Chapter 28 - The Ledger on the Caledonia
The crack of Dominic’s knee giving way was swallowed by his choked roar of agony.
His grip on my collar tore free as he stumbled backward into the swirling, waist-deep water. His revolver discharged into the concrete ceiling, raining shards of pulverized stone down into the basin.
Before the old man could recover his aim, Gabriel surged forward through the torrent like an apex predator. He didn't fire his weapon. He slammed his entire weight into his father, driving Dominic hard against the rusted iron casing of the pump housing. The chrome revolver flew from Dominic’s grip, splashing into the murky water and disappearing beneath the foam.
"Gabriel!" Julian yelled from the ladder. "The emergency bilge valves are failing! The whole basin is going to drown in sixty seconds!"
Gabriel held his father pinned against the iron, his forearm pressed hard against the older man’s throat. Dominic sputtered, coughing up harbor water, his silver hair wild, his hands clawing weakly at his son’s wrists.
"End it," Dominic wheezed, blood flecking his cracked lips. "Do it, Gabriel. Be my son."
Gabriel stared down into the face of the man who had haunted his entire adult life. For three agonizing seconds, the silence between them was louder than the rushing harbor water. I saw the darkness in Gabriel’s eyes—the generational curse of the Rossi bloodline demanding execution.
Then Gabriel’s grip relaxed.
He pulled back, stepping away into the rising current.
"No," Gabriel said, his voice flat and steady. "If you die here, you stay a ghost. You stay a martyr in Chicago. You’re going back in handcuffs, Dominic. You’re going to sit in a federal courtroom in Cook County and watch the Rossi name get stripped off every building in the city."
He turned to his Dutch enforcers, who had secured the upper platform. "Secure him. Use the zip-ties on his wrists and drag him up the maintenance hoist."
"Gabriel, wait!" Julian shouted, splashing down from the ladder toward us, holding a thick, water-resistant leather ledger he had pulled from his oilskin coat. "The bearer bonds aren't the only thing on the *Caledonia*. Look at this."
Julian thrust the ledger into my hands. The cover was stamped with the emblem of the Chicago Port Authority, dated twenty years ago—the year my father took over Vance & Sons.
I wiped the dirty water from the plastic cover and flipped open the brittle pages.
Inside were hundreds of handwritten shipping logs, but they weren't in Julian’s handwriting. They were in my father’s handwriting. Detailed entries documenting illicit shipments of untaxed industrial machinery, foreign steel, and unregistered munitions passing through Slip Nine throughout the 1990s.
Every single entry had been co-signed by Arthur Vance and Dominic Rossi.
My hands began to tremble, the freezing cold of the water completely forgotten.
"Julian..." My voice broke. "What is this?"
Julian wouldn't meet my eyes. He looked down at the swirling water, shame carving deep hollows into his pale face.
"Dad wasn't an innocent victim, Maya," Julian whispered, his voice cracking with unbearable guilt. "Dad didn't get cornered by the Rossis. He was Dominic’s partner from the very beginning. They built the northern smuggling route together thirty years ago."
I felt the ground drop out from beneath my feet.
My father. The honest, broken old longshoreman who had spent the last year weeping in the church pews, swearing on my mother’s grave that the mob had stolen his company. The man Gabriel and I had bled to protect.
"Dominic didn't blackmail our family," Julian continued, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. "Dad sold twenty percent of Slip Nine to Dominic in 1994 to pay off his gambling debts in Atlantic City. When the federal investigation started ten years ago, Dad agreed to let Dominic fake his death and use Vance & Sons as the offshore front. That’s why I took the job as dispatcher. I wasn't working for Dominic to protect Dad. I was trying to cover Dad’s tracks so the Feds wouldn't send him to prison!"
I turned slowly to look at Gabriel.
He was standing five feet away, the water lapping at his waist, staring at the open ledger in my hands. His face had gone completely rigid, the muscle in his jaw jumping as he processed the handwriting.
"Your father," Gabriel murmured, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. "Arthur Vance wasn't the man being squeezed. He was the architect."
Dominic, still slumped against the iron pump behind us, let out a raspy, victorious cackle from the water.
May you like
"You thought you were saving an honest family, Gabriel?" Dominic spat, coughing up foam. "Arthur Vance took more dirty money through Slip Nine than my entire crew combined! You gave fifty-one percent of our family’s empire to the daughter of the man who sold me out to the Feds!"
***
