Chapter 2 - The Office on Michigan Avenue
Instead of termination papers, the following morning brought a dark town car idling outside my run-down apartment building in South Lawndale. Two men in charcoal wool suits stepped out, their faces devoid of expression, delivering a single concise message: Mr. Perry required my presence at the Perry Logistics headquarters on Michigan Avenue. The boardroom was fifty floors above the freezing Chicago river, wrapped in floor-to-ceiling glass that framed the gray, forbidding skyline. Leandro Perry sat at the end of a vast mahogany table, his sleeves rolled up, examining a single sheet of paper: my employee file from Laura. It listed my name as Clara Vance, my wage as minimum plus tips, and my degree in forensic accounting from the University of Illinois—a credential I had buried deep because a waitress with a clean financial record could hide from creditors much easier than an unemployed auditor. Leandro didn't shout. He didn't reference his sister’s appalling behavior the night before. Instead, he slid a fifty-dollar bill across the wood—the exact amount I had left on the bar to pay for Stella’s dry cleaning after she stormed out. "My sister is an undisciplined liability," Leandro said, his voice level and smooth. "And you, Miss Vance, are severely underemployed. A graduate with your honors doesn't spend twelve hours balancing dining room receipts unless she’s hiding from a very specific paper trail." My heart hammered against my ribs. I had thought the mob boss was calling me in to punish me for talking back to his blood; instead, he opened a thick, encrypted corporate ledger detailing millions of dollars in unaccounted losses, missing freight manifests, and phantom payroll accounts. "I need someone who knows how to trace stolen money," Leandro continued, locking his steady gaze onto mine. "And unlike my current executives, you don't steal from me."
