Chapter 2 - The Second Language
Before Silvio Rossi could draw the compact snub-nosed revolver concealed in his inner breast pocket, Dominic moved with terrifying, instantaneous speed.
He grabbed the heavy crystal water carafe from the boardroom table and smashed it across the side of his uncle’s jaw.
The glass shattered in a brilliant spray of water and sharp fragments. Silvio collapsed sideways off his chair, groaning as blood bloomed across his immaculate white collar.
"Don't move," Dominic snarled to Gregory Volk’s two bodyguards, pulling a custom dark-steel semi-automatic pistol from his shoulder holster with his right hand while maintaining total stillness.
Dominic’s own men converged on the room, their weapons drawn, sweeping the space within seconds.
"Check Newark!" Dominic ordered his chief of security, a broad-shouldered man named Marko. "Get a strike team to the east dock terminal immediately! Anthony is inside!"
Maeve stepped back toward her bucket, her instincts telling her to dissolve into the background once more. The room was chaotic now—men barking orders, guns drawn, blood dripping onto the carpet she had spent forty minutes scrubbing.
Dominic kicked his uncle’s fallen gun across the floor and turned back to Maeve.
"You," he said, pointing the barrel of his gun down toward her bucket. "Leave the mop."
"Mr. Rossi, I have four more floors to finish before six in the morning," Maeve said, maintaining her composure. "If I don't finish my shift, the night supervisor docks my pay by fifty dollars."
Dominic stared at her for two long seconds, then pulled a thick leather wallet from his inner suit jacket. He extracted a stack of crisp, uncirculated hundred-dollar bills—at least five thousand dollars—and shoved it directly into the pocket of her canvas apron.
"Your shift is over," Dominic said. "You're coming with me."
"I don't work for you, Mr. Rossi," Maeve replied firmly, looking down at the money in her apron pocket. "I clean buildings."
"You just saved my brother’s life and blew open a three-year conspiracy inside my family in under ninety seconds," Dominic said, walking toward the exit doors as his men handcuffed Silvio and pinned Gregory against the mahogany table. "Which means as of two-twenty-five this morning, you are the highest-paid linguistic security consultant in the city of Chicago."
"I didn't apply for that job."
"You didn't have to," Dominic said, stopping at the doorway and looking back over his shoulder. "Because if you stay in this building, Gregory’s remaining men outside will figure out who broke their code before the sun comes up. You walk out that door alone, Maeve Nolan, and you're dead by breakfast."
Maeve looked at the blood on the floor, then at the thick stack of bills in her apron.
She looked at her scrub bucket one last time, peeled off her yellow rubber gloves, dropped them into the gray water, and walked out of the room behind the mob boss.
They descended in the private express elevator to the underground parking garage. Rain was pouring outside, heavy and cold, drumming against the concrete ramp above. A convoy of three black armored SUVs stood idling near the security exit, their exhaust fumes rising in white plumes against the dim fluorescence.
Dominic opened the rear door of the center vehicle and gestured for her to get in.
"Marko!" Dominic called out as he slid into the leather seat beside Maeve. "What's the status on Anthony?"
Marko leaned back from the front passenger seat, holding a satellite phone to his ear. "The local team just hit the Newark site, boss. They found the fuel canisters, just like the lady said. They neutralized Gregory’s two watchers and pulled Anthony out of the office room. He’s shaken up, but he doesn't have a scratch on him."
Dominic closed his eyes for a long moment, taking a deep, slow breath. When he opened them, the cold, murderous edge in his demeanor softened slightly. He turned his head to look at Maeve, who was sitting stiffly on the soft leather, clutching her small vinyl purse in her lap.
"He's safe," Dominic said softly. "My brother is alive because of you."
"I'm glad," Maeve said quietly. "He's nice. He always says please when he asks for extra towels on the fourteenth floor."
Dominic let out a brief, genuinely surprised laugh. "Anthony always was too soft for this business. Which is why my uncle thought he could eliminate him without consequence."
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Silvio has been my father’s trusted lieutenant for thirty years. I knew there was a mole in our logistics pipeline, but I never suspected him. How did you pick up his signal?"
"It wasn't a language from a country, Mr. Rossi," Maeve explained, her hands sitting quietly in her lap. "It was Sicilian prison cant—a dialect used by inmates in the 1980s in Palermo. My grandfather spent time in a facility there before immigrating. The double ring-tap against the crystal glass means 'execution approved, clear the venue.' He wasn't swirling his water. He was giving an operational command."
Dominic stared at her in total, stunned silence.
"Eight languages," he whispered. "You said eight."
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"English, Spanish, French, Russian, Albanian, Italian dialects, Romani slang," Maeve counted off on her red, calloused fingers. "And silence. Most people don't realize silence is a language too. It tells you exactly who is afraid, who is waiting, and who is lying."
The armored SUV accelerated into the rainy Chicago night, carrying Maeve Nolan away from her fifteen-dollar-an-hour life and into a world where every word was a hidden weapon.
