers, a concussion, and a laceration across her temple,” I said, stepping onto the first stair. “And you don't have a scratch on you.”
“I was lucky,” she replied, her eyes darkening slightly, the sweetness fading from her tone. “Leo, why are we talking about a servant? She’s a lying, low-class nobody. We have three hundred guests arriving in three weeks. The Mayor is attending. The Governor’s office called this morning to confirm their table. You need to focus on what matters.”
“What matters,” I repeated, taking another step up. “Ewan matters.”
The name fell between us like a dropped blade.
Celeste froze entirely. The glass in her hand tilted slightly, a drop of scotch spilling over the rim and running down her pale, perfectly manicured knuckles.
“Ewan died six years ago, Leo,” she said, her voice dropping an octave, losing its airy, aristocratic cadence. “You know that. You were at the funeral.”
“I was at a funeral,” I corrected, stepping up until I was standing on the same stair, looking down into her pale green eyes. “I buried a man named Julian Vance. A courier your father sent to Pier 44 to die in my brother's place.”
Silence stretched across the foyer, thick and suffused with murder.
Celeste didn't panic. That was the most terrifying thing about her—she didn't scream, she didn't weep, she didn't deny it with hysterical gestures. She simply straightened her spine, set her glass down on the wooden banister, and stared back at me with a face that was as cold and calculating as my own.
“Julian was a loose end,” she said flatly, her voice entirely stripped of emotion. “Just like Ewan was becoming. Your brother was soft, Leo. He thought he could run a syndicate with morals. He found out about our pharmaceutical transfers and wanted to go to the federal prosecutors. He was going to destroy both our families. I did what had to be done to protect the alliance.”
“You shot him,” I whispered. “He was twenty-four years old.”
“He was an idiot!” Celeste snapped, her eyes flashing with a sudden, vicious fire. “He was going to burn down a three-billion-dollar trade network because he had a bleeding heart! Your father knew it! Why do you think your father never pushed the investigation into Pier 44? Why do you think he agreed to our betrothal six months later? Your father knew Ewan was a liability!”
I felt a cold strike in the pit of my stomach. “My father didn't know.”
“He suspected,” she sneered, leaning closer, her breath smelling of peat and burnt sugar. “And he chose the survival of the Moretti family over the memory of his dead son. Just like you are going to do today, Leo. Because if you break this betrothal, if you accuse my family of Ewan’s death, the Vandermark syndicate will unleash every federal wiretap, every bank record, and every informant we’ve accumulated on your business for twenty years. You will go to prison. Your men will go to prison. And your mother... well, your mother won't survive the week.”
I looked at the woman standing before me. I thought of the way she had sat at my dinner table, the way she had kissed my cheek, the way she had adjusted my tie before city galas. I had thought she was ambitious. I had thought she was arrogant.
I had not realized she was a monster.
“My mother,” I said slowly, “has been silent for four years.”
“She’s a broken old woman whose mind burned out,” Celeste said dismissively, turning her back on me to walk up toward the second floor. “She’s irrelevant. The wedding stays on schedule, Leo. You will tell the press that the nurse was dismissed for theft. You will pay her off, send her out of the state, and in three weeks, you and I will sign the merger agreements. That is how this ends.”
She reached the landing, her boots clicking sharply against the hardwood floor.
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching her back disappear down the west wing corridor toward her suite.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed a single number.
Viktor answered on the first ring. "Boss. We’re at the rear gates."
“Seal the estate,” I ordered, my voice terrifyingly calm. “No one enters. No one leaves. Cut the landlines and jam the cellular towers within two miles. If Celeste Vandermark attempts to leave her room, put a bullet through her tires. If she resists, lock her in the wine cellar.”
“Understood, Boss. What about her security detail?”
May you like
“Disarm them,” I said. “If they draw a weapon, execute them in the driveway.”
I hung up the phone and walked slowly down the long hallway toward the east wing—toward the quiet, sunless room where my mother had been laying in a mechanical bed for four long years.
