Chapter 3 - A Measure of Mercy
The penthouse on Lake Shore Drive did not look like the home of a killer.
It occupied the entire forty-second floor, a cavern of dark walnut paneling, floor-to-ceiling glass, and minimalist cream wool carpets that muffled every footstep. Outside, the gray expanse of Lake Michigan churned with whitecaps under a November gale, the Chicago skyline fading into freezing sleet.
In the master guest suite, Dr. Alan Vance dropped a pair of heavy surgical shears into a stainless-steel tray with a sharp clatter.
"She’s lucky the bone didn't pierce the arterial wall," Dr. Vance said, pulling off his latex gloves. He was a man in his late fifties with silver hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and hands as steady as a vice. He had patched up bullet wounds in warehouse basements for Dominic's father, and he didn't ask questions he didn't need the answers to. "The fibula is snapped clean across the distal third. A blunt-force impact, delivered with significant weight. She walked on it for nearly an hour. The micro-fractures alone should have put her into shock."
Clara lay back on the crisp Egyptian cotton sheets, her skin gray, her teeth clamped hard on a folded linen washcloth.
Her leg was now encased in a heavy plaster splint, wrapped from below the knee down to the ball of her foot with clean white fiberglass tape. An IV drip was tapped into the back of her left hand, the saline bag hanging from an antique floor lamp beside the bed.
"I didn't give her the hydromorphone," Dr. Vance added, turning to Dominic, who stood near the foot of the bed with his arms crossed over his chest. "She refused it. Bit my hand when I tried to swab the injection site."
Dominic looked down at Clara.
Her eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with dark, bruised circles of pure exhaustion. But they were wide open, staring at the ceiling with an unnatural, terrifying vigilance.
"Why?" Dominic asked her quietly.
Clara spit the washcloth out onto the mattress. Her voice was raw, scraped down to the vocal cords.
"If I go to sleep," she whispered, "I can't hear the phone."
Dr. Vance sighed, packing his surgical kit into a black leather bag. "She needs eight weeks of absolute non-weight bearing, Dominic. If she puts ten pounds of pressure on that heel in the next forty-eight hours, the bone will shift again and I'll have to put titanium pins through the marrow. Keep her in that bed."
"Thank you, Alan," Dominic said. "Leo will walk you down."
When the bedroom door clicked shut, the massive room was left in absolute silence, save for the dull whistle of the wind against the triple-paned glass.
Dominic walked over to the side of the bed. He pulled an upholstered armchair closer, sat down, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
He had changed out of his bloodstained tuxedo into a dark charcoal cashmere sweater and black trousers, but the shoulder holster remained strapped across his chest, the heavy grip of the SIG Sauer resting under his left arm.
He reached onto the nightstand, picked up a porcelain bowl of warm chicken broth the kitchen staff had prepared, and set it on the rolling tray table.
"Drink it," Dominic said.
Clara didn't look at the bowl. She turned her head toward him, her knuckles gripping the satin duvet.
"Where is Tommy?" she demanded.
"En route to Mexico," Dominic replied without hesitation. "Or at least, he thinks he is. He boarded a private charter out of an airstrip near Gary, Indiana, forty minutes ago. He paid five thousand dollars cash to a pilot who owes me three hundred grand."
Clara’s breath hitched. "You knew where he was?"
"I've known where Tommy was since noon," Dominic said, his voice completely level. "The pilot isn't flying south, Clara. He’s circling Lake Michigan at ten thousand feet until my air-traffic contact clears him to land at a private strip in Rockford. Tommy is flying in a circle inside a cage."
Clara stared at him, the depth of his power finally registering in her exhausted mind. To her, Tommy had been an inescapable, terrifying monster—a man who could smash her leg with a tire iron and disappear into the night with total impunity.
To Dominic Castiglione, Tommy was just a fly caught in a web that covered three states.
"Then why aren't you getting Lily?" she cried, her voice cracking. "If you have Tommy, why haven't you kicked the door down?!"
Dominic didn't flinch at her anger.
"Because Tommy didn't take her to Mexico," Dominic said. "He left her with Sal Briggs. Do you know who Sal works for when he isn't running errands for your brother?"
