Chapter 2 - The Man Outside the DoorLorenzo raised his gun toward the apartment entrance.
Chloe pushed the barrel down.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Trying to keep us alive.”
“The man outside knows you.”
“That’s the problem.”
Another knock.
“Wren.”
The voice was patient.
Familiar.
Impossible.
Chloe crossed the apartment and stopped beside the door rather than in front of it.
“Who is he?” Lorenzo asked.
She did not answer.
Outside, the man spoke again.
“I know you remember Calumet.”
Chloe closed her eyes.
Calumet.
Rain.
Warehouse lights.
A concrete floor painted black with blood.
A burning vehicle near the river.
Her partner screaming through a radio that had already gone dead.
She forced the memory away.
“What do you want?” she called.
The man laughed.
“That’s better.”
Lorenzo watched her face.
He had seen frightened employees.
He had seen men waiting for sentencing.
He had seen enemies discover too late that someone they trusted had sold them.
Chloe’s fear was different.
It was old.
“Open the door,” the man said.
“No.”
“I didn’t come to kill you.”
“Then you should have sent flowers.”
“You always hated flowers.”
Lorenzo leaned close.
“Who is he?”
Chloe finally whispered, “Adrian Vale.”
“Should that name mean something?”
“It means he was buried three years ago.”
Silence.
Even Lorenzo seemed briefly uncertain.
Outside, Adrian spoke.
“Victor has eyes on every hospital, every Capello property and every known associate. If you stay here, his men will burn the building to flush you out.”
“That doesn’t sound like Victor.”
Lorenzo’s voice was cold.
Adrian heard him.
“Lorenzo Capello.”
A pause.
“Still alive. Chloe always did hate following instructions.”
Lorenzo’s face turned toward the door.
“You know me.”
“I know everything Victor knows about you.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No. It’s a warning.”
Chloe glanced toward the bedroom.
There was another way out.
A fire escape accessible through the rear window.
She moved.
Adrian heard the floorboard.
“Don’t.”
She stopped.
“The alley is covered.”
Lorenzo mouthed, Can we trust him?
Chloe almost laughed.
Trust.
Tonight that word had become obscene.
“No,” she mouthed back.
Adrian continued.
“You have ninety seconds before Victor’s crew reaches the fourth floor.”
Lorenzo looked at the peephole.
“Then why are you standing out there?”
“Because they think I’m one of them.”
That changed everything.
Chloe unlocked the top deadbolt.
Lorenzo caught her wrist.
“You said we cannot trust him.”
“We can’t.”
“Yet you’re opening the door.”
“We’re out of options.”
“Your life philosophy is exhausting.”
She opened it.
Adrian Vale stood in the hallway wearing a soaked black coat.
He was taller than Chloe remembered.
Or perhaps memory had compressed him.
His dark hair was shorter. A pale scar crossed his forehead. His left hand wore a black leather glove.
But he was alive.
Chloe stared at him.
Three years ago she had watched a warehouse roof collapse with Adrian inside.
Three years ago she had identified dental records provided by Meridian Risk.
Three years ago she had attended a memorial where no body was shown.
“You’re dead,” she whispered.
“So were you.”
Her fist struck his mouth.
Adrian staggered backward.
Lorenzo raised one eyebrow.
Chloe hit him again.
This time Adrian caught her wrist.
“Can we schedule the emotional reunion for later?”
“You left me there.”
“I dragged you out.”
“You disappeared.”
“Because Victor owned the people who were supposed to protect us.”
Footsteps sounded below.
Adrian released her and pulled a security keycard from his coat.
“Roof access. Now.”
They ran.
The stairwell smelled of wet concrete and dust.
Lorenzo’s wound slowed him.
Chloe stayed beside him.
Adrian climbed ahead.
“You always did collect complicated men,” he called down.
Chloe glared upward.
“I served him whiskey.”
“Sure.”
Lorenzo looked at her.
“Should I be offended?”
“Yes.”
They reached the roof.
