Chapter 2 - The Eviction of Truth
The sound of my sneakers squelching against the pavement was the only rhythm left in the silent, hollowed-out night.
Every four blocks, I darted into the entryway of a closed bodega or under the rusted metal fire escape of a brick tenement.
Every single time I stopped, the sleek black Escalade drifted to a halt half a block behind me.
It did not flash its brights.
It did not pull alongside me.
It simply existed in my wake, an inescapable reminder that my miserable, anonymous life had somehow crossed into another hemisphere.
By the time I reached 14th Street, my teeth were chattering so violently that my jaw ached.
The neighborhood here was tired; its streetlamps were shattered by BB guns, leaving large pools of stagnant darkness between the row houses.
I threw open the rusted iron gate of my apartment complex, a dilapidated five-story brick building that smelled of boiled cabbage and damp drywall.
I practically threw myself into the narrow vestibule, slamming the outer glass door shut behind me.
Safe.
Or at least, insulated from the street.
I reached into my drenched coat pocket, fishing for my brass keys with fingers that had lost all tactile sensation.
My hands were shaking so hard that the metal rattled violently against the keyhole.
I jammed the key into the deadbolt, but the worn internal tumblers refused to yield.
“Come on,” I muttered, tears of sheer frustration burning behind my eyes. “Not tonight. Please, not tonight.”
I leaned my full weight into the wooden door, twisting the key with both hands until the metal groaned under the torque.
“The brass pin in the upper chamber is stripped,” a calm voice spoke from the shadows of the vestibule.
My heart seized.
I spun around, slamming my back against the locked door, my hand diving into the bottom of my purse.
I pulled out a small black canister of keychain pepper spray, pointing it directly at the figure standing ten feet away in the hallway.
It was one of the men from the construction site.
He stood motionless under the flickering amber light of the vestibule bulb.
He was clean-shaven, perhaps thirty-five, with a thin scar cutting through his left eyebrow and hair trimmed to military perfection.
He wore the same high-end overcoat, now dry, with his hands held openly at his sides to show they were empty.
“If you take another step toward me, I will blind you,” I snarled, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to sound lethal.
The man didn't flinch.
He didn't reach for a holster.
“Miss Ki, if my intention was to harm you, you would not have made it past the iron gate outside.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Marco,” he answered politely, his voice carrying the calm cadence of a butler delivering tea. “I am Mr. Richi’s head of logistical security.”
The name struck me like a physical blow.
Richi.
The cold terror that had begun to recede in the stairwell flooded back into my veins.
There wasn't a person in Cook County who didn't know that name, even if they only spoke it in hushed whispers over diner counters.
Dante Richi was the uncontested architect of Chicago’s underworld.
The newspapers referred to him euphemistically as an 'infrastructure magnate' and 'real estate venture capitalist.'
The people on the South Side knew better.
The Richi syndicate owned the concrete plants that poured the foundations of city hall, the labor unions that controlled the rail yards, and the private security firms that patrolled the gated enclaves of the Gold Coast.
He was a man who brokered truces between rival cartels and made politicians vanish from ballots overnight.
“Why is Dante Richi following a waitress?” I demanded, keeping the nozzle leveled at his nose.
“Mr. Richi does not explain his motives to me, Miss Ki,” Marco replied smoothly. “His only order was to ensure you crossed your threshold without incident.”
He extended his right hand, open-palmed.
“May I?”
I hesitated, my breath coming in ragged, visible puffs in the unheated entryway.
Then, feeling the cold exhaustion creeping into the marrow of my bones, I pulled the stubborn key from the lock and dropped it into his palm.
Marco stepped forward without making a sound on the linoleum.
He slid the key into the lock, lifted the handle upward by an eighth of an inch to relieve the pressure on the damaged tumbler, and turned it with a clean, metallic click.
The apartment door swung open into my dark studio.
He stepped back immediately, handing the key back to me with a slight bow.
“Mr. Richi will be in touch tomorrow afternoon.”
“Tell him to save his time,” I snapped, backing across the threshold. “I don’t want anything to do with him, his money, or his enemies.”
Marco offered a faint, melancholy smile that seemed deeply out of place on a killer’s face.
“In my experience, Miss Ki, what one wants has very little bearing on what Mr. Richi decides will happen.”
Before I could slam the door, he turned on his heel and descended the outside steps into the rain.
I threw the deadbolt, latched the chain, and dropped the pepper spray onto the tiny counter that served as my kitchen.
I didn't turn on the light.
I walked straight to the window, pulling the cracked vinyl blind back an inch.
Across the street, the black Escalade sat beneath the canopy of an overgrown elm tree.
The exhaust pipe puffed white smoke into the freezing air for two minutes before the vehicle shifted into drive and slipped away into the night.
I sank to the floor with my back against the wall, pulling my knees to my chest.
I sat there in the pitch black for an hour, shivering until my clothes dried against my skin.
Who was my mother?
Why would Dante Richi’s face harden at the mention of my name?
My mother, Teresa Ki, had been the quietest woman I knew.
She worked as a seamstress in a tailor’s shop on Taylor Street for twenty years.
She never received late-night calls.
She never spoke of family in Italy, always claiming her parents had died in an earthquake outside of Naples before she immigrated alone as a teenager.
She had lived like a nun, praying every evening over a worn silver rosary and guarding me like an endangered species.
Eventually, exhaustion dragged me down into an uneasy, dreamless sleep on the thin mattress.
I woke at seven in the morning to the sharp, aggressive vibration of my mobile phone against the linoleum.
I sat up, groaning as the stiffness in my spine flared violently.
I grabbed the cracked phone from the floor, expecting an automated alert from the utility company.
Instead, there was a single text message from Carl, the shift manager at the diner:
Do not come in today or for the rest of the schedule. Your final pay envelope will be mailed to your address. Position has been filled.
I stared at the screen, my heart dropping straight into my stomach.
I tapped his number instantly and pressed the phone to my ear.
It rang twice before clicking directly to voicemail.
I called back three times.
On the fourth attempt, the line dropped after half a ring—he had blocked my number.
“No, no, no,” I whispered frantically, leaping off the mattress.
I opened my bank’s mobile application with trembling fingers.
Account Balance: $142.18.
Rent was due on the first of the month—exactly five days away.
Four hundred and eighty dollars.
If I didn't have the cash in my landlord’s hand by five o'clock on Friday, Mr. Henderson would change the padlocks and toss my mother’s sewing machine into the dumpster in the alley.
My gaze drifted across the tiny room, landing on the laminate countertop.
The ivory card lay next to the sink, its embossed gold lettering catching the pale morning light through the window.
If you need food, shelter, or someone removed from your path, dial the number.
“Never,” I muttered to the empty room.
I took the card, shoved it to the very bottom of the junk drawer beneath old receipts and soy sauce packets, and slammed the drawer shut.
I would find another job.
This was Chicago.
May you like
There were ten thousand diners, bars, dry cleaners, and stockrooms in this city.
I threw on a dry sweater, laced up my damp sneakers, and walked out the door into the freezing morning wind.
