Chapter 4 - The Blood on the Ledger
We rode back to the penthouse in total silence.
The city lights blurred past the tinted windows of the town car like streaks of neon oil, reflecting the storm brewing inside my mind. I had spent my entire life trying to stay invisible, scrubbing floors, counting pennies, making sure my brother had his inhalers, and now I had just walked through the crossfire of a Chicago syndicate war.
When we stepped into the penthouse, Vincenzo didn’t go to his office. He poured two glasses of amber whiskey from the crystal decanter, holding one out to me.
“Drink it,” he said, noticing my trembling hands. “It stops the adrenaline crash.”
I took the glass, my fingers brushing against his. His skin was warm, a sharp contrast to the ice in his eyes. “You used me tonight.”
“I gave you a choice to stay in the car,” he replied evenly, walking over to the wall of glass overlooking the glittering skyline.
“No, you didn’t,” I retorted, my voice rising. “You brought me into a room full of killers and forced me to sing like some kind of weapon. What happens when Marcone realizes I’m just a community college dropout who cleans houses?”
Vincenzo turned around, his expression hardening. “Marcone doesn't care about your resume, Lucia. He cares about power, and tonight, you proved you have more nerve than half my capos. But you’re right about one thing—this is only the beginning.”
He unlocked a heavy steel drawer beneath his mahogany desk and pulled out a thick, leather-bound ledger covered in faded handwriting and red ink markings.
“What is that?” I asked, stepping closer.
“This was my father’s ledger,” Vincenzo said, opening the yellowed pages. “It details the assets stolen from my family when we were forced out of Palermo twenty-five years ago. But more importantly, it contains the names of the syndicate elders who betrayed us—the ones who fled to Chicago and built the very foundations of the Outfit we are fighting today.”
I looked down at the names scrawled across the page. One name leaped out at me immediately, circled in red ink with a date from twenty years ago.
Marcone.
“Salvatore Marcone wasn’t just a rival boss,” I whispered, looking up at Vincenzo in shock. “He was part of the betrayal.”
“He was the architect,” Vincenzo corrected, his jaw tightening. “And he thinks that by seizing my shipping containers, he’s cutting off my finances. But he doesn't know what’s hidden in the back of this book.”
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Before Vincenzo could turn the page, a sharp, piercing alarm echoed through the penthouse.
Marco burst through the double doors, breathless and bleeding from a cut across his forehead. “Boss! We’ve been compromised. The security system at the downtown warehouse just went offline, and there’s an unmarked team breaching the lower elevators right now!”