Wind hit them hard.
Adrian crossed to the neighboring building where a maintenance bridge connected the two rooftops.
Behind them, the stairwell door opened.
Voices.
Chloe pushed Lorenzo forward.
Two shots cracked into the rooftop equipment.
Lorenzo fired once behind them.
Adrian opened the neighboring access door.
They descended through an empty office building and exited onto another street where an old delivery van waited.
Only after the doors closed did Chloe turn on Adrian.
“Talk.”
Adrian started the engine.
“Victor began moving against Lorenzo eleven months ago.”
“How?” Lorenzo demanded.
“Money first. Loyalty second. Documentation third.”
“What documentation?”
Adrian drove.
“A revised Capello Holdings succession agreement.”
Lorenzo’s expression changed.
“There is no revised agreement.”
“There is now.”
Chloe leaned forward.
“What happens if Lorenzo dies?”
Adrian looked into the rearview mirror.
“His controlling shares enter the Capello Family Protection Trust.”
Lorenzo stared at him.
“My sister becomes trustee.”
“Not according to the copy Victor filed with Hawthorne & Price.”
The law firm.
Lorenzo’s family attorneys for twenty-six years.
“Who becomes trustee?” Chloe asked, although she already knew.
Adrian answered.
“Victor.”
The van fell silent.
Lorenzo looked out at Chicago sliding past the rain-streaked windows.
“How many people?”
Adrian understood the question.
“How many are his?”
“Yes.”
“Enough that you shouldn’t go home.”
“My mother?”
“Under surveillance.”
“Isabella?”
“Also watched.”
Lorenzo’s hand tightened around his weapon.
“If he touches them—”
“He doesn’t need to.”
Adrian reached beneath his seat and tossed a folder backward.
Chloe caught it.
Inside were photocopies.
Bank transfers.
Trust documents.
Corporate minutes.
A notarized amendment bearing Lorenzo’s signature.
He stared at it.
“That is not mine.”
“I know.”
Chloe examined the date.
Fourteen months earlier.
Two months before Lorenzo had begun receiving unexplained requests to consolidate family assets.
A pattern.
Adrian turned onto Lower Wacker.
“Victor doesn’t want to destroy the Capello family.”
“He tried to execute me.”
“He wants to own it.”
Lorenzo’s laugh contained no humor.
“He already has money.”
“This isn’t about money.”
“What is it about?”
Adrian looked at him through the mirror.
“Your father.”
Lorenzo became completely still.
Carlo Capello had been dead seven years.
Cancer.
A private funeral.
A mausoleum in Queen of Heaven Cemetery.
“My father is dead.”
“Yes.”
“Then explain.”
Adrian hesitated.
Chloe noticed.
“What?”
“There’s something you need to see.”
They drove another twenty minutes and entered an underground parking garage beneath an abandoned insurance building.
Adrian stopped beside a concrete pillar.
He opened the back of the van.
Inside sat a locked steel case.
Chloe recognized it immediately.
Her knees nearly failed.
The case had once belonged to her.
Meridian Risk.
Field Unit Seven.
Paint burned away on one side.
The same case she had carried into the Calumet warehouse three years earlier.
The case that had supposedly been destroyed.
“What is that doing here?” she whispered.
Adrian entered a six-digit code.
The lid opened.
Inside rested an encrypted hard drive, three passports and a manila envelope.
Across the envelope, someone had written two words in black ink.
CARLO CAPELLO.
Lorenzo reached for it.
Adrian stopped him.
“Before you open that, understand something.”
Lorenzo’s eyes hardened.
“Move your hand.”
“Your father did not die believing Victor was his friend.”
The silence that followed was brutal.
Lorenzo removed Adrian’s hand.
He opened the envelope.
The first page was a letter.
Not typed.
Handwritten.
Carlo’s handwriting.
Lorenzo recognized it immediately.
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His father’s first line made his face lose all color.
Enzo, if Victor ever gives you a gift, assume it is a weapon.
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