Chapter 6 - The Geneva Ledger
The private terminal at O'Hare was quiet at three in the morning.
Outside, the snow had finally begun—large, wet flakes that stuck to the wings of the Gulfstream IV parked on the tarmac like salt on a pretzel.
Inside the cabin, the air was warm and smelled of new leather and toasted almonds.
Julian lay on a long leather sofa in the rear of the plane, his leg encased in a white fiberglass cast that ran from his ankle to his hip. He was sleeping, his face pale under the reading lights, a thin red line of healing skin visible above his left eyebrow.
Ana sat by the small oval window, a cup of lukewarm milk in her lap.
Nico sat across from her, a mountain of paper spread out across the mahogany table between them: the blue ledger, four passports, three sets of power-of-attorney documents, and a small leather box that contained her mother's silver rosary—the one thing her father had taken from the house in Naples that hadn't been converted into cash.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Zurich first," Nico said without looking up from his pen. "Then Lugano. The bank needs three days to verify the DNA match from the lancet. Once the funds are released to the trust, six million goes to the dockworkers' pension fund in Bari. The rest goes into an annuity for Julian."
"And me?" she asked.
Nico set the pen down. He leaned back in his leather chair, looking at her in the dim light of the cabin.
He looked tired. The dark circles under his eyes were deep as bruises, and his collar was unbuttoned, exposing the thick, grey-ing hair at the base of his throat.
"You're coming with me," he said.
"I have a life in Chicago," she said, though the words felt thin even to her own ears.
"You had a life in Chicago until six hours ago," Nico said. "Now you have a cousin who is being buried in an unmarked plot in Cook County, a stepfather's family in Bari who thinks you have eleven million dollars in your coat pocket, and a federal prosecutor in Illinois who has had your photograph on his desk since ninety-nine."
He reached across the table and took her hand.
His palm was rough, covered in calluses from years of holding things that didn't want to be held, but his grip was gentle—so gentle it made her throat tighten with a sudden, sharp ache she hadn't felt in fifteen years.
"My father took your father's life," Nico said softly. "Your father took my family's peace. It's an old story, Elena. It's the only story people like us ever know how to tell."
He looked down at her hand, his thumb tracing the tiny blue vein that ran across her wrist.
"I'm not going to keep you in a cellar," he said. "And I'm not going to make you sing the song if you don't want to. But this child... this child is a Casaro. And I have spent thirty years watching this family destroy everything it touched because there was no one left who remembered how to hold something without breaking it."
"I don't even know you," she whispered.
May you like
Nico looked up at her, a tiny, sad shadow of a smile touching the corner of his lips.
"I know," he said. "That's the only reason we have a chance."
