Chapter 3 - Shadows on the South SideThe cramped apartment on the south side smelled of disinfectant, boiled cabbage, and old medicine. Gabriel Turner sat in his worn armchair beside the window, an oxygen cannula resting in his nose, staring blankly out at the snow beginning to dust the fire escapes outside.
Nula dropped her keys onto the scarred laminate counter, her hands still trembling slightly.
“You’re home early, sweetheart,” Gabriel rasped, his voice weakened by the stroke that had stolen half his mobility two years ago. “Did Mr. Callahan give you the afternoon off?”
“Yes, Dad,” Nula said, walking over to check the digital readout on his oxygen tank. Satisfied it was stable, she knelt beside his chair. “Dad, I need to ask you something. And I need you to tell me the absolute truth.”
Gabriel turned his head slowly, his cloudy eyes focusing on her face. “About what?”
“Mom.”
The old man’s expression shuttered instantly. The lines around his mouth hardened into a mask of ancient pain. “We don't talk about your mother, Nula. We agreed. It hurts too much.”
“She didn't die in that hit-and-run, did she?” Nula asked, her voice cracking under the weight of her discovery.
Gabriel went completely rigid. The oxygen tubing rattled against his collarbone as his chest hitched. “Where did you hear that?”
“I saw a photograph today,” Nula whispered, gripping the armrests of his chair. “In Andrew Callahan’s office. A picture of her outside a federal courthouse. Dad, my employer—the man I clean for—has a secret file on my mother. Who is he? Why does he have her picture?”
Gabriel closed his eyes, a single tear cutting a clean path through the wrinkles on his weathered cheek. He reached out with a shaky, partially paralyzed hand and patted Nula’s head.
“I swore I’d take the secret to my grave to keep you safe,” Gabriel whispered hoarsely. “Your mother wasn't just a housewife, Nula. Before she met me, she was a forensic accountant working for the federal prosecutor’s office in downtown Chicago. She helped build a racketeering case against the old Callahan syndicate.”
Nula’s breath hitched. “She was an auditor? But the police said—”
“The police were bought off,” Gabriel interrupted bitterly. “When they realized she was going to testify against the syndicate’s financial backbone, they didn't kill her—they traded her life. They told her if she vanished, assumed a new identity, and never spoke to us again, they’d let her family live. But she never stopped keeping tabs on you, Nula. And neither did the man who inherited that empire.”
“Andrew Callahan,” Nula said, the name tasting like ash in her mouth.
“Andrew was twenty-five when his father died and he took over the family business,” Gabriel said, opening his eyes to look directly into hers. “He didn't want the violence. He wanted out. But to dismantle the syndicate from the inside, he needed the exact financial ledgers your mother helped hide before she went into deep witness protection.”
“And that’s why I was hired,” Nula realized with a sickening thud in her stomach. “It wasn't an accident that the employment agency placed me in his mansion two years ago. He knew who I was the moment I walked through his front door.”
Before Gabriel could answer, a loud, sharp knock rattled the front door of their apartment.
Nula stood up instantly, her heart leaping into her throat.
“Stay here,” she whispered to her father.
May you like
She tiptoed to the front door, peering through the peephole.
Standing in the dim, flickering hallway under the stairwell light was Marcus Vance, flanked by two men in dark suits. And behind them, standing silently in the shadows, was Andrew Callahan.
