Chapter 4 - The 35th Street Rail Yard
The industrial corridor along 35th Street was a graveyard of rusted boxcars, weathered brick warehouses, and low-hanging diesel smog. Rain had started falling again, turning the unpaved access roads into trenches of slick, gray clay.
The black Suburban slid to a halt beside an abandoned cold-storage facility. Mateo cut the headlights, leaving only the dull, rhythmic sweep of the windshield wipers cutting through the gloom.
"Stay down," Mateo muttered, shifting the vehicle into park.
I huddled low in the passenger seat, my knees pressed against the glove compartment. My breath fogged the window, through which I could make out the silhouette of a long, corrugated metal shed with half its roof collapsed inward.
A second car was already parked inside the open bay of the shed—Luca’s black Mercedes sedan.
"Is he in there alone?" I asked, my voice trembling.
"Mr. Moretti is never alone," Mateo replied, checking the action on his Glock before tucking it back into his shoulder rig. "Get out. He wants you inside."
"Why?"
"Because he asked for you," Mateo said, opening his door into the wet cold. "And nobody makes him ask twice."
The air inside the warehouse smelled of rotten insulation, rusted steel, and engine grease. Luca stood beneath a single hanging work light that swung gently in the draft, casting long, erratic shadows across the wet concrete floor.
Tied to a heavy wooden pallet in the center of the pool of light was a man I recognized immediately.
It was Gianni, Vanessa’s private driver. His mouth was split, his expensive uniform jacket torn at the shoulder, and his hands were bound behind his back with heavy yellow zip-ties.
Luca was leaning against the fender of his Mercedes, smoking a cigarette with quiet, methodical detachment. When he saw me step through the side door, he flicked the ash onto the concrete.
"Emma," he said, gesturing forward with two fingers. "Come here."
My legs felt like lead, but Mateo pressed a heavy palm between my shoulder blades, guiding me into the light. I stopped five feet from the tied man. Gianni looked up, his one swollen eye widening when he saw my face.
"Tell her what you told me, Gianni," Luca ordered. His tone was conversational, as if he were asking the man to recommend a wine vintage.
Gianni swallowed hard, a drop of dark blood dripping from his chin onto his collar. "I didn't know who she was meeting. I swear to Christ, Mr. Moretti. Miss Bellini just told me to drive her to the First National Bank on Michigan Avenue yesterday at noon."
"What was in the box, Gianni?" Luca asked.
"A ledger," the driver croaked. "An old leather one. With brass corners. She didn't open it in the car, but she called someone on an overseas burner the second she got back in the backseat."
Luca took a slow drag of his cigarette, the tip glowing red in the warehouse dusk. He looked at me over the curl of smoke.
"My father had two sets of books, Emma," Luca said. "One for the families in New York, and one for the family in Chicago. The New York books showed we paid twenty percent on every container coming through the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The second book—the brass one—showed the real number."
He paused, letting the silence settle like dust.
"Zero. For twenty-five years, my father diverted thirty million dollars a year into private trust funds. If that book reaches the Commission in Manhattan before Saturday, there won't be a Moretti family left by Sunday morning."
My throat was dry. "Vanessa... she’s giving it to New York?"
"Worse," Luca said. "She's giving it to Julian. Julian is going to present it to the five families as proof that I’m unfit to run the Midwest territory. They back his takeover, Vanessa gets her wedding, but with a different brother at the altar."
The sheer insanity of it made my head spin. "Then why hasn't he killed you already? Why wait for Saturday?"
"Because the trust funds require two signatures to liquidate," Luca said coldly. "The boss, and his bride. As long as I’m alive and unmarried, the money is frozen. If Julian kills me today, the state seizes the accounts. But if I marry Vanessa on Saturday, and have a fatal heart attack during the reception... the money flows directly into her name. And through her, to him."
He stepped away from the car, crushing the cigarette out beneath the heel of his Italian leather shoe.
"Gianni says Vanessa gave the key to someone she trusted to deliver to the bank’s vault keeper," Luca continued, stopping directly in front of me. "A woman who went into the master bedroom this morning to collect the laundry."
I took a step back, my heart seizing. "I didn't take any key! I haven't been in the master bedroom since Thursday!"
"I know," Luca said. "It wasn't you."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, familiar silver object.
A heart-shaped silver locket on a broken chain.
The breath left my lungs in a sharp gasp. I reached for my chest instinctively, my fingers clutching empty air beneath my collar. The locket had been a gift from my mother before she died; I had taken it off to shower before the dinner service yesterday and left it on the dresser in the servants' quarters.
"They planted it," I whispered, horrified. "They put the safe key in my room."
"They didn't just put it in your room, Emma," Luca said, his voice dropping into a dark, velvet register that sent shivers straight to my marrow. "Vanessa called the police thirty minutes ago. She reported her diamond tennis bracelet stolen. Along with ten thousand dollars from the study."
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He held up the broken locket. Inside the tiny silver oval, wedged between the faded pictures of my parents, was a small, flat brass key.
"The police are searching your room right now," Luca said. "And when they find this... you become the state’s primary suspect for the break-in at my estate."
