Chapter 2 - THE BROKEN SEAL
The laugh did not sound like joy. It sounded like metal groaning under cold water, an antique hinge wrenching open after nearly a decade buried in salt.
Sal collapsed forward onto his elbows, his forehead grazing the fringe of the Persian wool, his whimpering cut dead by sheer bewilderment. Behind him, the two bodyguards exchanged a glance so wide-eyed and panicked that they looked ready to dive through the plate-glass window. Dante Marino was laughing so hard his gun hand dropped, his knuckles lightly brushing his tailored slates.
“The biohazard fee,” Dante choked out, his voice scraping against nine years of grit. He wiped a thumb beneath his eye, looking down at the Montblanc pen I was still holding straight out like a lightning rod. “You interrupted a sit-down because you didn’t want to file an insurance claim on the wool.”
“It’s imported silk-blend, Mr. Marino,” I said, refusing to drop my arm. My wrist burned from tension, but I kept my chin level. “Replacement takes four months from Milan. Your auditors are downstairs checking in with building security. You have five minutes before they ask why the executive officer is unavailable.”
Dante straightened. The terrible levity vanished from his posture, but the ice in his dark gray eyes had cracked, replaced by an intense, razor-sharp focus that pinned me to the floorboards. Slowly, he took the pen from my fingers. His skin was warm and rough, a blunt contrast to the cold gold barrel of the Montblanc.
He bent over the desk, signed three separate tax authorizations with fluid, slashing strokes, and slid the ledger back to my chest.
“Take Sal downstairs through the freight elevator,” Dante told the guards without looking at them. “Put him in the South Side holding room. Do not touch him until I arrive.”
Sal scrambled up, babbling frantic blessings in Sicilian. “Dante, please, on my mother’s soul—”
“One more word and I let Emily calculate your funeral expenses,” Dante murmured softly.
Sal clamped his jaw shut and practically ran out ahead of the guards.
I gathered the signed ledger against my ribs, turned on my sensible low heels, and headed for the door. I had made it two steps into the hallway when Dante’s quiet voice caught me.
“Emily.”
I stopped, glancing back over my shoulder. “Yes, Mr. Marino?”
He hadn't holstered the pistol yet. He was watching me with an expression that wasn't rage, but an unsettling curiosity. “You knew Sal took three million before you stepped into this room.”
“Yes.”
“And you told me he used his mother’s maiden name. Viterbo.”
“It took one query on the Cook County registrar,” I replied, checking my wristwatch. “Four minutes until the IRS agents hit floor twenty-four.”
“Sal didn’t move that money for himself,” Dante said, his voice dropping an octave lower, flat and dangerous. “Sal doesn't gamble, he doesn't use narcotics, and his mother died twenty years ago. Who told you to pull the South Side offshore manifests this morning?”
My stomach dropped into my shoes. “Nobody. The accounts didn't balance against our third-quarter shipping manifests. It was a basic variance check.”
Dante walked toward me, halting three feet away. Close up, he smelled of cedarwood, cold rain, and gun oil. He reached inside his charcoal breast pocket and drew out an ivory envelope, heavy and thick, sealed with red wax that bore no initials—just the clean, deep imprint of an anchor. The wax was broken.
“This was slipped under my residence door at dawn,” Dante said. “It gave an account number in Zurich. It promised three million would vanish from South Side today unless I reopened Clara’s shipping lanes through Detroit.”
The breath caught in my throat. Clara. In my three years working for him, her name had never once passed his lips in my presence.
“I don’t know anything about shipping lanes, Mr. Marino. I manage your schedules and keep vendors from overcharging you.”
“I believed that until five minutes ago,” he whispered. He held up the torn envelope. Inside, visible between the stiff paper folds, was a thin gold chain holding a tiny, tarnished silver pendant shaped like a swallow.
My heart slammed against my ribs so violently I thought he would hear it. The swallow was identical to the one resting inside my jewelry box at home—the one my mother gave me before she died, and the exact match to the one my little brother wore taped to the back of his medical wristband.
“Do you recognize this?” Dante asked.
“No,” I lied immediately, the word tasting like ash on my tongue.
Dante stared down at me, his eyes reading every microscopic twitch of my face. He knew I was lying. A man who survived twenty years in the Chicago underworld could hear a heartbeat change pitch from across a room. Yet instead of drawing the weapon back up, he slowly slid the envelope back inside his coat.
“The auditors are waiting, Emily,” he said softly. “Go make sure our books look holy. Then you and I are going to visit your brother.”
The hallway air felt freezing the moment the heavy mahogany doors clicked shut behind me. Dante had never asked about Leo. He had never asked about my family, my life, or why I wore the same three navy cardigans on rotation. For three years, I had been furniture that could type ninety words a minute.
Now he knew.
My hands shook so badly as I pressed the elevator button that the tax ledger slipped, the pages fanning out across the polished marble. As I dropped to my knees to scoop them up, a small slip of carbon paper fluttered out from between the forms Dante had just signed.
May you like
It wasn't IRS paperwork. It was a receipt from the St. Jude Children’s Rehabilitation Wing, dated nine years ago, bearing the signature of Clara Marino. And the patient listed under her private charity account wasn't an orphan from the parish.
It was Leo Davis.
