Chapter 2 - The First Night at Oak Park
The Vitali estate in Oak Park was not a grand display of glass and light like the modern houses built by the suburban developers. It was a dark, three-story Tudor mansion surrounded by ten-foot stone walls, set behind iron gates that had been forged in Pittsburgh before the Great Depression.
It was a house built for men who expected people to shoot at them through the windows.
The limousine pulled through the gates at midnight. The reception at the downtown hotel had dragged on for four hours—four hours of toasts, forced dances, and fake smiles from men who held handguns under their tuxedo jackets.
Nico stepped out of the car first, turning to offer his hand to Vanessa.
She took it, leaning her weight against him as if exhausted by the weight of her own happiness. "It was perfect, Nico," she murmured, her voice soft against his ear as they walked up the broad stone steps. "Everything your family deserved."
"My family has had very little that was perfect, Vanessa," Nico said, leading her through the heavy front doors.
Inside, the house was silent. Two guards stood near the dark mahogany sideboard in the foyer, their hands folded behind their backs, their faces blank as they bowed their heads to the new mistress of the house.
Arthur Barone emerged from the private office at the end of the hall, carrying a thin manila folder.
"Everything is set upstairs, Don Nico," Arthur said, his voice flat. "The luggage from the hotel has been unpacked."
Vanessa smiled at Arthur—a warm, gracious smile that she had practiced for years in the mirrors of private schools. "Thank you, Arthur. I know how much extra work this has been for you."
"It is my work, Mrs. Vitali," Arthur replied without looking her in the eye.
Nico turned to Vanessa. "Go up. I have twenty minutes of business with Arthur regarding the dock deliveries for tomorrow morning. I’ll be up shortly."
Vanessa hesitated for a fraction of a second—a subtle pause that only a man watching for it would have noticed. "On our wedding night?"
"The river doesn't stop running because I signed a register, Vanessa," Nico said gently, touching her chin with two fingers. "Go on. The master bedroom is at the end of the hall."
She nodded, gathering her heavy silk train in one hand, and walked up the carpeted stairs. Her footfalls were completely silent.
Nico watched her until the shadow at the top landing swallowed her white dress. Then he turned and walked into the office, shutting the double doors behind him.
Arthur was already sitting behind the desk. He slid the thin manila folder across the green blotter.
"The phone was clean," Arthur said. "It’s an encrypted audio recording, seventy-four seconds long. The caller on the other end was using a burner routed through a server in Toronto, but the voice recognition match is ninety-eight percent."
Nico didn't sit. He picked up the folder and opened it. "Curtis Vaughn."
"Curtis Vaughn," Arthur confirmed. "Your father’s old financial secretary. The man who disappeared three days after your father’s car went into the canal in nineteen-ninety-eight."
Nico stared at the printed transcript. His eyes lingered on the lines Ellie Kelly had described upstairs at Asheford Grove.
VAUGHN: What about Local 419? VANESSA: My mother kept what mattered. VAUGHN: If the Kelly issue comes back, it complicates everything. VANESSA: We’ll handle the Kelly problem the same way it was handled the first time.
"The mother," Nico said softly. "Eleanor Sinclair."
"She was Dan Kelly’s secretary at the union hall in nineteen-ninety-six," Arthur explained, pulling a second paper from his pocket. "Before she married Senator Sinclair, she went by Eleanor Vance. She was the one who signed off on the internal transfer sheets that moved three million dollars from the Local 419 pension pool into the construction accounts for the I-90 expansion."
Nico’s eyes narrowed. "The money my father was accused of stealing."
"The money that killed your father," Arthur corrected quietly. "When the federal grand jury convened in ninety-seven, your father had no defense because the ledgers showed his signature on every release form. He spent the last year of his life believing one of his own capos had betrayed him. He died thinking his name was ruined."
Nico closed the folder slowly, the sound like a small rifle shot in the dark room.
"It wasn't a capo," Nico said. "It was the girl in the union office and the senator who bought her."
"And now the daughter is here," Arthur said, gesturing toward the ceiling. "She doesn't know you have the recording. She thinks the waitress was just a minor inconvenience who got thrown out into the cold. What do you want to do with the Kelly girl?"
Nico walked over to the tall leaded glass window that overlooked the rear garden. The rain had started again, dark drops streaming down the glass like salt water.
"She’s at her mother’s apartment on Thirty-Third," Nico said. "Send two men to watch the street. Not to touch her—just to make sure nobody from the Sinclair side tries to clean up their loose ends before the week is out."
"And Vanessa?"
May you like
Nico turned from the window. His hazel eyes were entirely devoid of light.
"Let her search," he said. "The keys to the wall safe in this office are in the top drawer of my nightstand. Make sure she finds them by Thursday."
