Chapter 2 - The Ledger of Number 48
By eleven that night, the freezing drizzle had turned into a driving, sharp sleet that stung the skin. Dominic sat in the rear of the Lincoln Continental, parked across the street from a sprawling, windowless industrial brick complex on the edge of the district. A rusted metal sign above the loading bays read Apex Industrial Linen Supply. Every few minutes, a blast of sulfurous, bleach-scented steam erupted from a side exhaust vent, rolling across the slick asphalt.
The passenger door opened, bringing in a rush of sub-zero air and the smell of wet wool. Dean slid into the front seat, tossed a manila folder onto Dominic’s lap, and put the car into drive without turning on the headlights.
“You were right,” Dean said, wiping sleet from his collar. “She’s a ghost, but she’s local. Teresa Marie Kincaid, age twenty-six. Born at Methodist Hospital. Married a guy named Cory Kincaid when she was nineteen—drywaller, heavy gambling habit, hooked on crystal. He took off four years ago for Arizona, leaving her with a mountain of medical debt and a kid.”
Dominic opened the folder. The pale screen of his phone illuminated a blurry driver’s license photo. Her hair was down in the picture, but the eyes were unmistakably the same—exhausted, calculating, utterly unyielding.
“She works the two-to-eleven shift here,” Dean continued. “Loads industrial washing drums with hospital bedding. Twelve-fifty an hour. Pulls in maybe sixteen hundred a month after taxes.”
Dominic turned the page, stopping at a property deed printout for number 48. “Who owns her building?”
“That’s where it gets dirty,” Dean replied, tapping the steering wheel. “Building is registered to a shell company controlled by Gregori Vlasov.”
Dominic’s thumb halted on the paper. “The Russian?”
“The very same. Vlasov’s been buying up foreclosed rowhouses on that block for three years, running them as illegal multi-unit rentals. Tess Kincaid is two months behind on her rent—nine hundred a month, plus Vlasov’s fifty-dollar weekly late fee. She owes him twenty-one hundred total. And Vlasov’s collector, that brute Igor with the glass eye, was sitting on her front porch yesterday afternoon while her kid was playing on the sidewalk.”
A slow, dark heat began to simmer in Dominic’s chest. It was not kindness; Dominic did not deal in kindness. It was a matter of territory and authority. Tess Kincaid had put food in his parents' kitchen when his own money had failed to reach them due to administrative corruption. That made her an asset under his implicit umbrella. A bottom-feeder like Gregori Vlasov sending a street collector to intimidate an asset connected to the Bruno family was an intolerable breach of respect.
“Look,” Dean muttered, nodding toward the factory side door.
The heavy steel door swung open, releasing a dozen workers wrapped in winter coats. Tess was the last to exit. She wore a cheap, bright yellow plastic rain poncho over her worn coat, walking with a pronounced, stiff-hipped limp brought on by standing on concrete floors for nine hours straight. She trudged toward a battered 2011 Honda Civic parked near the chain-link fence. The front fender was a mismatched gray—a junkyard replacement.
She unlocked the door, slid into the driver's seat, and turned the key. The starter dragged heavily. Click. Click. Click. The headlights flickered to a sickly yellow glow, then died entirely.
Through the rain-streaked windshield, Dominic watched her rest her forehead against the steering wheel. She didn't slam her hands on the dash. She didn't cry. She simply remained motionless in the freezing dark, letting the sleet hit the metal roof for ten long seconds.
“Pull up,” Dominic ordered softly.
“Boss—”
“Pull the car up alongside her, Dean.”
The Lincoln glided forward, its heavy engine purring silently, stopping two feet from her driver’s side door. Dean rolled down the rear dark-tinted window. Tess turned her head, her eyes narrowing as the luxury sedan loomed beside her dead car. She reached into her pocket, her fingers closing around a heavy set of keys—her only weapon.
Dominic leaned toward the open window. “Battery’s shot.”
Tess stared at him through the falling sleet, her face pale under the harsh parking lot floodlights. “What are you doing here?”
“Your alternator’s been whining since you pulled onto the street this afternoon,” Dominic lied smoothly. “Get in the car.”
“I’m waiting for a tow.”
“No tow truck is coming to this alley at midnight in a sleet storm for a twelve-year-old Honda,” Dominic said flatly. “Get in. Your kid is at number forty-eight with a teenage sitter who’s currently charging you fifteen dollars an hour extra because it’s past eleven.”
Tess stiffened, her jaw tightening as she calculated the math in her head. He had hit the exact nerve he intended to hit. She looked down at her dead dashboard, then back at Dominic’s unreadable face.
“If you touch me,” she said, her voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register, “I will drive this key into your neck.”
“I’m a businessman, Teresa,” Dominic replied, opening the heavy car door from the inside. “I don't waste time getting my clothes bloody over twelve-fifty an hour. Get in. It’s freezing.”
She hesitated for two more seconds, then grabbed her worn canvas tote bag, stepped out of her ruined car, and slid into the heated leather interior of the Lincoln. The door clicked shut, instantly sealing out the roar of the wind and the freezing sleet. She sat as far to the right as possible, her body tense, her eyes darting between Dean’s back and Dominic’s tailored coat.
Dominic pulled an insulated travel mug from the center console holder and handed it to her. “Coffee. Black.”
She didn't take it immediately. She looked at his bruised knuckles, then at the mug, before slowly wrapping her raw, red hands around the warm stainless steel. “How do you know my name?”
“I know you owe Gregori Vlasov twenty-one hundred dollars,” Dominic said smoothly, leaning back into the leather cushions as the car rolled out of the industrial alley. “I know his collector sat on your porch yesterday while your boy was outside. And I know you think you can work fifty hours a week at a laundry facility to fix a broken life.”
Tess took a small sip of the hot coffee, her eyes never leaving his face. “Are you working with Vlasov?”
Dominic let out a harsh, dry sound that was entirely devoid of humor. “Vlasov operates illegal gaming machines in the back of laundromats and shakes down single mothers for late fees. I run the South Side. Don't insult me again.”
“Then why are you trailing me?”
“Because my father has a tremor that makes him spill his soup, and my mother is eighty years old,” Dominic said, his eyes turning cold as iron. “And the agency I paid to protect them left them in the cold. You filled the gap. In my world, debts are settled. You helped my blood. Now I balance the account.”
“I don't need your blood money, Mr. Bruno,” Tess said, setting the coffee mug firmly into the door pocket. “I pay my own way.”
“You can’t pay your way out of a broken alternator and a Russian loan shark with an iron bar, Teresa,” Dominic replied as the Lincoln pulled up to the curb in front of number 48.
May you like
Standing on the narrow, dilapidated porch of number 48, half-hidden in the dark shadow of the doorway, was a tall, hulking figure wearing a heavy leather bomber jacket. The dim streetlamp caught the glint of a thick silver chain and the unnatural, motionless stare of a glass right eye.
Igor had arrived for his weekly late fee.
