Chapter 4 - A Voice on the RecordingThe cabinet moved only three inches before stopping.
Tessa shoved it with both hands.
Nothing happened.
Marco used his shoulder.
The old metal cabinet groaned and slid across the floor, revealing a second door behind it.
Gas thickened the air.
Vincent’s lungs tightened.
“Open it,” Marco ordered.
Lauren inserted the key.
The lock turned.
The door swung inward.
Fresh air rushed through the opening.
Marco dragged Vincent through first, then pulled Tessa and Lauren after them. They collapsed into a narrow service corridor that smelled of dust and cold concrete.
Behind them, the archive filled with pale vapor.
Marco slammed the hidden door.
“Keep moving.”
Vincent tried to push himself forward, but his arms had weakened.
Tessa crouched beside him.
“Let me help.”
“I can move.”
“You can barely breathe.”
“I said I can move.”
She grabbed his shoulders.
“You don’t get to die because your pride is louder than your lungs.”
Vincent stared at her.
Even in the dim light, Tessa’s face was furious.
Then she pulled him forward.
They reached the old carriage house twenty minutes later.
Marco forced open the rusted rear door, and cold Chicago air struck Vincent’s face. Rain had begun falling again. The carriage house stood behind a line of overgrown hedges, hidden from the mansion by stone walls and dead trees.
Two black SUVs waited outside.
Marco’s men surrounded them.
“Who are they?” Lauren asked.
“People I trust,” Marco replied.
Vincent looked toward the mansion.
Smoke drifted from an upstairs window.
His bedroom.
The men had set it on fire.
“Why burn the room?” Tessa asked.
“To destroy evidence,” Vincent said.
Marco wrapped a coat around Vincent’s shoulders.
“Or to make it look like an accident.”
They loaded Vincent into the rear of the SUV. Tessa climbed in beside him. Lauren sat across from them, still clutching the silver key.
Marco took the front passenger seat.
“Where are we going?” Vincent asked.
“An apartment in River North.”
“No.”
Marco turned.
“No?”
“Take us to the warehouse on Canal.”
“That place isn’t secure.”
“It has a medical room and a generator.”
“It also has cameras.”
“Good.”
Marco studied him.
Vincent understood the hesitation.
His empire had fractured while he lay in bed. Men who had served him for years now answered to Dominic. The mansion had been infiltrated. A private archive had been poisoned. Someone had known exactly where Vincent spent every night.
If he wanted answers, he needed to stop behaving like a patient.
“Can you sit upright?” Tessa asked.
“I’m sitting.”
“You’re leaning.”
“I’m injured.”
“You’re stubborn.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
She adjusted the support around his waist.
The SUV pulled away from the mansion.
For ten minutes, no one spoke.
Then Vincent looked at Lauren.
“Tell me everything about the meeting at the Drake.”
Lauren looked down at her hands.
“Dominic called me three weeks before the shooting. He said he had discovered that someone inside your organization was planning to kill you.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Why did you meet him?”
“Because he told me he had proof.”
“And did he?”
“He showed me photographs.”
“Of what?”
“You meeting with a woman.”
Vincent frowned.
“What woman?”
“Evelyn Shaw.”
Vincent looked toward the rain-streaked window.
“When did I meet her?”
“Two days before the shooting. Outside the restaurant.”
“That never happened.”
“It did.”
“I would remember.”
“Maybe you were drugged.”
Marco turned around.
“What?”
Lauren looked at him.
“Dominic said Vincent had been given something at dinner. He claimed someone was using him to move money without his knowledge.”
Vincent remembered the night.
The restaurant. The rain. His father’s old ring pressing against his finger. Evelyn waiting beneath the awning.
She had said only one sentence.
Your father left you a choice.
Then Vincent had walked toward his car.
He remembered a sharp headache.
The street tilting.
A hand on his shoulder.
Then the bullet.
“What was the medication?” he asked.
Lauren shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you tell the doctors?”
“Because Dominic told me the doctors were compromised.”
Vincent’s hands curled into fists.
