Chapter 2 - Midnight at the Door
Twenty-four hours later, the world outside Sienna’s third-floor apartment in Pilsen was dark, damp, and quiet. She was sitting at her tiny laminate kitchen table, staring at a final eviction notice from her landlord, when three heavy, deliberate knocks shook her front door.
Not a neighbor's frantic pounding. Not the landlord's usual aggressive rattle. These were systematic, heavy, professional knocks.
Her hand instantly dropped to the paring knife resting beside her cold mug of tea. She crept toward the door, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. Through the warped fish-eye peephole, she saw them: two men built like solid brick walls, wearing identical dark overcoats. And standing between them, leaning heavily on a carved ebony cane with a silver wolf’s head handle, was an older man with piercing gray eyes and a tailored suit that whispered ancient, untouchable power.
Sienna’s stomach plummeted straight through the floorboards.
Vittorio Moretti.
The butcher of the South Side. The man who owned the docks, the sanitation unions, half the city council, and most of the federal judges in the district. Dawson’s grandfather and the true patriarch of the family.
He's here to finish what Dawson started, a cold voice whispered in her head. I embarrassed his bloodline, and now I'm going to end up in a landfill outside Cicero.
She turned the chain lock with trembling fingers and pulled the door open, ready to fight for every inch of her miserable life.
"Miss Sienna Brooks?" Vittorio asked. His voice sounded like grinding stones, smooth yet utterly merciless.
"If you're here to kill me, do it in the hallway," Sienna said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts to keep it steady. "My neighbor’s dog barks at cops, but nobody else."
Vittorio didn't pull a gun. Instead, a faint, humorless twitch touched the corner of his weathered mouth. He stepped past her into the cramped, peeling-wallpaper apartment without an invitation, his guards flanking him silently as the door clicked shut behind them.
"Kill you?" Vittorio murmured, leaning on his cane as he surveyed the tiny kitchen, the single mattress visible through the bedroom door, and the red eviction notice sitting on the table. "My grandson spent twenty-four hours staring at a wall after you poured ice water over his head, Miss Brooks. He didn't drink. He didn't break anything. He just... thought."
Sienna swallowed hard, keeping her hand close to the knife. "He was destroying property. I did my job."
"Your job is waiting tables at a third-rate lounge for minimum wage," Vittorio replied, turning his sharp gaze back to her. "My job is managing assets. And right now, my grandson is a volatile, self-destructive mess who needs someone in his orbit who isn't terrified of his shadow."
He reached into his overcoat and pulled out a thick manila envelope, tossing it onto the table right on top of her eviction notice.
"What is this?" Sienna asked, her eyes narrowing.
"A contract," Vittorio said simply. "Three hundred thousand dollars a year. Full medical coverage for your brother’s asthma treatments at Northwestern Memorial. And one simple requirement: you join Dawson’s inner administrative staff at Moretti Holdings as his personal executive coordinator. Keep him out of the bars, keep him out of the headlines, and make sure he doesn't burn our entire enterprise to the ground before I pass the crown."
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Sienna stared at the envelope, then up at the old mob boss. Her mind raced wildly. It was insane. It was dangerous. It was a deal with the literal devil.
It was also the only way she would ever survive.
