Chapter 7 - The Gathering of the Wolves
The library on the second floor of the Moretti compound was lined with four thousand volumes of maritime law, commercial history, and nineteenth-century shipping manifests, but the only book open on the twelve-foot walnut table was a thin, leather-bound municipal registry from 1954.
Vincent Moretti sat at the head of the table. He was still wearing the clothes he had worn during the day—a plain gray woolen sweater, dark trousers, and the heavy leather work boots he wore when he inspected the dry docks in Gary.
On the table in front of him sat the brick.
The black electrical tape had been sliced through with an exacto knife, the glossy photograph of Victoria Langford laid out flat beside it, its edges curling slightly under the green shaded desk lamp.
Emma stood on the other side of the table, her coat still on, her boots leaving damp circles of snow-melt on the dark parquet floor. Frank, the driver, stood three paces behind her right shoulder, his arms folded across his chest, his gray eyes fixed on the door.
"The car was an unregistered Dodge Charger," Mark Gable said from the shadow between two bookcases. "Stolen from a municipal lot on 47th Street three hours before the incident. Found burning in an alley off Halsted twenty minutes ago. Professional work, but cheap. Twenty-five hundred dollars to some neighborhood talent to deliver a message."
"A message to who?" Vincent asked. He hadn't touched the brick. His hands were clasped loosely over his stomach, his thumbs circling each other in that slow, terrifyingly patient rhythm.
"To me," Emma said.
Vincent looked up. "You think this was about you, Miss Carter?"
"They wrote 'back to the dirt,'" Emma said, her voice tight with anger that had been simmering for the entire ninety-minute drive back up the interstate. "They went to Lily’s hospital. They tried to get her clinical license pulled. Victoria Langford wants to make sure I know that even if I’m sitting in this castle, my family is still three miles from the stockyards."
"Victoria Langford didn't order this," Vincent said.
Emma blinked. "What?"
"Victoria Langford is currently in her father’s townhouse on Astor Street, drinking Valium with chamomile tea while three public relations consultants try to figure out how to keep her name off the front page of the Sunday business section," Vincent said coldly. "She’s a spoiled, vicious child, Miss Carter, but she isn't stupid enough to send a crew to the South Side forty-eight hours after I pulled her family’s credit facility."
He tapped the glossy photograph with his index finger.
"This," Vincent said, "was ordered by her uncle. Richard Langford."
Mark stepped forward, placing a thin manila folder beside the lamp.
"Richard is the managing trustee of the Langford Real Estate Trust," Mark explained to Emma, his tone conversational, as if he were explaining a bus schedule. "He controls sixty million dollars in warehouse properties along the south branch of the Chicago River. For the last eighteen months, he has been attempting to buy the old rail transfer slips on 33rd Street—the ones that border your father’s neighborhood."
Emma felt a strange, cold click in the back of her mind.
"My dad worked those slips," she said.
"I know," Vincent replied. "And your father is the recording secretary for the Local 397 retiree association, which holds the perpetual easement on the dock access road. Without that easement, Richard Langford’s sixty million dollars of warehouses are completely landlocked. He can't build his luxury logistics center, he can't sell the development rights to Amazon, and he can't service the seventy-million-dollar mezzanine loan he took out from the bank in New York."
Vincent leaned forward, his elbows resting on the walnut wood, bringing his face into the sharp circle of green light.
"Richard has been looking for leverage against your father for six months, Miss Carter. When you grabbed Victoria’s wrist at the Drake, you didn't just save my mother’s face. You walked right into the middle of a thirty-year war over two miles of industrial riverfront."
Emma looked from Vincent to the brick on the table.
"So this wasn't about me at all," she said, a bitter taste rising in her mouth. "You didn't give me this job because you were grateful. You gave me this job because my father owns the road."
Mark Gable didn't speak. He looked down at his shoes.
Vincent didn't flinch. He didn't offer a polite, patrician excuse. He met her eyes with that same terrifyingly pure honesty that made people afraid to sit across from him in arbitration hearings.
"I gave you the job because my mother wouldn't let go of your apron, Miss Carter," Vincent said. "The fact that your father holds the key to Richard Langford’s financial windpipe was merely an alignment of interests."
"An alignment of interests," Emma repeated, her hands clenching into fists inside her coat pockets. "My sister was crying on the kitchen floor twenty minutes ago! My dad’s living room window is in pieces on the carpet!"
"And Richard Langford’s bank accounts will be in pieces by Tuesday," Vincent said, his voice dropping into that low, flat register that silenced ballrooms. "Frank."
"Sir," the driver answered from behind Emma.
"Take two men from the gate crew. Go to Racine Avenue. You stay on that porch until the new window is set and the glass is cleared. If anyone slows down their car within fifty yards of Thomas Carter’s house, put them against the curb."
"Understood, Mr. Moretti." Frank turned and left the library, the heavy oak door closing behind him without a sound.
Vincent stood up. He walked around the table until he was standing three feet from Emma. He was a large man, but he moved with that peculiar, balanced quietness that belongs to people who have worked on ships and steel frames.
"You have two choices, Miss Carter," Vincent said.
"It’s always two choices with you," Emma muttered.
"That’s how the world is built," he said. "Choice one: you pack your bag, Mark gives you forty thousand dollars in a cashier’s check, and Frank drives you to the airport. You take your father and your sister to Arizona. You buy a small house in the desert. You live on the pension, and you spend the rest of your life hoping Richard Langford forgets your name."
Emma stared at his chin. "And choice two?"
"Choice two," Vincent said, reaching down and picking up the brick from the table, turning it over in his hand as if it weighed nothing at all. "You stay in this house. You pour my mother’s tea. And tomorrow morning at ten o'clock, you walk into the Chicago Athletic Association on Michigan Avenue with me, wearing a dress that cost more than Richard Langford’s first car, and you sit at the high table while I strip his family down to their bare skin."
Emma looked at the red clay dust that had fallen from the brick onto the green baize of the desk lamp.
She thought of her father’s hands—the thick, scarred thumbs that had never taken an inch of charity, the bent back that had carried three decades of union cards. She thought of Lily’s yellow carbon slip, the petty, vicious threat to four years of night school and scrub washes.
"I don't have a dress," Emma said.
May you like
Vincent set the brick down on the manila folder with a heavy, final thunk.
"Mark," he said, not taking his eyes from Emma’s face. "Call the atelier at Saks. Have them bring the trunk collection to the morning room by seven. And tell them to bring something that looks good with iron."
