Chapter 2 - THE ASHES OF RIVER NORTHThe old tannery on the north branch of the Chicago River was a decaying monument to the city’s industrial past. Red-brick walls, choked with dead ivy and stained by decades of smog, loomed over the black water. The windows were mostly boarded up with water-warped plywood, and the iron fire escapes hung loose like broken ribs.
Adrian’s three-car motorcade tore into the gravel alleyway behind the building, tires spray-painting dark mud against the brickwork.
Before the vehicles had even come to a complete stop, Adrian threw his door open and stepped out into the damp chill. Luca and four armed security guards formed a tight perimeter around him, their suppressed sidearms drawn and held low against their legs.
“Boss, let us breach first,” Luca warned, his eyes darting toward the broken basement windows. “If Donati or someone else put her here, it’s a kill box.”
“If someone wanted her dead, they wouldn’t have left her in a derelict building for six years,” Adrian said coldly, taking June by the hand while Luca’s second-in-command carried April and May. “Lead the way, June.”
June pointed toward a rusted iron door tucked behind a rusting dumpster. “Up the stairs. Third floor. The door with the red cross drawn in chalk.”
They moved up the narrow interior stairwell. The air was thick with the scent of damp wood, old river silt, and the sharp, chemical tang of oil paint. It was an environment Adrian knew intimately—Clara had always preferred the smelling chaos of working studios over pristine galleries.
When they reached the third floor, Luca checked the frame of the door with the chalk cross, nodded to Adrian, and turned the handle. It was unlocked.
The room inside was huge, drafty, and lit only by the pale, cold wash of the city skyline through a row of high, arched windows. Canvases were stacked everywhere—hundreds of them, leaned against brick pillars like silent witnesses. There was almost no furniture: a folding table with a hot plate, three small cots neatly made with faded wool blankets, and a large easel standing in the center of the room.
And in the corner, on a narrow iron bed covered in heavy coats, lay a woman.
Adrian’s heart stopped.
He walked toward the bed as if moving through deep water. Every step felt heavy, terrifying, miraculous. He dropped to his knees beside the iron frame and reached out a hand that trembled violently.
She was thin—far too thin. Her cheekbones pressed sharply against pale, translucent skin, and dark shadows bruised the hollows beneath her eyes. Her honey-blond hair was cut short, falling around her face in ragged layers. But as Adrian’s fingers gently touched her cheek, feeling the burning heat of a severe fever, he knew.
It was Clara.
“Clara,” he choked out, the name tearing from his throat like a prayer.
Her eyelids fluttered. She let out a soft, dry gasp, her head turning slowly toward his voice. Her green eyes opened—unfocused, hazy with illness, but instantly recognizable.
“Adrian?” she whispered, her voice barely a thread. She raised a frail hand, her fingers hovering an inch from his face, as if afraid he was a hallucination brought on by the fever. “No… no, you’re not real. I’m dreaming again.”
“I’m real, my love,” Adrian sobbed, catching her hand and pressing her knuckles against his mouth, his cheek, his forehead. “I’m here. I found you.”
Clara’s eyes suddenly widened with a flash of terror. The haze of the fever cleared for one desperate second. She tried to push him away with her feeble strength. “No! Adrian, get out! You can’t be here! If he finds you—if he knows I didn't die—”
“Who?” Adrian demanded, his voice dropping into a deadly register. “Clara, who did this to you?”
Before she could answer, a floorboard creaked in the hallway outside.
Luca spun toward the door, raising his weapon, but a cold, familiar voice echoed through the vast, empty room.
“I always told you, Adrian… you were always too sentimental about women and art.”
Adrian slowly stood up, turning around to face the doorway.
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Standing between two heavy brick pillars was Julian Vance—Adrian’s senior corporate counsel, his closest confidant for fifteen years, and the man who had handed Adrian the melted bracelet outside Milwaukee seven years ago.
Behind Julian stood four men in dark tactical gear, their submachine guns pointed directly at Adrian’s chest.
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