Six months of rehabilitation. Six months of wondering whether his legs might recover. Six months of believing the shooting had been a random attack.
Someone had drugged him before the bullet.
Someone had wanted him conscious enough to know he was being betrayed.
They reached the warehouse just after midnight.
The building appeared abandoned from the outside, but the moment the SUV entered the loading bay, floodlights turned on. Armed men stepped from behind stacked crates.
Vincent was transferred into a reinforced chair and pushed into the medical room.
Tessa examined his breathing.
“You inhaled something,” she said. “The gas irritated your lungs.”
“How bad?”
“Not dangerous if you rest.”
“I don’t rest.”
“You do tonight.”
“I’m the one paying you.”
“And I’m the one keeping you alive.”
Marco placed the basin on a steel table.
The listening device sat inside, wrapped in towels.
“We need to know what it recorded,” he said.
“Can you access it?” Vincent asked.
Marco nodded.
“Give me an hour.”
“Take thirty minutes.”
“You’re not in charge of time.”
Vincent looked at him.
Marco sighed.
“Thirty-five.”
While Marco worked, Tessa cleaned the scratches on Vincent’s hands. Lauren stood near the wall, watching them.
“You trust her,” Lauren said.
Vincent did not look up.
“Yes.”
“You’ve known her four months.”
“And you’ve known me seven years.”
Lauren flinched.
Tessa paused.
Vincent saw it.
“Don’t make her part of this,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“You’re jealous of a nurse?”
“I’m jealous of anyone you look at like that.”
Vincent’s eyes hardened.
“Like what?”
“Like they tell you the truth.”
Before he could answer, Marco returned with a small laptop.
“I recovered the audio.”
He connected the device.
Static filled the room.
Then voices emerged.
Lauren’s voice first.
“I won’t do this.”
A man answered.
Dominic.
“You already did.”
“I signed a receipt. Nothing more.”
“You signed the transfer. That makes you part of it.”
“Where is the money going?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“I want proof Vincent will be safe.”
Dominic laughed.
“Vincent’s safety is no longer your decision.”
The audio crackled.
A third voice entered.
The voice was deeper and older.
Vincent leaned forward.
“Turn it up.”
Marco increased the volume.
The third man spoke.
“The boy must be taken alive.”
Vincent froze.
Boy.
His father’s files had always referred to him as the boy, even after he became a man.
Lauren’s voice trembled.
“Who is that?”
Dominic answered.
“The Steward.”
The older voice returned.
“His legs are irrelevant. Once he signs the harbor transfer, the empire belongs to us.”
Vincent looked at the harbor papers Lauren had mentioned that morning.
The recording continued.
Lauren said, “And if he refuses?”
A pause.
“Then we remind him what happened to Ethan.”
Vincent’s entire body went cold.
Ethan.
The recording ended.
No one spoke.
Tessa looked at Vincent.
“Who was Ethan?”
“My half-brother.”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did they threaten him?”
Vincent did not answer.
Marco rewound the recording and isolated the third voice.
The words became distorted but clear enough.
“You should have listened to your father, Vincent.”
Vincent’s pulse stopped.
He knew that voice.
He had heard it every Sunday at family dinners.
He had heard it beside his father’s grave.
He had heard it six months earlier while lying unconscious in the hospital.
Silas Corvino.
His uncle had been the Steward.
Lauren covered her mouth.
Marco reached for his weapon.
Vincent stared at the laptop.
His uncle had ordered the shooting.
His uncle had used Lauren.
His uncle had waited until Vincent was paralyzed before demanding the harbor.
But one detail did not fit.
“If Silas ordered the shooting,” Vincent said, “why did the note say Lauren didn’t hire the shooter?”
Marco looked at him.
“Because someone else paid him.”
“Who?”
A new sound came through the laptop.
A faint scrape.
Then the voice of a woman.
“Because Silas wasn’t alone.”
Vincent turned toward the door.
Evelyn Shaw stood there, soaked from the rain, holding a gun with both hands.
May you like
Her eyes were fixed on him.
“I was the one who paid the shooter,” she said.
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