Chapter 3 - The Cold Floor of the Cellar
The basement beneath the Duca Tower did not exist on any architectural blue-prints filed with the City of Chicago.
It lay thirty feet below the parking garage, accessible only by a freight elevator that required a physical brass key and a thumb-print scan that only three men in the Midwest possessed: Marco Duca, Caruso, and Gianni.
The air down here was nine degrees colder than the rest of the building. It smelled of damp limestone, old iron, and the sharp, metallic tang of unwashed fear.
Marco stepped out of the lift, pulling a pair of thin, black leather driving gloves onto his hands. He had changed out of his tuxedo trousers into a pair of dark denim jeans and a simple black cashmere crewneck sweater, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows.
Caruso was waiting for him near the heavy iron door at the end of the corridor, holding a thick manila folder and a silver thermos of espresso.
"How is he?" Marco asked, taking the file without stopping.
"Loud," Caruso replied, falling into step beside his boss. "He started by claiming the Morettis paid him fifty thousand to drop the location. Then he changed it to thirty thousand. Ten minutes ago, he offered me two hundred grand from his mother's trust fund if I let him walk out through the alley."
Marco opened the file. Inside were three bank transfer receipts from a small private bank in Zurich, dated forty-eight hours ago. The recipient was an LLC registered in the Bahamas—a company owned entirely by Matteo Duca’s twenty-two-year-old mistress.
"He sold his aunt for three hundred thousand dollars," Marco said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "He didn't even get market value."
"He’s an idiot, Boss," Caruso said, unlocking the iron door with a heavy brass key that turned with a dry, screeching scrap. "He thinks because his father was your father’s brother, he has immunity."
"Immunity is for diplomats," Marco said, pushing the door open. "Not family."
The room inside was sixteen feet square, illuminated by a single, unshielded halogen bulb hanging from a black cord in the center of the ceiling.
Sitting on a metal folding chair in the center of the concrete floor was Matteo Duca.
He was twenty-six years old, handsome in a soft, pampered way, with slick dark hair and expensive tailored clothes that were now torn and covered in gray concrete dust. His hands were zip-tied behind the back of the chair, his right eye was swollen shut, and a dark trickle of blood had dried along the line of his thin mustache.
Gianni was standing in the shadow near the wall, his arms crossed over his massive chest, a thick length of reinforced garden hose dangling from his right hand.
When the heavy door clicked shut, Matteo jumped, his head snapping toward Marco.
"Marco!" Matteo gasped, his voice high, thin, and desperate. "Marco, thank God! Tell these animals to cut these ties! Gianni has gone crazy! He hit me, Marco! He hit your own cousin!"
Marco didn't answer. He walked over to a small wooden table against the far wall, pulled out a second folding chair, and unfolded it three feet in front of Matteo.
He sat down, crossing his long legs at the ankle, leaning his elbows on his knees. He looked at Matteo the way an entomologist looks at a rare, slightly disgusting beetle pinned to a piece of cardboard.
"You look wet, Matteo," Marco said softly.
"They... they poured ice water on me!" Matteo sobbed, his chest heaving under his ruined silk shirt. "Marco, listen to me! It was a setup! The Morettis... they kidnapped my girl! They told me if I didn't give them the table assignments for the gala, they’d send her back to me in three different boxes! I had no choice, Marco! I was trying to protect her!"
Marco slowly reached into his pocket, pulled out the three bank receipts from Zurich, and dropped them onto the concrete floor between Matteo’s shoes.
The small white papers fluttered down, landing in a puddle of dirty water.
Matteo’s eyes dropped to the papers. The blood drained out of his face so fast he looked as though he were going to vomit onto his own shoes.
"Three hundred thousand," Marco read the numbers from memory. "Sent to the Blue Sky Holdings account in Nassau. Registered to Miss Chloe Bennett. The same Chloe Bennett who bought a diamond necklace on Michigan Avenue yesterday afternoon while you were buying two tickets to Saint Barts."
Matteo swallowed, his throat making a dry, clicking sound. "Marco... I..."
"You sold your aunt," Marco said, his voice dropping into a register that seemed to make the concrete walls shrink inward. "The woman who paid for your tuition at Georgetown. The woman who bought your mother a house in Naples when your father drank his liver into copper filings. You sold her to the Morettis for three hundred grand and a beach vacation."
"I didn't think they were going to shoot her!" Matteo shrieked, tears finally spilling out of his good eye, cutting pale tracks through the gray dust on his cheeks. "They said... they said they were just going to cause a disturbance! They said they just wanted to embarrass you in front of the Mayor! I swear to God, Marco! On my mother's grave!"
"Your mother is alive and living in Naples," Marco said flatly. "Don't kill her off before her time."
