Chapter 2 - The Shadows of Pilsen
The staff quarters beneath the east wing were former storage vaults built in the 1920s, converted into small, windowless rooms with low ceilings and heavy oak doors that locked only from the outside.
Dominic stopped outside room 04.
A thin line of yellow light leaked from beneath the door frame. From inside came no sound of a television, no music, no soft murmur of a telephone conversation. Only the rhythmic, metallic clink of a small spoon striking the side of a glass jar.
Dominic turned the brass knob and pushed the door open without knocking.
Nora Castillo sat on the edge of a narrow iron cot. She had removed her gray uniform jacket, wearing only a plain white cotton shirt that stretched tightly over her broad shoulders and full arms. Her dark hair had been released from its practical knot, falling in thick, heavy waves over her neck and back.
She did not scream. She did not startle.
She simply froze, the small silver spoon held halfway between a jar of instant coffee and a plastic mug of hot water. Her dark eyes, large, almond-shaped, and deep as coal, moved slowly from his face down to his hands, then settled on the white bandages visible beneath his open silk robe.
"You shouldn't be walking, Mr. Reyes," she said. Her voice was lower than he expected, rich and gravelly, with the distinct, heavy cadence of the south side streets—unhurried, flat, and entirely unawed by him. "The doctor said your shoulder tore twice during the surgery. If you open those stitches, you'll bleed through the floorboards before Callahan gets down here."
Dominic stepped into the small room, closing the door behind him with his heel. The room was small, smelling of damp wool, instant coffee, and her lemon soap.
He raised his right hand and dropped the lead washer onto her small laminate desk.
It struck the faux-wood surface with a dull, heavy thud.
Nora’s eyes did not drop to the washer. They remained fixed on his face, steady and unblinking.
"Where did you get it?" Dominic asked. His voice was low, carrying the quiet, lethal weight that usually made grown men in his organization look at the floor.
Nora carefully set the spoon down on the paper napkin beside her cot. She did not pull her shirt together. She did not attempt to adjust her posture to look smaller or less imposing. She sat with her knees apart, her large, work-roughened hands resting calmly on her thighs.
"My father left it in his tool lockbox," she said. "Along with four notebooks full of rail car numbers, dates, and names."
"Mateo Castillo," Dominic said.
"He worked the 41st Street yards for twenty-two years," she replied softly. "He lost three fingers on his left hand to your father’s switching engine back in '09. They paid him four hundred dollars and a box of frozen turkeys to keep him from signing with the union lawyers."
Dominic took a slow, painful breath, leaning his weight against the narrow iron doorframe. "Your father didn't die in an accident on Route 41, Nora."
"I know," she said. Her face did not twist with grief. The anger in her eyes was old, settled, and crystallized into something cold and useful. "He died because he found out that the six crates marked 'Machinery Parts' didn't contain lathe components. They contained sixty cases of Russian automatic rifles and three million dollars in cash that belonged to Marco Salerno’s father."
Dominic’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Marco Salerno didn't own those crates. My father did."
"Your father stole them from Salerno," Nora corrected gently, as if explaining a simple bookkeeping error to a child. "And my father was the one who signed the manifests. When Salerno’s people realized the crates were gone, they didn't go to your father. They went to my house in Pilsen. I was nineteen years old, Mr. Reyes. I watched three men break my father’s knees with a tire iron in our kitchen while my sister hid under the sink."
Silence fell over the small room, thick and suffocating as wet canvas.
"If you came here for blood," Dominic said softly, "you're twelve years late. My father has been in the ground at Mount Carmel since 2018."
"I didn't come for your father," Nora said. She stood up slowly.
She was not a small woman. Standing five foot six, with wide hips, full breasts, and the heavy, powerful frame of someone who had spent her life carrying laundry baskets, moving furniture, and scrubbing floors, she occupied the small room completely. She didn't move with the delicate, cautious grace of the women Dominic usually saw in his circles; she moved with the heavy, unyielding permanence of an oak tree.
She stepped toward him until she was standing less than two feet away. He could see the faint faint scar across her left chin—an old mark, likely from a broken dish or a fall—and the dark circles under her eyes that no amount of sleep would ever erase.
"I didn't come for your father," she repeated, her eyes locked onto his slate-gray gaze. "I came because the man who killed my father twelve years ago isn't dead."
Dominic’s pulse gave a single, violent throb against his bandages. "Hector gave the order."
"Hector gave the order to move the crates," Nora said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "He didn't give the order to kill Mateo Castillo. He wanted my father alive so he could keep signing the fake manifests. The man who leaked the location of those rail cars to Marco Salerno—the man who told Salerno that my father was going to the cops—was a twenty-two-year-old boy who wanted to clear his own gambling debts."
She reached out. For a second, Dominic thought she was going to strike him, and his muscles tensed to absorb the blow.
May you like
Instead, her large, calloused fingers brushed gently against the silk of his robe, right over his left shoulder, inches from his wound. Her touch was remarkably light for a hand so broad and powerful.
"It was your cousin Marco," she whispered. "And eleven nights ago, he tried to do to you what he did to my father."
