Chapter 2 - The Shadow over the PlazaBy mid-afternoon, the gray clouds over Manhattan had thickened, threatening a heavy snowstorm. In a private penthouse suite overlooking the Magnificent Mile, Dante Salvatore sat in a high-backed leather chair, a glass of thirty-year-old scotch balanced on his knee.
He was a man in his late fifties, impeccably groomed, with a silver mustache and eyes as cold and vacant as a reptile’s. Across his glass coffee table lay six glossy black-and-white photographs.
The top photograph captured a moment from three days prior: Nathaniel Cross, the unapproachable titan of the Midwest underworld, kneeling in the snow, gently wrapping his own silk scarf around Lily Hayes’s tiny neck while Titan stood guard beside them.
"It’s pathetic," spat Marco, Dante’s chief enforcer, a hulking man with a jagged scar running from his ear to his collarbone. "The great Nathaniel Cross... turning into a nanny for a dead debt-collector’s brat."
"You lack vision, Marco," Dante purred, his voice like dry leaves scraping across pavement. "Nathaniel Cross has spent nine years playing the invisible king. He built a fortress. He paid off judges, federal agents, and senators. He was untouched because he cared about nothing. No woman, no heir, no domain beyond his balance sheets."
Dante reached down and picked up the photograph, his yellowed fingernail tracing the outline of Lily’s small face.
"When a man has nothing to lose, he is a demon," Dante whispered. "But when he opens his heart to a little girl... he becomes a man again. And men can be bled."
"What are your orders, boss?" Marco asked, his hand drifting toward the shoulder holster hidden beneath his coat. "Do we hit the estate? The front gate has four guards, but we can take a team through the ravine—"
"No," Dante snapped, slamming his glass onto the table. "You don't fight a dragon in its cave. You draw it out. The mother... Clara. She still has a sister living in South Chicago, doesn't she?"
"Yeah," Marco grunted. "A nurse at St. Jude’s. Works the night shift."
Dante smiled—a cruel, thin line that didn't reach his eyes. "Send two men. Grab the sister. Don't hurt her yet—just make sure Clara gets the video feed on her personal phone. Tell her that if she wants her sister to breathe through the weekend, she opens the east utility gate of the Cross estate tonight at midnight."
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"And the kid?" Marco asked.
"Bring the kid to me," Dante said, his voice dropping into a sinister murmur. "I want Nathaniel Cross to crawl on his hands and knees through the mud of my warehouse before I put a bullet in his head. And I want him to watch me take everything he tried to protect."
