Chapter 2 - The Shadow of the Past
The silence that followed Victor’s words was heavy enough to crush a man’s chest.
"What did you say?" I asked, my voice dropping into a deadly, hollow register that made Frank immediately drop into a defensive stance, unholstering his weapon and stepping between my mother and the black sedan across the street.
"I said, don't believe her," Victor repeated calmly, taking a slow sip of what sounded like ice clinking in a crystal glass. "Your mother has severe dementia, Cole. She’s been deteriorating for the last three years. Paranoia, hallucinations, wandering off in the middle of the night. I paid for the absolute best private memory-care facility in Illinois, but she keeps breaking out. She thinks everyone is trying to kill her. She thinks you sent people to kill her."
I looked down at the woman shivering on the pavement.
Her hands were still wrapped around the young woman’s waist, her body quivering with a terrifying combination of hypothermia and absolute dread.
"She’s sitting in an alley in Humboldt Park, Victor," I said, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached. "She’s freezing to death. She’s covered in bruises. She looks like she hasn't eaten a solid meal in six months."
A subtle pause lingered on the line. Just half a second too long.
"Humboldt Park?" Victor sighed, sounding genuinely distressed—a masterclass in artificial empathy. "God damn it. She must have slipped past the night guards at the facility again. The bruises are probably from falling on the ice, Cole. Look, stay right where you are. I have my personal security detail in the area looking for her. That's probably my boys in the Lincoln across the street right now. Let them load her up, bring her to my estate, and we’ll get a private doctor to check her out immediately. Then you and I can sit down, have a drink, and catch up like brothers."
I stared at the black Lincoln across the street.
The dark metal barrel poking out of the passenger window wasn't a tranquillizer gun. It was a suppressed submachine gun—a weapon meant for quiet, efficient exterminations, not a welfare check on an elderly woman with dementia.
"Yeah," I whispered. "I see your boys, Victor."
"Good. Let them handle it, Cole. You just got back into town. You don't need this stress."
"Victor?"
"Yeah, brother?"
"If I find out you lied to me," I said softly, "there isn't a hole on this earth deep enough to hide you from what I'm going to do."
I hung up the phone before he could reply.
"Frank!" I barked. "Cover!"
Frank didn't hesitate. He raised his weapon and fired two rapid shots directly into the radiator grille of the Lincoln Town Car across the street. The sharp CRACK-CRACK echoed off the brick walls of the alley.
The Lincoln’s engine sputtered violently, steam pouring from the shattered grille, but the passenger door flew open anyway. Two men in tactical vests and heavy ski masks leaped out, raising automatic weapons.
"GET HER IN THE CAR!" I roared, throwing my body over my mother and the young woman.
Marcus reversed the heavy Escalade at fifty miles an hour down the snow-covered street, slamming the rear bumper directly into a streetlight pole right beside the alley entrance, creating a massive metal barrier between us and the shooters.
Bullets rattled against the reinforced armor plating of the Escalade like heavy hail—CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.
"Inside! NOW!" Frank yelled, sliding the side door open.
I scooped my mother up in my arms. She weighed almost nothing—maybe eighty pounds. Her bones felt like dried twigs beneath her ragged layers of clothes. It was like carrying a ghost.
"Come on!" I reached out with one arm and grabbed the young woman by her sweater collar, hauling her up into the leather-lined interior of the SUV right alongside my mother.
Moose scrambled in behind us, his giant body blocking the open doorway until Frank vaulted inside and slammed the heavy armored door shut.
"DRIVE!" I commanded.
Marcus slammed his foot on the accelerator. The eight-thousand-pound armored vehicle roared to life, its heavy four-wheel-drive tires digging into the ice, fishtailing wildly before launching forward down the avenue, leaving the smoking Lincoln and the gunmen behind in a cloud of white snow and exhaust.
Inside the cabin, the heavy silence returned, broken only by the loud, ragged breathing of five people and a dog.
The SUV's high-capacity climate control system immediately began pumping scorching hot air into the space.
My mother lay huddled on the leather bench seat, her head resting on my lap, trembling violently as the warmth hit her frozen skin. Moose lay beside her, pressing his thick, furry body against her back, radiating heat like a furnace.
The young woman sat on the floor of the vehicle, leaning against the opposite door, gasping for air. Now that we were under the bright interior LED lights, I could see her clearly for the first time.
