Chapter 1 - The Frozen 42nd Floor
Dante Marino liked the glass because it hid nothing, unlike the dark corners where ghosts lingered. Nine years ago, a car bomb intended for him took his wife, Clara, along with the very concept of human emotion from his chest. Since that Tuesday in November, his empire operated in suffocating, terrified silence where men died for clearing their throats too loudly.
He was thirty-eight, but his eyes belonged to an infinitely more tired soul that had long ago turned to stone. The attrition rate for his personal secretaries was staggering at three weeks per person before they cracked under the weight of his absolute zero presence.
Then HR hired Emily Davies, who was thirty-one, permanently exhausted, and thoroughly unimpressed by the theatricality of organized crime. She did not fear Dante because fear was a luxury reserved for people who actually got eight hours of sleep.
Emily ran on lukewarm breakroom coffee, sheer spite, and the terrifying knowledge that losing this job meant her younger brother would be kicked out of his Evanston care facility. The facility cost eight thousand dollars a month to manage his severe schizophrenia with dignity, while the Marino Corporation paid her twelve thousand. For a four-thousand-dollar spread, she was perfectly willing to ignore the men with broken noses tracking mud onto the Persian rugs.
On a rainy Thursday, Emily sat at her desk battling a spreadsheet that refused to reconcile a missing three million dollars. Dante's intercom buzzed with flat, inflectionless authority requesting Tommy to enter the inner sanctum. Tommy was a hulking enforcer sweating through his tailored suit in the reception chair while his leg bounced frantically.
"Emily, listen," Tommy whispered. "If I don't walk out of there—"
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"I'll cancel your dental appointment for Tuesday," she replied without looking up from her monitor. "And I'll mail your final check to your mother's house in Cicero. Good luck."
Tommy stared at her, bewildered by her profound lack of sentimentality, before pushing open the heavy oak doors. Emily took a sip of her terrible coffee and gave it three minutes before a heavy thud crashed into the walnut desk inside.
