Chapter 7 - The Contract of Salt
By five in the afternoon, the rain had returned to Chicago, coming down in long, grey sheets that washed the dirt off the stone gargoyles on the roof of the Dearborn Street mansion.
Laurel sat in the small sitting room off the master bedroom on the third floor. She had been given a soft grey sweater made of cashmere that smelled of nothing at all, and a pair of dark trousers that were three inches too long for her.
Leo was sleeping on the large dark-oak bed in the corner, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket that had the Moretti crest embroidered in black silk on the hem.
Damian sat across from her at a small writing table. A single sheet of paper lay between them, written in the fine, dark ink of his fountain pen.
"Read it," Damian said.
"I don't want to read your legal garbage," she said, her voice flat and dull.
"It’s not legal garbage," Damian said. "It’s a agreement between two people who don't trust each other."
She looked down at the paper. His handwriting was precise, sharp, with long downstrokes that looked like small daggers.
1. Laurel Hart and Leo Vane will reside at the Dearborn property or the Lake Forest estate for a minimum of twenty-four months. 2. Laurel Hart will receive an allowance of twelve thousand dollars per month, administered through a private account with no oversight from the Moretti estate. 3. Damian Moretti will have full paternal recognition, but no right to remove the child from the primary care of the mother without her written consent. 4. Neither party will enter into any relationship with the North Side or Cicero factions.
"And if I sign this?" she asked.
"Then you’re safe," Damian said. "And the boy gets a doctor who doesn't work out of a basement in Cicero."
"And what do you get?"
Damian looked at her—at the red welt near her eye, the sharp line of her chin, the way her fingers clutched the edge of the cashmere sweater as if she were still standing in the cold stockroom at The Monarch.
"I get an heir," he said simple. "And I get to stop looking over my shoulder every time I hear a door open in Detroit."
"You never cared about Detroit," she said softly.
"I cared enough to keep you alive," he said. "If I had stayed three more days in that basement on Cass Avenue, Marco’s people would have burned the building down with you inside it. Do you think I liked leaving six grand on a table like I was paying off a whore?"
She flinched as if he’d slapped her.
"I hated it," Damian said, his voice dropping into that dark, low rumble that seemed to fill the room like lead. "I hated every mile of the drive back to Chicago. But I had a father who was dying with sixty million dollars in debt and twelve men who wanted to cut my throat in my own kitchen. I didn't have room for a girl who made tea in a chipped mug."
"I hated that mug," she whispered, her eyes filling again.
"I know," Damian said. "It had a blue flower on the side."
She looked at him quickly.
He didn't move. He sat there in his four-thousand-dollar suit, his grey scar showing beneath his cuff, his dark eyes fixed on her face with an intensity that made her ribs ache even worse than the blow from Brandi’s heel.
"You remember that?" she asked.
"I remember everything, Laurel," Damian said. "I remember the smell of your hair when the heat went out in December. I remember the way you cried when the cat died behind the garage. I remember every lie I told you so you wouldn't ask why I had three different driver's licenses in my glove compartment."
He reached out, picked up the fountain pen, and held it out to her.
"Sign the paper, Laurel," he said. "Hate me all you want. Call me a monster to the boy when he’s old enough to understand the word. But sign it so I can kill the people who want to hurt you."
May you like
She looked at the pen—the heavy sterling silver tool that had probably signed orders to burn down warehouses and buy off judges across three counties.
Slowly, her thin fingers reached out and took it from his hand.
