Chapter 1 - The Ash of Garfield Street
The rain over the West Side had a greasy, metallic sheen to it, picking up the yellow ambient light of streetlamps that flickered inside cracked glass housings. Damian Voss stood on the narrow, asphalt-paved fire escape outside the third-floor landing of the Garfield Street building, his leather-gloved hands gripping the wet iron railing until the seams threatened to pop.
Below him, two black Suburban vehicles sat idling in the alleyway, their exhaust pipes sending white plumes of steam rising through the autumn chill. His men—Cole at the lead, two others flanked near the dumpster—stood with their hands buried deep in the pockets of their dark wool coats, eyes constantly sweeping the street corners, the fire escapes, the dark windows of the residential towers across the street.
Inside the small apartment, the air smelled faintly of cheap bleach, toasted wheat, and the synthetic flower scent of an old plug-in air freshener.
Damian turned back into the room.
Nadia had not moved from her position beside the narrow laminate kitchen counter. She held her elbows tight against her ribs, her posture guarded, her spine straight with a rigid, unnatural stiffness that spoke of years spent expecting the floor to drop out from beneath her feet.
Ava sat on the edge of the pulled-out sofa bed, her small white sneakers dangling two inches off the floor. She was holding a blue crayon in one hand and her stuffed rabbit in the other, watching the tall man in the dark suit with the quiet, observant intensity that children only possess when they have learned too early that adults are unpredictable.
"Who was the man?" Damian asked. His voice was low, devoid of inflection—the quiet tone his capos knew to fear more than his shouting. "The man who handed you the letter four years ago."
Nadia’s eyelashes fluttered, casting small shadows across her high cheekbones. "You know who it was, Damian. Or at least... you should know who had access to your office when you were at the docks."
"I want the name from your mouth," he said.
"Julian," she whispered.
The name hung in the cramped apartment like an unexploded shell.
Julian Voss. His cousin. His father’s brother’s son, the man who managed the syndicate’s offshore holdings and real estate portfolios in the West Loop. The man who had sat across from Damian at family dinners every Sunday since they were boys, passing the bread, drinking the same red wine, talking about municipal permits and shipping manifests.
Damian felt a cold, calcified knot form in the pit of his stomach. It didn't burn; it hardened.
"Julian came to the diner," Nadia continued, her voice steadying as she forced herself to remember what she had spent forty-eight months trying to bury. "It was a Tuesday. Two weeks after you went down to the Gulf to clear out the union strike. He pulled up in a dark grey Mercedes. He didn't come inside. He had one of his drivers come to the kitchen door and tell me there was an emergency regarding your bail hearing."
She took a slow, deliberate breath, her fingers tightening around her arms.
"I went out to the alley. Julian was sitting in the back seat. He didn't even look at me when he handed me the envelope. He said... he said you had settled your accounts with the district attorney, but the price was clean hands. He said the board wouldn't let a man with a felony indictment take the chair if he was living with an unvetted girl from the South Side who had three cousins in the county jail."
"My family has no record," Nadia added, her eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce ember of old anger. "None of my brothers have ever been arrested. He lied about that, too. But I didn't know then. I was twenty-two, Damian. I had three hundred dollars in my checking account, a positive pregnancy test in my purse that I hadn't even figured out how to show you, and a man telling me that if I stayed, his security detail would make sure I was picked up for possession before the week was out."
Damian took three slow steps across the worn carpet. He stopped two feet away from her—close enough to feel the faint heat radiating from her body, far enough that he didn't force her to step back.
"And the letter?" he asked quietly.
"He said you wrote it the night before you left for the Gulf," she said. "He said you didn't have the heart to look at me while you did it. He said you gave him twenty thousand dollars in cash to hand to me so I wouldn't go to the newspapers."
"Did you take the money?"
Nadia looked up, her dark eyes pinning his with an absolute, searing clarity. "I threw the envelope through his car window. I took my coat, I took my purse, and I walked to the CTA station. I didn't use the credit card you gave me. I didn't go back to my apartment on 18th Street. I slept on my sister’s floor in Rockford until I found a night shift at the laundry."
