Chapter 3 - The Secret Meeting in the West Wing
The private dining room on the west side of the estate was usually reserved for high-stakes meetings with syndicate capos and corrupt municipal officials. Tonight, however, it smelled faintly of chicken noodle soup and buttered toast.
Ellie sat at the massive mahogany table, her feet dangling several inches above the seat of an oversized velvet chair, happily dipping crackers into a bowl of soup. Petra, the head cook who ruled the estate’s kitchens with an iron fist, stood nearby watching the little girl with a look of protective devotion that she usually reserved for stray animals.
Hannah sat stiffly across the table, her hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea. She hadn't touched her food. Her eyes kept darting toward the heavy double doors leading out to the hallway, as if expecting federal agents or syndicate enforcers to burst through at any second.
"Drink your tea, Hannah," Vincent said, walking into the room without his suit jacket, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing the clean, hard lines of his forearms and a faint, jagged scar across his left wrist.
Hannah looked up, startled. "Mr. Caruso, I... I don't understand what's happening. One minute you're threatening to fire me over a ruined rug, and the next you're having Petra cook dinner for us in the private wing."
"The rug was expensive," Vincent admitted, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the opposite end of the long table. "But my judgment was expensive, too. And I hate making mistakes."
He slid a small, encrypted tablet across the polished wood. The screen was paused on a high-definition freeze-frame of Paul Vance’s face—specifically, the split-second smirk he wore as Hannah’s tray hit the floor.
Hannah stared at the screen, her breath catching in her throat. "That’s... that’s Paul from logistics. He told me he was rushing to deliver shipping manifests to the main office."
"Paul lied," Vincent said coldly. "He’s a cousin of Arthur Vance—the same real estate developer who has been trying to muscle me out of the Halsted Street warehouses for six months. They thought if they created chaos inside my house, I’d start firing staff, disrupting my own security perimeter, and turning my own people against each other."
Hannah looked from the tablet up to Vincent’s face. The realization washed over her in a slow, chilling wave. "He did it on purpose. To get me in trouble."
"He used you to get to me," Vincent corrected. "Which means he owes you an apology. And so do I."
The silence in the room grew heavy. Hannah set her teacup down with a faint clink. For three years, she had lived in the shadow of this man’s reputation, terrified of his shadow, keeping her head down and her mouth shut. She had watched powerful men stutter in his presence.
And now, the most feared man in Chicago was sitting across from her, admitting he had been wrong.
"An apology from Vincent Caruso?" Hannah whispered, a dry, humorless smile touching her lips. "People in your line of work don't apologize, Mr. Caruso. They eliminate the problem and move on."
"Most of the time, yes," Vincent agreed, his dark eyes holding hers with an intense, unblinking focus. "But most people don't have four-year-old daughters who march into my living room wearing mismatched socks and order me to fix my mistakes."
At the sound of her name, Ellie looked up from her soup bowl, her mouth half-full of cracker. "Is he saying sorry now, Mommy?"
Hannah’s cheeks flushed a bright, burning red. "Ellie, eat your soup."
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Vincent let out a low, gravelly chuckle—the first real laugh Hannah had ever heard come out of him. It transformed his harsh, weathered face, making him look less like a syndicate boss and more like an ordinary man carrying the weight of a very complicated life.
"Not yet, Ellie," Vincent said, leaning forward resting his forearms on the table. "First, we have to deal with Paul."
