Chapter 2 - The Crimson Ledger
Across the city, high above the glittering skyline in a sprawling penthouse overlooking the Loop, Carmine Costa sat in front of a massive walnut desk. The room was shrouded in shadow, illuminated only by the amber glow of a single desk lamp and the ambient light of the sprawling metropolis below.
Carmine was a man of sixty, with sharp silver hair, eyes like chipped flint, and a tailored suit that cost more than Sadi’s rent for an entire year. In front of him lay an open leather-bound ledger—the financial spine of the Costa family’s legitimate shipping and real estate empire, alongside the darker ink entries of their underground operations.
The heavy oak doors of the study creaked open, and Roman stepped inside.
He had cleaned up. The charcoal suit had been discarded, replaced by a simple black turtleneck and dark slacks. But the white bandage wrapped tightly around his right hand stood out sharply against the dark fabric. His jaw was clenched, his shoulders tense, moving with the coiled, restless energy of a caged predator.
Carmine didn't look up from the ledger immediately. He dipped a heavy fountain pen into a crystal inkwell, scratching a final line across a row of figures before closing the book with a heavy thud.
“You broke a seventeenth-century painting, Roman,” Carmine said, his voice terrifyingly calm, devoid of shouting or anger. That was always worse than rage. “You smashed an antique chair that belonged to my grandfather. And you terrified the patrons of Tossano’s to the point where David called my direct line three times before I even hung up my coat.”
“The deal with the dock union fell through,” Roman said, his voice hard, rough around the edges. “Vance is playing both sides. He took our payout and gave the south pier to the Marcone family. I went down there to settle it, and the guys lost their nerve.”
“So you went to a high-end restaurant and threw a tantrum like a spoiled child,” Carmine finished, finally lifting his piercing eyes to look at his son. “That’s not business, Roman. That’s weakness. That’s an inability to control the fire in your blood. If you can’t manage your temper in public, how do you expect to sit in this chair when I’m gone?”
Roman stepped closer to the desk, slamming his uninjured hand down on the polished wood. “I don’t want the damn chair, and you know it! I’m sick of the meetings, the handshakes with politicians who smile to our faces and stab us in the back, the endless cycle of looking over our shoulders! I’m suffocating, Dad!”
“And smashing furniture helps you breathe?” Carmine asked coldly, leaning back in his leather chair. He gestured to Roman’s bandaged hand. “Who patched you up? One of the guards?”
Roman hesitated. For a split second, the image of Sadi Jenkins flashed behind his eyes—the tired, hazel eyes that hadn't flinched when he screamed, the cold water on her skin, the calm, matter-of-fact way she told him blood was a nightmare to get out of wool.
“No,” Roman muttered, looking away toward the window. “Just... a waitress.”
Carmine’s eyebrows arched slightly. A rare flicker of curiosity crossed the older man’s weathered face. “A waitress. In Tossano’s? At midnight?”
“Her name is Sadi,” Roman said, his voice dropping slightly. “She didn’t blink. She didn't call security. She handed me a bar towel, told me I owed David three hundred dollars for the frame, and went back to sweeping glass.”
Silence stretched across the penthouse study. Carmine studied his son, searching for the manic edge that usually defined Roman’s outbursts. Instead, he saw something else—something unfamiliar, a strange stillness that had settled over the young man like a cooling coal.
“Interesting,” Carmine murmured, opening a small drawer in his desk and pulling out a manila folder stamped with a red confidentiality seal. He slid it across the mahogany surface toward Roman. “You aren't the only one who had an interesting night, my son. While you were breaking chairs at Tossano’s, my accountants found a discrepancy in the municipal shipping audits for the Cicero line. Someone has been siphoning funds out of our legitimate logistics accounts directly into a dummy front company.”
Roman frowned, stepping forward and opening the folder. Inside were bank statements, wire transfers, and corporate registry printouts. “Who?”
“That’s the problem,” Carmine said, his eyes narrowing. “The paper trail leads straight to a small-time mechanic’s garage on the west side that went under four years ago. A man named Thomas Morgan. But Thomas Morgan died of a heart attack in Peoria four years back. Or so the official record stated.”
Roman scanned the pages, his sharp mind—usually clouded by anger, now suddenly razor-sharp—latching onto the details. “A dead man’s front company. That means someone on the inside is using a ghost identity to bleed us dry from the municipal side.”
“Precisely,” Carmine said, standing up and buttoning his suit jacket. “And the municipal official who signed off on those dormant permits is none of other than Councilman Arthur Vance—the very man who sold us out to the Marcones on the south pier.”
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Roman looked up from the folder, a dark, dangerous light returning to his eyes, but this time, it was focused, channeled into a singular point. “Vance.”
“Find out who is pulling the strings behind that dead man’s garage,” Carmine instructed quietly, walking around the desk to stand beside his son. “And find out everything you can about the waitress at Tossano’s. Because in this city, Roman, nobody acts like that around a Costa unless they’re either profoundly stupid... or they have protection we don't know about.”