Clara shook her head, tears spilling into her hair. "Sal... Sal is just a junkie. He lives in the garden apartment on 47th Street. He fixes cars in the alley."
"Sal Briggs did two years in Statesville for armed robbery," Dominic told her. "When he got out, he went on the payroll of the North End Russian crew. Viktor Kozlov."
The name meant nothing to her, but the cold weight in Dominic's voice made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
"Kozlov has wanted my logistics depot on the canal for three years," Dominic continued. "Tommy didn't just steal my payroll. Tommy stole my security access codes, my dispatch schedules, and the alarm bypass keys. He sold half of them to Kozlov to pay for his plane ticket, and he left Briggs behind with the girl as an insurance policy."
Dominic leaned in closer, his dark eyes boring into hers.
"If I send twenty men with shotguns to kick down the door on 47th Street, Sal Briggs will panic. If he panics, he won't negotiate. He'll put a bullet through the lock, or through the girl, and slip out through the sewer mains before my perimeter is set."
Clara pulled the duvet up to her chin, her entire body shaking with a helpless, suffocating dread. "Then what are you going to do? What does he want?"
"He wants the wire transfer," Dominic said. "And he wants confirmation that the Castiglione family is in disarray."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the burner phone Frankie had recovered from the church courier. He laid it flat on the tray table between them.
"I had my tech unit trace the tower bounce from that photo," Dominic said. "It didn't come from 47th Street."
Clara blinked. "What? But Sal lives on—"
"Sal took her south," Dominic interrupted. "To the old stockyards off Damen Avenue. The abandoned meatpacking plant behind the rail depot. That’s Kozlov territory. Sal is sitting in a concrete bunker surrounded by three miles of empty industrial wasteland."
Clara looked at the phone, then looked at the cast on her leg.
"You can't just leave her there," she whispered, her voice breaking into a dry, jagged sob. "She’s five years old, Dominic. She has a stuffed rabbit named Barnaby. She won't eat unless someone cuts the crust off her toast. She's terrified of the dark. When Tommy locked her in that closet... she was crying for me."
She reached out with her trembling, IV-tapped hand and grabbed Dominic’s wrist.
Her skin was burning with a mild fever, her small fingers clutching the dark wool of his sweater with a strength born of pure, unadulterated desperation.
"You took me as payment," Clara wept, looking directly into the face of Chicago’s most ruthless mob boss. "You own me. That was the deal, wasn't it? My brother traded my life for his debt. If you want me to scrub your floors, I'll scrub them. If you want me to clean your motels, I'll clean them until my fingers bleed. If you want me to play the happy mob wife at your dinners, I'll put on whatever dress you buy and I'll smile until my jaw aches."
She leaned forward, her forehead pressing against his sleeve.
"Just bring her back," she begged, her tears soaking through the cashmere to his skin. "Please. Don't let her die in the dark because my brother is a monster."
Dominic looked down at her bowed head.
In his world, people begged for many things. They begged for more time to pay. They begged for their fingers not to be broken. They begged for their lives while kneeling on plastic tarps in abandoned basements.
No one had ever begged him to use them. No one had ever offered their entire soul as collateral for someone else's child.
Dominic slowly reached out with his free hand.
His fingers, calloused from the recoil of heavy-caliber weapons and cold iron, settled gently against the crown of her head. He didn't pull away.
"Clara," he said softly.
She looked up, her face devastated by grief.
"The deal Tommy made is dead," Dominic told her, his voice absolute and unyielding. "You are not payment. You are not collateral. And no one under my roof gets bartered away."
He stood up from the chair, pulling his wrist gently from her grasp.
"Rest your leg," Dominic commanded, turning toward the bedroom door. "I'm going to get your niece."
"Wait!" Clara’s voice stopped him with his hand on the brass doorknob.
He glanced over his shoulder.
Clara was trying to slide her good leg off the opposite side of the mattress, her face pale with renewed determination. "You don't know the building. You don't know how Sal thinks. He won't open that door for anyone he doesn't recognize."
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Dominic frowned. "You can't walk, Clara."
"I don't need to walk," she said, her green eyes blazing through her tears. "I just need you to get me to the door."
