Everyone Feared the Mafia Boss Who Never Let Anyone Touch Him Until His New Assistant Silently Fixed His Tie

At six-thirty the following morning, the forty-second floor was silent except for the rhythmic hum of the floor buffers down the hall.

Paige unlocked the heavy glass doors, turned off the security system with her five-digit code, and walked straight to her desk.

Arthur was already there.

His office door was cracked three inches. Through the gap, she could see him sitting behind his broad walnut desk, his coat off, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He was staring at a blue-line architectural drawing of the new container terminal at Calumet Harbor.

He didn't look up when her heels clicked across the marble.

"Your coffee is on the side table, Mr. Gallagher," she said, her voice carrying through the door as she set down her bag. "Black, two sugars, from the place on Adams."

"I don't want coffee," his voice came back. It was rougher than usual, as if he hadn't slept at all.

"You need coffee," she said, opening her ledger. "You have the Port Authority committee at nine, the harbor master at eleven, and two men from the Teamsters local waiting in the lobby right now."

Silence from the inner office.

Then the sound of a chair scraping against the floorboards.

Arthur appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a fresh white shirt—crisp, stiffly starched, perfectly buttoned at the neck. But he wasn't wearing a tie. His dark suit coat hung over the back of his desk chair behind him.

He stood in the frame, his hands jammed deep into his trouser pockets.

He stared at her for five long seconds.

Paige didn't look up from her screen. She opened her calendar, sorted her unread emails by priority, and began drafting a response to a zoning inspector who was asking for an "administrative fee" to approve the new crane foundations.

"Bennett," Arthur said.

"Yes, Mr. Gallagher?"

"Who told you you could do that yesterday?"

Paige stopped typing. She looked up, adjusting her glasses slightly.

Arthur was standing six feet away. His expression was completely unreadable—the dark, heavy brow low over his pale eyes, his mouth a thin, hard line carved into stubbled jawline.

"Do what?" she asked.

"You touched me."

"Your tie was knotted wrong," she said calmly. "You were going to walk into a twenty-million-dollar signing looking like you’d been in a street fight. It reflected poorly on the firm."

"I don't give a damn about the firm," Arthur said, taking one step forward. "And I don't give a damn about the tie."

"The Port Authority does," Paige replied. "City inspectors don't give zoning permits to men who look like they’ve just come from a riverbank beating. They give them to men who look like they own the river."

Arthur stopped. His eyes narrowed.

"Leo thought I was going to break your neck," he said softly.

"Leo is very dramatic," Paige said, turning back to her screen. "He also left three coffee cups on the boardroom table last night. If he does it again, I’m going to start charging his expense account for maid service."

Arthur didn't move. He stood four feet from her desk, his hands still in his pockets, staring at the side of her face.

He had expected her to apologize. He had expected her to tremble, or offer some stuttering excuse about wanting to help, or perhaps show a flicker of the manipulative warmth that women usually used when they wanted something from a man with money.

Instead, she was complaining about Leo’s coffee cups.

"You didn't flinch," he said. It wasn't a question.

"I don't have time to flinch, Mr. Gallagher," Paige said, her fingers flying across the keys again. "I have ninety-four invoices to process before ten o'clock, and the shipping manager from Gary is claiming three of his drivers were hijacked by men wearing Gallagher Freight vests. Do you want me to handle that, or do you want to lecture me about dress code protocol?"

Arthur let out a sound that was half-cough, half-grunt. It might have been the beginning of a laugh if he had known how to make one.

He turned toward his office, then paused with his hand on the door frame.

"The men in the vests," Arthur said, his tone shifting instantly back to business. "They weren't Gary drivers."

"I know," Paige said without looking up. "They’re Callahan’s men."

Arthur’s body went completely rigid.

He turned back slowly. "How do you know Callahan?"

"I don't know him," Paige said. "But his sister’s name is on the health insurance roster for the South Chicago yard. She’s been receiving monthly medical stipends from our slush account for six months. The checks are signed by Leo, but the delivery address is a drop box in Hammond."

She pulled a paper from her drawer and laid it on the corner of her desk—eight inches outside her own three-foot line, right within his reach.

"Callahan isn't missing because he was kidnapped, Mr. Gallagher," she said gently. "He’s missing because he’s selling our manifest data to the North Side crew, and he used his sister’s address to collect the deposit."

Arthur stared at the paper. Then he looked at Paige.

For the first time in three months, he didn't look at her like an administrative appliance. He looked at her like a weapon he hadn't realized was sitting on his shelf.