Chapter 2 - The Ledger of Ellsworth Street
The ride back to his Center City penthouse was a blur of wipers slapping against wet glass and city lights bleeding into smears of neon red and yellow.
Dominic didn't turn on the radio. He sat in the leather-lined silence of the Mercedes, tasting the phantom metallic tang of copper and garlic in the back of his throat. The five hundred dollars were still sitting on his passenger seat where he had tossed them, though he had left them behind on the table—or rather, Tess had left them on the table while he stood there like an idiot.
“I don’t like owing people.”
The words echoed in his skull. In Dominic’s world, everyone owed someone. Life was a continuous chain of debts—some paid in cash, some in blood, some in quiet compliance. For a broke girl living three doors down from a crumbling rowhouse to reject his money with such casual, unyielding pride was an insult that felt dangerously close to a challenge.
Or worse: an anomaly.
By 8:00 AM the next morning, Dominic was sitting behind the mahogany desk of his private office in the back of Bruno’s Imported Meats, a legitimate wholesale deli on 9th Street that served as the nerve center for his North and South Philadelphia operations.
Across from him sat Dean Gallo, his oldest friend and shadow—a massive man with a broken nose, a cauliflower ear, and a talent for digging up dirt that rivaled the NSA.
“Talk to me,” Dominic said, not looking up from a shipping manifest.
Dean dropped a manila folder onto the blotter. “Her name is Theresa Marie Miller. Twenty-six years old. Born and raised in Kensington. Married a drywall contractor named Danny Miller at nineteen. Three years later, Danny walked out to buy a pack of cigarettes and kept driving all the way to Florida, leaving her with twenty grand in credit card debt and a toddler.”
Dominic flipped open the folder. Inside were tax documents, employment records, and a grainy photograph of Tess standing outside a massive, corrugated-metal building.
“Where’s she working?” Dominic asked.
“Keystone Industrial Linen on Delaware Avenue,” Dean replied, leaning his bulk against the edge of the desk. “She works the second shift—two to eleven at night. Sorting, washing, and industrial pressing. Heavy, hot, miserable work. Minimum wage plus shift differential. Brings home about sixteen hundred bucks a month after taxes.”
Dominic scanned the numbers. Sixteen hundred a month in Philadelphia was a sick joke. Rent, utilities, food, childcare for Leo—it was an equation that always ended in the negative.
“Debt?” Dominic asked, his thumb tracing the edge of a credit report.
“Mounting,” Dean said grimly. “She’s current on her electric, barely, but she’s four months behind on her rent at 414 Ellsworth. Two thousand one hundred and fifty dollars total.”
Dominic stopped tracing the paper. “Who’s her landlord?”
Dean cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably. “That’s where it gets complicated, Boss. The building is owned by a shell corporation named Baltic Holdings. But the underlying paper is held by Viktor Petrov.”
Dominic’s eyes snapped up. Viktor Petrov. The ruthless, cocaine-snorting Russian brute who had been muscling in on the dock unions over in Port Richmond, pushing into Bruno territory with reckless disregard for local traditions.
“Petrov owns her building?” Dominic’s voice dropped an octave, the temperature in the office plummeting.
“Yeah,” Dean nodded. “His property managers are notorious. They don't send polite notices; they send guys with brass knuckles to lean on tenants. I checked the eviction docket. Her court date is set for next Tuesday. If she doesn't cough up the two grand, Petrov’s guys are throwing her and the kid out onto the street.”
Dominic closed the folder slowly. He leaned back in his leather chair, staring up at the acoustic-tiled ceiling.
A single mother, working herself to the bone in a steam-filled linen plant, coming home to feed his ungrateful, senile parents out of her own pocket, while a Russian psychopath was sharpening his knives to throw her out into a freezing Philadelphia November.
It was a tragedy playing out in miniature right on his family’s doorstep. And worse—it involved his parents. Whether Dominic liked it or not, Tess Miller had crossed the line from a stranger into his perimeter.
“Keep an eye on her,” Dominic instructed quietly.
May you like
“You want me to buy the debt from Petrov?” Dean asked. “Clear her ledger?”
“No,” Dominic said, standing up and buttoning his suit jacket. “If we buy her debt directly, Petrov smells blood in the water. He’ll think we’re soft for a tenant. Let’s see how she handles the pressure first. I want to watch her move.”