Marco leaned forward, his dark eyes fixing on his cousin’s swollen face.
"Do you know who Lena Carter is, Matteo?"
Matteo blinked, confused by the sudden change in subject. "Who? The... the nurse? The girl from the papers?"
"She isn't a nurse," Marco said, his voice almost gentle now—a gentleness that made Caruso step back two inches toward the door, knowing what that tone meant. "She is thirty-six years old. Her mother died of lung cancer when she was twelve. Her father was a drunk who beat her until she learned how to hide behind furniture. She came to this city with two hundred dollars in a plastic bag and built a life where no one touched her, no one hurt her, and no one knew her name."
Marco reached out, his gloved hand reaching into Matteo’s hair, grabbing a fistful of dark locks and jerking his cousin’s head back until his throat was fully exposed to the harsh halogen light.
"And tonight," Marco whispered, "because of your three hundred thousand dollars, that girl had three inches of glass dug out of her shoulder without making a single sound. She bled on my coat, Matteo. She took three bullets that were meant for the woman who raised me."
"Marco... please..." Matteo wept, his body shaking violently against the metal frame of the chair. "I'm family! We share the same blood! Our grandfathers came from the same village!"
"Blood doesn't make you family, Matteo," Marco said, his fingers tightening in his hair until Matteo let out a sharp Yowl of pain. "Blood just makes you a biological inconvenience when you turn traitor."
Marco turned his head slightly toward Gianni. "Is the boat ready?"
"Waiting at the dock in Gary, Boss," Gianni replied. "Forty miles out into the deep water. The concrete bins are already mixed."
"No!" Matteo screamed, his voice breaking into a high-pitched, pathetic screech as he began thrashing against the zip-ties. "Marco, no! Please! I'll leave the country! I'll go to South America! You'll never see me again! I'll tell you everything about the Moretti accounts! I have names! I have dates!"
Marco stood up, casually smoothing the front of his cashmere sweater. He didn't look back at the crying man in the chair.
"Give the names to Caruso," Marco said, walking toward the heavy iron door. "If they check out, tell the boys in Gary to use sixty-pound blocks instead of eighty. Let him sink twenty minutes faster."
"Marco!" Matteo’s screams echoed off the cold limestone walls, bouncing around the dark corridor as Marco stepped back out into the elevator lobby. "MARCO! SHE’S JUST A NOBODY! SHE’S A SERVANT! YOU’RE KILLING YOUR OWN BLOOD FOR A SERVANT!"
Marco stopped in the doorway.
He didn't turn around, but his voice carried through the small room with the absolute, terrifying weight of a final judgment.
"She isn't a servant anymore, Matteo," Marco said softly. "She is the woman who owns the Duca family. And you are just a piece of meat that took up room at my dinner table for twenty-six years."
The iron door slammed shut.
The sound was heavy, final, and absolute, cutting off Matteo’s screams into silence.
Marco stepped into the private lift, pulled off his thin leather gloves, and tossed them into the small metal trash receptacle near the control panel. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and dialed the internal extension for the thirty-fifth floor.
It rang twice before a soft, raspy voice answered.
"Hello?"
"Did you take the medicine Vance left for you?" Marco asked, leaning his head against the wood paneling of the cab as it rose through thirty-five floors of steel and glass.
A short pause on the line. "I took the white pill. I refused the green one because it smelled like Valium and I don't like losing my edge."
The corner of Marco’s mouth twitched—the first real vestige of a smile he had experienced in six hours. "You're supposed to lose your edge when you're recovering from surgery, Lena."
"I’m not recovering from surgery," she said, her voice small but clear over the digital line. "I’m sitting in a bed that costs more than my annual salary, watching the rain hit your windows, and wondering when the police are going to knock on your front door."
"The police aren't knocking on my door tonight," Marco said as the lift passed the twentieth floor. "The Commissioner is currently having dinner with my legal counsel at the Drake. He has been assured that the shooter was an isolated fanatic from out of state."
"And your cousin?" she asked softly.
Marco went quiet for three seconds. The lift chimed as it reached thirty-four.
"My cousin has decided to relocate to the Caribbean," Marco said. "Permanently."
A long silence followed on the line. Lena didn't ask for details. She was too smart, too perceptive, and too familiar with the dark realities of the world to ask questions she didn't want the answers to.
"You should sleep, Marco," she said, her tone shifting slightly—losing its sharp, defensive edge, becoming almost gentle. "You sound like a ghost."
"I'm coming up," he said.
"To your room?"
May you like
"To my room," he corrected. "Which happens to be where you are."
He hung up before she could formulate an argument, stepping out of the elevator into the dim, quiet luxury of the thirty-fifth floor.
