“Mister, put your dog in timeout!” Three-year-old Lucy Bennett marched into the private meeting of the most feared man in Chicago with one hand on her hip and the other gripping what remained of a stuffed rabbit.

The workshop beneath the south garage smelled of damp concrete, cold steel, and battery acid.

A single fluorescent bulb hung from an exposed wire, flickering yellow light over Greg Bennett. He was tied to a steel folding chair in the center of the bay, shivering uncontrollably. The water from his soaked clothes pooled around his worn sneakers.

Vincent sat on an overturned wooden crate ten feet away, rolling a heavy silver Zippo between his knuckles. *Click. Clack. Click. Clack.*

Frank stood near the tool bench, cleaning his fingernails with a small pocketknife.

"Vincent, please, man," Greg chattered, his teeth clicking together so hard his jaw rattled. "You don't know the whole story. Marcus... Marcus said he’d slice my lungs out if I didn't get him something on you. He said you were expanding into the rail yard behind Pier 14. He said Nora could get the blueprints from your desk—"

Vincent didn't stop the rhythm of the lighter. *Click. Clack.*

"You brought my name to Marcus Valenti," Vincent said. The voice was quiet, rhythmic, and deadly. "You told him you had an inside track to this house."

"I didn't mean it like that! I was high, man! I was sick!" Greg began to weep, tears carving clean streaks through the grime on his gaunt cheeks. "I just wanted my kid. Nora stole her from me! She took my daughter and ran off to live with some mobster—"

Vincent was on his feet so fast the crate didn't even shift.

His hand clamped around Greg’s throat like a hydraulic vise, cutting off the sentence mid-syllable. Vincent didn't lift him off the floor, but he bent forward until his nose was an inch from Greg's twitching face.

"Say that word again," Vincent whispered.

Greg's eyes bulged with sheer, animal terror. His heels drummed frantically against the concrete. "N-no... please..."

"Nora Bennett is an honest woman," Vincent stated with freezing clarity. "She works eight hours a day to feed a child you abandoned in an unheated apartment eighteen months ago. She has more honor in her little finger than your entire bloodline has produced in four generations."

He tightened his grip slightly, feeling the frantic, ragged pulse beneath Greg's skin.

"And Lucy," Vincent continued, his voice dropping another octave, "is not your daughter anymore. You forfeited that right the day you walked into Jimmy Vane’s betting parlor and put her future up as collateral for five bundles of heroin."

"What... what are you... going to do to me?" Greg gasped.

The heavy steel door at the top of the concrete stairs clicked open.

Footsteps descended. Slow, deliberate, hesitant.

Vincent didn't release Greg's neck, but his eyes cut sideways toward the stairs.

Nora stood on the bottom landing.

She wore a thick knit cardigan pulled tightly around herself, her hair tied back, her face pale as parchment in the harsh fluorescent glare. She looked at Greg—the man she had once promised to love until death—tied to a chair, weeping, broken, and utterly pathetic.

"Nora," Vincent said, his voice flat. "I told you to stay with the girl."

"Mrs. Gable is reading to her," Nora said, her voice trembling slightly before finding its footing. "I needed to see him."

Vincent studied her face for a heartbeat. Then, with a faint grunt of disgust, he released Greg’s throat and stepped back, wiping his palm with a clean white handkerchief from his suit pocket.

Greg choked, drawing in great, ragged lungfuls of air. "Nora! Nora, baby, tell him! Tell him we can work this out! We can go back to Peoria, we can—"

"Shut up, Greg," Nora said.