Chapter 3 - The Web of the Spider
By two o'clock in the afternoon, the raw skin on the back of my heels had split and begun to bleed into my socks.
I had walked over thirty blocks through the Loop and the edge of River North.
I had filled out paper applications at fourteen different restaurants.
I had smiled until my facial muscles ached at hostesses half my age who looked at my worn canvas coat with thinly veiled disgust.
“We’re looking for someone with high-volume bartending experience.”
“We just hired three college students this morning, hon.”
“Leave your resume in the basket; we’ll call if something opens up next month.”
Every response was an identical wall of polite, corporate indifference.
The hospitality industry in downtown Chicago was an interconnected web of owners, suppliers, and managers.
At the fifteenth restaurant—an upscale Italian bistro on Grand Avenue—the general manager, an older man with kind eyes, took my application and looked down at my employment history.
“You worked at the Starlight Diner on Clark?” he asked, adjusting his spectacles.
“Yes, sir. Three years. I never missed a shift, never arrived late, and I can handle seven tables simultaneously during the lunch rush.”
The man gave me a curious, sympathetic look.
He leaned across the host stand, lowering his voice.
“Did you have a falling out with Carl over there?”
I blinked, taken aback.
“No. He sent me a text this morning saying the position was filled. He wouldn’t even take my calls.”
The manager sighed, sliding my application back across the polished mahogany counter.
“I shouldn’t tell you this, kid, but Carl called three restaurant associations on the South Side before noon. He told everyone you were caught slipping money from the register.”
A cold wave of nausea washed over me.
“What? That’s a lie! I have never stolen a penny in my entire life!”
“I believe you,” the man said gently. “You don't have the eyes of a thief. But Carl’s word carries weight with the neighborhood grease-traps, and none of us can afford internal theft right now. I’m sorry, Miss Ki. I can’t help you.”
I walked out of the restaurant onto the sidewalk, my vision blurring with angry, helpless tears.
Carl didn't fire people; he was too cowardly to confront a dishwasher over broken plates.
Someone had told him to fire me.
Someone had paid him to blackball me across the district.
The thought hit me like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head.
Dante Richi.
He hadn't offered me his card out of the goodness of his heart.
He was manufacturing my desperation.
He was systematically cutting every single thread tying me to my independent life, leaving me with only one possible direction to fall.
Right into his open hands.
A low, guttural growl broke my trance.
A sleek black Mercedes-Maybach pulled silently up to the curb beside me, its engine idling with the quiet purr of a predatory cat.
The rear passenger door swung open from the inside.
Marco stepped out, wearing a fresh tailored suit and an expression of serene patience.
“Miss Ki,” he said, nodding respectfully. “Your shoes look ruined. Won't you step inside?”
Pedestrians hurried past us, giving the luxury vehicle a wide berth.
I marched directly up to Marco, stopping three inches from his chest, trembling with unadulterated rage.
“Tell your boss that he is a coward,” I hissed, my fists clenched inside my coat pockets. “Tell him that if he thinks starving me will make me beg for his mafia blood money, he picked the wrong girl. I would rather sleep on the concrete under the tracks than step foot in his car!”
Marco didn't blink.
He simply reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a small, transparent plastic evidence pouch.
Inside was a silver pendant on a delicate chain—a vintage medallion depicting Saint Michael the Archangel, with a distinctive nick on the outer rim.
The air vanished from my lungs.
My mother’s medallion.
She had worn it every single day of her life until the nurses unclasped it in the hospice wing.
I had placed it in the small velvet box inside the locked drawer of my nightstand this morning before leaving the apartment.
“Where did you get that?” I whispered, the rage draining from my face, replaced by a sickening, paralyzing dread.
“Mr. Richi did not steal it, Miss Ki,” Marco said softly. “Your landlord, Mr. Henderson, sold the contents of your room an hour ago. He claimed you abandoned the property after someone offered him five thousand dollars in cash to terminate your lease immediately.”
“He can't do that! That's illegal!”
“In this city, cash makes many things legal,” Marco replied without judgment. “Mr. Richi’s men intercepted Henderson before the pawnshop could take your mother’s possessions. Everything you own has already been transported to safe storage.”
He held out the door of the Maybach.
“You have no home, Miss Ki. You have no job. You have no one else to call. Mr. Richi is waiting for you at the Penthouse.”
I looked down at the Saint Michael medallion resting in the plastic sleeve.
I looked at the open door of the vehicle, the supple cream leather seats, the soft golden ambient lighting glowing within.
It was not a car; it was a velvet-lined cage.
Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to run, to flee to another city, to buy a bus ticket to nowhere with my remaining hundred and forty dollars.
But what would I run to?
A park bench in the Chicago winter?
A slow death from hypothermia in an alley?
And more than the survival instinct, a dark, burning curiosity ignited within my chest.
Why my mother?
Why was a man who held the entire city in his palm orchestrating the systematic destruction of a destitute waitress over a silver medallion?
“If he touches me,” I said, looking Marco dead in the eyes, “I will carve his throat out with whatever sharp object I find on his desk.”
Marco gave a slow, respectful nod and stepped aside.
“I would expect nothing less from Teresa’s daughter. Please, watch your head.”
May you like
I stepped into the car.
The heavy door sealed behind me, cutting off the noise of the city completely, encasing me in a suffocating, terrifying quiet.