The silence returned, heavy and thick.
Ava dropped her crayon. It rolled across the linoleum floor, hitting the toe of Damian’s handmade Italian leather shoe with a soft clack.
Damian knelt down. He did it slowly, his long frame folding with deliberate care so he wouldn't startle the child. He picked up the blue crayon, turned it in his fingers, and held it out toward the little girl.
Ava leaned forward, her small, round face serious. She took the crayon from his palm. Her thumb brushed against his skin—a tiny, warm touch that felt like an electric current running straight into his chest, tearing through four years of accumulated scar tissue.
"Thank you, big man," she said.
"My name is Damian," he said gently.
"Dami-an," she repeated, testing the syllables with her tongue. She looked up at Nadia. "Mama, is he the one from the drawing?"
Nadia turned her face toward the dark window, her lower lip trembling once before she bit it firm.
"We are leaving," Damian said, standing up.
"No," Nadia said instantly, turning back to face him. "No, Damian. We are not going anywhere with you. I don't know who you are anymore. For four years, I thought you were the man who paid his cousin to throw me into the street. Now you tell me it was a forgery. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. But you live in a house surrounded by guns and men who kill people for a living. I am not taking my daughter into that world."
"Nadia," Damian said, his voice dropping an octave, ringing with the absolute weight of his authority. "Look out that window."
She didn't move.
"Look out the window," he repeated, gentler this time.
Nadia hesitated, then stepped to the thin sheer curtain and pulled it back three inches.
Down in the street, three doors down from his Suburbans, a white commercial van with no logos was parked under the flickering light of the corner tavern. Inside the cab, two figures sat motionless, the orange embers of their cigarettes glowing in the dark.
"Those aren't my men," Damian said, standing behind her shoulder. "And they aren't the debt collectors. Those are scouts from the Moretti syndicate. Julian has been using Moretti’s shell companies to clear his offshore transfers for the last two years. I know this because my accountants flagged three discrepancies in the West Loop books yesterday morning."
Nadia’s breath hitched. She let the curtain fall.
"They didn't find you by accident, Nadia," Damian said, his grey eyes turning into flat, lethal slate. "The collection agency that came through your door today was a subsidiary owned by a holding group registered in Delaware. The primary shareholder is Julian Voss. He didn't want the money. He wanted to see if you were still in Chicago. He wanted to see if there was anything—or anyone—living in this apartment that could blow his forgery apart if I ever looked too closely at his books."
Nadia pulled Ava into her arms, lifting the girl onto her hip. Ava wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck, burying her face in Nadia’s collarbone, sensing the cold tide of danger rising around them.
"He knows," Nadia whispered, the horror dawning on her face. "He knows I kept the letter."
"He knows you kept the letter, and he knows Ava exists," Damian said. "And because he knows I am looking for the origin of those offshore transfers, you are no longer a forgotten piece of his past. You are evidence."
He turned toward the door, reaching into his coat for his phone. He tapped the screen once.
"Cole," Damian said into the receiver. "Bring the secondary transport to the alley door. Clear the stairwell. We have two eyes on the street in a white Ford. Put three men on them. If they move their hands off the steering wheel, take their knees."
He hung up, looking back at Nadia.
"You don't have to trust me," Damian said, holding out his hand—not to take hers, but to offer her an anchor. "You don't have to love me. You don't ever have to forgive me for letting him come between us four years ago. But you will let me keep you alive. Both of you."
Nadia looked at his hand. She looked at the strong, scarred knuckles, the heavy gold family ring on his pinky, the immaculate dark sleeve of his jacket. Then she looked down at Ava, whose small face was pressed against her shoulder, dark curls spilling over her knuckles.
Slowly, without saying another word, Nadia reached out and placed her small, cold hand into his.
May you like
Damian closed his fingers around hers.
"Cole," he said into his comms unit as he pulled the apartment door open. "We're coming down."
