Chapter 64 - The Matriarch’s Summons
The room seemed to spin. The smell of oil and sawdust turned sickeningly sour in my throat.
"You had a choice," I whispered.
"What choice, Maya?" my father pleaded, stepping forward, his hands trembling as he reached toward me, then letting them fall helplessly to his sides. "Tell me what choice I had! If I went to the police, Hector would have walked through that front door and shot your mother and you in your beds before a squad car even left the station! Giancarlo owned the South Chicago precinct captain!"
"So you gave them the key to the shop," I said, backing away from him until my spine struck the cold service door. "You opened the door for Hector and the Greek."
"I thought they were going to beat him," he wept, openly sobbing now, his shoulders shaking with the weight of eighteen months of silent torment. "I thought they were going to put him in the hospital, teach him a lesson, scare him enough so he would pack his bags and leave Chicago for good! I ran to Slip Nine. By the time I reached the drydock floor... it was already over. They had him in the drum. The torch was already lit. Giancarlo was standing on the upper catwalk, smoking a cigar, looking down at me. He smiled and said: *'Good work, Richard. Your debt is paid. Now go home to your daughter.'*"
The door behind me swung open suddenly, cold air rushing in.
I spun around, my heart leaping into my throat.
Gabriel stood in the doorway, his silhouette stark against the drizzle. Behind him, parked at the mouth of the driveway, was a long black town car with heavily tinted windows. The rear door was open.
"Agent Miller's warrant has been signed by the federal magistrate," Gabriel said quietly, looking from me to my father. "His cars are rolling down the block right now."
My father looked at Gabriel, then down at the floor. He didn't seem surprised. He didn't look afraid. A strange, exhausted relief washed over his features, as if he had been waiting for this exact knock on the door every second of every day for a year and a half.
"Let Miller take me," my father said quietly, unbuttoning his canvas shop apron and folding it neatly onto the workbench. "I’ll sign whatever confession they put in front of me. I won't contest a single charge."
"Miller isn't the one who needs to see you first," Gabriel replied.
He stepped aside and pointed toward the open town car on the street. Through the rear window, bathed in the soft interior light of the sedan, sat Rosa Giammona.
She was dressed in her customary black wool coat, her hands folded primly in her lap over a silver-headed walking cane. Her dark, penetrating eyes were fixed directly on the open garage door, looking straight through the drizzle at my father.
"Mother wants you in the car, Richard," Gabriel said.
My father stiffened. The name seemed to pierce him far deeper than the threat of federal prison or Agent Miller’s handcuffs.
"Rosa knows?" my father asked.
"Rosa has known since nineteen ninety-four," Gabriel said coldly. "When my father was alive, she handled the port payments. She knew every check Giancarlo Vance wrote to the municipal inspectors. But she didn't know about David until tonight."
I looked at Gabriel, then at my father. "Why does she want him? The case is over. Giancarlo is dead. The port is shut down."
"It’s not over," Gabriel said, stepping aside to let us pass. "Giancarlo’s will was filed in Cook County probate court two hours ago by his surviving corporate attorneys. The entire Vance estate—the warehouses, the leases, the offshore dummy accounts—is being transferred into an offshore blind trust in Zurich. And the man listed as the sole authorized signatory on that trust isn't Hector, and it isn't the Greek."
May you like
Gabriel looked directly at my father.
"It’s you, Richard."
