Chapter 5 - The Glass Penthouse
We didn't go to another safehouse. We drove straight into the beating, neon heart of downtown Chicago.
The penthouse occupied the entire sixty-fourth floor of the Constantino Tower on Michigan Avenue. While the streets below were alive with late-night traffic, sirens, and pedestrian chatter, the penthouse was a soundproof fortress of black marble, brushed bronze, and bullet-resistant floor-to-ceiling glass that looked out over the pitch-black expanse of Lake Michigan.
Six armed men were already stationed in the private elevator vestibule when the doors parted. They bowed their heads in unison as Salvatore walked through, his hand resting firmly on the small of my back, guiding me into the living room.
“Lock down the building,” Salvatore ordered the lieutenant in charge. “No deliveries. No maintenance crews. Anyone who steps out of the service elevators without Level-1 retinal clearance is to be detained and interrogated in the sub-basement.”
“Yes, Don Salvatore.”
The men melted away into the shadows of the residence.
I stood in the center of the massive room, my thrifted green dress covered in gray limestone dust, my shoes ruined. I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked down at the city. From this height, the cars looked like tiny ants, the problems of normal people reduced to microscopic specks of light.
“My mother,” I whispered, my voice cracking as the exhaustion caught up to me. “If they know about me... they know about St. Jude’s.”
Salvatore walked up behind me. He didn't crowd me; he stood just close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his broad shoulders.
“Your mother was moved three hours ago,” he said quietly. “Before I even arrived at the estate for dinner.”
I spun around to face him. “What?”
“I have spent forty years playing chess against sociopaths, Lily,” Salvatore said, pouring a glass of mineral water from a crystal decanter and handing it to me. “The moment I wired three hundred forty-seven thousand dollars from an account tied to my primary trust, every wiretap in Cook County flagged your name. I knew the Bertinellis would strike tonight. Your mother is currently in a private intensive care suite on the fifth floor of this very building. We have an entire medical wing staffed by physicians who answer only to me.”
My hands shook so hard the water sloshed against the rim of the glass. “You used me as bait.”
Salvatore didn't flinch. He didn't offer a cowardly excuse. He simply looked at me with those ancient, sorrowful gray eyes.
“I used myself as bait,” he corrected softly. “I brought you to my estate because I knew that if they were going to strike, they would do it where they thought I was vulnerable. I needed to see who within my inner circle leaked the coordinates of my dinner.”
“And did you?”
“Yes,” he said, his jaw tightening into a line of pure granite. “It was Vincent Moretti. My godson. The boy I raised after his father was killed in the dock wars.”
He turned away, looking out over the black water of the lake.
“He thinks I am too old. He thinks fifty-eight means senile. He made a backroom deal with New York to carve up the Great Lakes shipping corridors the moment I was in the ground.”
I set the water glass down on a black marble console table. I walked over until I was standing directly in front of him, forcing him to look down at me.
“He’s wrong,” I said.
Salvatore looked surprised. “What?”
“He thinks you’re weak because you care about something,” I said, my voice gathering strength from a well of stubborn resilience I hadn't known I possessed. “All my life, men like Vincent have told women like me that we are disposable. That we should keep our heads down, take the crumbs, and be grateful for the scraps. You gave my mother a chance to live. You looked at my ruined hands and saw a human being.”
I reached up, my small fingers brushing against the pale scar on his left eyebrow.
Salvatore went completely rigid. For a man who had faced down federal indictments, car bombs, and assassination squads without blinking, my light touch seemed to rattle him to his very core.
“Don’t look at me like I’m a ghost, Salvatore,” I whispered. “I am alive. And I am not going to let them destroy you.”
A deep, shuddering breath escaped his chest. Slowly, reverently, his large hand came up, covering mine where it rested against his scarred cheek. His skin was warm, rough, and trembling.
May you like
“Lily,” he murmured, his voice thick with an emotion he had buried for three decades. “You don't know what you’re stepping into. This world... it devours everything it touches.”
“I’ve been devoured my entire life,” I replied, stepping closer until my chest brushed his cashmere sweater. “At least with you, I get to fight back.”
