Chapter 3 - Shadows on Wall Street
When the first golden rays of dawn cut through the Chicago skyline, Emma moved.
She gasped, her eyes snapping open in sudden, violent panic. She sat up so fast she nearly tangled herself in the cashmere duvet, her hand flying to her mouth as her gaze swept around the massive, oak-paneled bedroom.
When her eyes landed on me, sitting quietly in my wheelchair in the corner of the room, every drop of color drained from her face.
"Oh God," she whispered, her voice hoarse from sleep. She scrambled off the bed, her sneakers hitting the floor as she smoothed down her crumpled uniform with shaking hands. "Mr. Vance... I... I'm so sorry. I sat down for a second while wiping the baseboards. I didn't mean to—"
"You've been asleep for five hours," I said, my voice flat, unreadable.
Emma swallowed hard. She looked at the heavy blanket she had been sleeping under, then looked at me. Confusion flickered in her eyes, mixed with genuine terror.
"Please don't fire me," she rasped, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. "I need this job. I have to pay the facility by Friday or they... they're going to move my mother to a state ward. I'll clean the entire east wing again. I won't take a break. Just... please."
I looked at her trembling frame. She wasn't begging out of pride or manipulation; she was begging out of pure, instinctual survival.
"Get out," I said quietly.
Emma froze, her lower lip quivering slightly. She bit it back, nodded once, and turned toward the door.
"Emma," I called out before her hand touched the brass handle.
She stopped, looking back over her shoulder, waiting for the executioner's final blow.
"The kitchen staff puts out fresh breakfast at six," I said, looking out the window toward Lake Michigan. "Eat something before you leave the house. You look like a ghost."
She stared at me for three long seconds, unable to process what she had just heard. Then, with a soft, barely audible "Thank you," she slipped out into the hallway.
Ten minutes later, the door to my study opened, and Luke walked in.
Luke was six-foot-four, built like a brick wall, with a scar running from his ear down to his collarbone—a gift from a rival cartel in Detroit five years ago. He was the only man in Chicago who knew where all my money was buried, and the only one brave enough to walk into my room without knocking.
"She fell asleep in your room," Luke said, dropping a manila folder onto my desk.
"You're watching my security cameras now?" I asked, my voice dangerously soft.
"I'm watching everything in this house, Danny," Luke replied, leaning against the desk. "A week ago, you would have had her thrown out into the rain. Today, you covered her up with a ten-thousand-dollar blanket and sat in the dark for four hours like a bodyguard."
"Do you have a point, Luke?"
Luke tapped the manila folder with his thick index finger. "Her name is Emma Carter. I had my guys run a deep dive on her background this morning after I saw the hallway footage."
I looked down at the folder, but I didn't open it. "What did you find?"
"Her mother, Martha, has early-onset Alzheimer's," Luke said, his voice dropping its sharp edge. "She's in a private care home in Evanston. It costs six grand a month. Emma's working nineteen hours a day—the diner on 4th Street, night cleaning here, and taking double shifts on weekends."
I felt a subtle twist in my chest. "Is she clean?"
"Clean as a whistle," Luke said. "No criminal record, no ties to the Vance Cartel, no connection to the sniper who took your legs. But she's in deep, Danny. Two months ago, she took a fifteen-thousand-dollar loan from a shark on the West Side to cover her mother's emergency brain surgery."
My eyes narrowed. "Which shark?"
"Sal Viti," Luke spat the name like bad tobacco. "Small-time scum. Runs illegal gambling dens and loan rackets out of a meatpacking plant near the river. He's charging her forty percent interest a week. They're harassing her at the diner. If she misses Friday's payment, Viti's guys threatened to visit her mother's facility."
The room went dead silent.
The phantom pain in my legs vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp rage that I hadn't felt in two long years.
Sal Viti was a insect. A street leech who fed on desperate people because he didn't have the guts to stand up to real men. Before I was shot, guys like Viti bowed until their foreheads hit the carpet whenever my SUV rolled down Wall Street.
"Luke," I said softly.
"Yeah, Boss?"
"Call Sal Viti."
May you like
Luke grinned, a dark, vicious expression that showed his gold tooth. "What do you want me to tell him?"
"Tell him he has an hour to bring Emma Carter's loan contract to my house," I said, leaning back in my wheelchair, my heavy hands resting on my armrests. "And tell him if he's one minute late, I'll have his entire operation burned to the ground before lunch."
