Chapter 2 - The Shadow of the Moretti EmpireThe 15-year-old sedan rattled violently as I crossed the Cook County line, the broken passenger-side window hissing as cold wind forced its way through the plastic sheet barrier. My hands shook slightly on the steering wheel now that the adrenaline was draining away, leaving a hollow, terrifying vacuum in its place.
I had just assaulted the fiancée of Dominic Moretti—the most powerful, feared logistics investor and underworld kingpin in the Midwest.
By the time I parked outside our third-floor Cicero apartment building, my phone was vibrating continuously in my pocket. Ten missed calls from the restaurant dispatch. Three text messages from unknown numbers containing a single, ominous geographic coordinate.
I didn't answer. I climbed the three flights of concrete stairs, slipping my key into the lock with cold fingers.
The apartment smelled faintly of antiseptic, boiled soup, and old paper. Through the open door of the small bedroom, I saw Mom resting quietly, the steady, rhythmic hiss of her oxygen concentrator filling the quiet room. Her face looked paper-white beneath the floral quilt, her breathing shallow but stable.
I walked quietly to the refrigerator. Taped right next to the electric bill was the envelope marked INSURANCE, containing the hundred-dollar bill Dominic Moretti had handed me weeks ago during my very first delivery to his estate.
I stared at it, a bitter laugh escaping my lips.
Dominic Moretti hadn't looked down on me that night. He had looked at me with cold, analytical curiosity. Rumor said he controlled the docks, the freight terminals, and half the municipal judges in Illinois. Men like that didn't hand out hundred-dollar tips out of charity; they invested in observations.
My phone buzzed again. This time, it wasn't a text. It was a call from an unlisted number.
I swiped the screen and pressed it to my ear.
“Avery Carter,” a deep, gravelly voice resonated through the speaker. It wasn't angry. It was terrifyingly calm. “You made quite an impression on my engagement floor tonight. My guests are still trying to figure out how a delivery driver put Vanessa through a three-thousand-dollar marble tile.”
My spine stiffened. “Mr. Moretti.”
“You disrupted a very delicate social ecosystem,” Dominic continued smoothly. “Vanessa is currently locked in her dressing room hyperventilating over a bruised elbow, and my security chief wants to know why I shouldn't have you picked up off the streets before midnight.”
“You can try,” I replied, my voice dropping into a steady, unyielding register. “Or you can ask your security chief what your fiancée was saying to a working girl whose mother is fighting for her life. Tell him to pull the security audio from the north corner of the ballroom. She threatened my mother’s medical care.”
A heavy, suffocating silence stretched across the line.
For ten seconds, neither of us breathed. Then, a low, humorless chuckle vibrated through the earpiece.
“You have iron in your spine, Miss Carter. Most people fold the moment my name is spoken aloud in a room,” Dominic said, his tone shifting from casual inquiry to something razor-sharp. “Be at the North Side shipping terminal on dock forty at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. We are going to have a conversation about what happens next.”
“I have a delivery route and my mother’s dialysis schedule,” I snapped back.
“Bring your mother’s insurance files with you,” Dominic replied quietly. “You might find my terms... surprisingly cooperative.”
May you like
The line went dead.
I stood in the dim kitchen of our Cicero apartment, staring at the phone screen. He knew about the insurance. He knew about Mom. The trap was set, but walking into it was the only option I had left.