She was pale, her lips blue, her dark hair tangled and dirty. But her features were sharp, intelligent, and fierce. Across her left cheekbone was a fading yellow bruise, and her knuckles were split and bleeding.
I pulled off my heavy cashmere overcoat and tossed it onto her lap.
"Put it on," I said.
She looked at the coat, then looked up at me with deep mistrust. "I don't need your charity."
"It's not charity. It's an order," I said flatly. "You freeze to death in my backseat, you're no good to me. Put the coat on."
She hesitated for a second, then wrapped the massive, warm garment around her narrow shoulders, burying her frozen hands in the deep pockets. A soft, shuddering sigh of relief escaped her lips as the warmth began to sink in.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Elena," she whispered. "Elena Cruz."
"Why were you in that alley with my mother, Elena?"
Elena looked at my mother, her eyes softening with a deep, protective tenderness that I hadn't seen in anyone's eyes in a very long time.
"Because if I hadn't been there," Elena said, looking back up at me with unwavering conviction, "those men in the black cars would have killed her three days ago."
I felt a cold lump form in my throat. "Tell me everything."
Elena took a deep, shaky breath, rubbing her raw wrists.
"I work... worked... as a dietary aide at St. Jude’s Senior Care in West Chicago," Elena began. "It's not a luxury retirement home. It’s a run-down, state-funded facility where people go when they have no family left and no money. Three weeks ago, Mrs. Ashworth was brought in by two men in suits."
"Two men in suits?" I echoed, my chest tightening. "Not Victor?"
"I don't know who Victor is," Elena replied. "They didn't give names. They paid the corrupt administrator ten thousand dollars in cash under the table to keep her in a locked room in the basement wing—no visitors, no medical charts, no name on the door. They called her 'Patient Zero'."
I clenched my fists so hard my nails bit into my palms through my leather gloves.
"Go on," I managed to say.
"I was assigned to bring food trays to the basement," Elena continued, tears glistening in her eyes. "She wasn't crazy. She didn't have dementia. She was starving, Mr. Ashworth. They were barely feeding her enough to keep her alive. Every time I went into that room, she was weeping, begging me to help her, saying her son was coming back and that if her son found out what they were doing, they would kill him too."
My mother stirred on my lap, letting out a soft, whimpering moan. I reached down, stroking her dirty silver hair, tears finally threatening to break past my own defenses.
"A week ago," Elena said, her voice dropping into a dark whisper, "I overheard the administrator talking to one of those men in the hallway. The man said... he said 'Cole is coming back from Europe next week. We need to clear the board. Make sure the old woman doesn't survive until the weekend. Make it look like heart failure.'"
"Jesus," Frank swore quietly from the front seat.
"I couldn't let them kill her," Elena wept silently, the tears tracing clean tracks through the dirt on her face. "That night, I stole the master keys from the head nurse’s desk. I got Mrs. Ashworth out through the laundry chute exit. We’ve been running for three days. No money, no phone, staying in abandoned buildings and alleys, trying to hide from those black cars. She kept telling me that if we could just stay alive until her son reached the city, he would save us."
Elena looked at me, her dark eyes searching my face with a terrifying blend of hope and accusation.
"Are you him?" she asked softly. "Are you the son she kept praying for?"
I looked down at my mother’s bruised, frail face. Eight years of sending four hundred thousand dollars a month—nearly forty million dollars in total—and while I was drinking expensive champagne in European villas, the woman who gave me life was being starved in a filthy basement, hunted like an animal in the snow.
Victor Hale hadn't just stolen my money.
He had stolen my mother’s humanity. He had used my name, my reputation, and my absence to build his own kingdom while turning my mother into a leverage piece to be discarded the moment I stepped foot back in the city.
"Yes," I told Elena, my voice shaking with an ancient, dark rage that had been sleeping inside me for fifteen years. "I'm her son."
I looked up at Marcus.
"Where are we going, Boss?" Marcus asked, his eyes wide in the mirror. "We can't go to your penthouse downtown. Victor knows all your properties."
"We're going to the old armory on 31st Street," I said grimly. "The one we shut down in '18. Nobody knows it's still operational except us."
"And then?" Frank asked, pulling a fresh magazine from his vest and slapping it into his weapon with a sharp CLACK.
May you like
I reached down and gently touched my mother’s freezing hand, holding it tight inside my own.
"And then," I said softly, "we tear Chicago apart until there is nothing left of Victor Hale but blood and ash."
