Chapter 2 - The Name on the Card
The silence that stretched over the encrypted line from the South Side penthouse down to that freezing apartment was a heavy, suffocating thing.
Roman Velez did not move. His glass of amber scotch sat untouched on the polished walnut table, the ice cubes slowly melting into the liquor, reflecting the glittering, jagged skyline of Chicago through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The three men sitting across from him—hardened capos who had spent their entire adult lives watching Roman eliminate competitors without a single flicker of emotion—suddenly felt the temperature in the room plummet.
"Mister?" the tiny voice whispered again. It was a girl's voice, small and desperate, competing against the muffled sound of frantic sobbing in the background. "Please... my mommy said if everything broke, I should call you. She has your card in the cedar box."
Roman’s hand tightened around the titanium frame of his phone with enough force to make the casing groan.
The cedar box.
There was only one woman in the continental United States who possessed a cedar box containing his personal, unlisted number. A woman who had vanished from his life exactly seven years ago, leaving behind nothing but an empty apartment, a lingering scent of vanilla, and a hollow ache in his chest that he had spent nearly a decade drowning in blood and business.
"Camila," Roman said, his voice dropping into a guttural rasp that made his driver, Jonah, instantly reach for the hidden holster beneath his left armpit. "Is your mother’s name Camila Rios?"
A sharp, collective gasp came from the other end of the line. "Yes! Yes, mister! Her name is Camila! She’s on the kitchen floor and there's blood on her face and she won't wake up! The ambulance lady said ten minutes, but Valeria is crying so hard and the room is getting cold—"
"Luz," the second voice—the sobbing one—broke through the receiver, closer to the microphone now. "Luz, ask him... ask him if he's the man from the picture. Ask him if he's our daddy."
The words hit Roman Velez like a localized artillery strike.
The untouchable king of the Chicago underground, a man who had survived three separate assassination attempts and smiled through a federal racketeering indictment, felt his knees go weak. He didn't look at his men. He didn't look at the millions of dollars in cash ledgers scattered across the table.
Our daddy.
Twins. She had said Valeria and Luz. Seven years. The timeline slammed into his brain with the devastating precision of a high-caliber round. Camila hadn't left him because she stopped loving him; she had left him because she was carrying his blood, and she had chosen the harsh, freezing reality of poverty over the gilded, lethal cage of his empire.
"Jonah," Roman roared, standing up so fast his heavy leather chair flipped backward, crashing against the marble floor. "Get the cars. Now."
Jonah didn't ask questions. He didn't check the manifest. He simply pointed at the two capos, signaling them to secure the penthouse, before sprinting toward the private elevator bay.
"Luz, listen to me," Roman said, his voice shaking with a raw, bleeding panic that none of his subordinates had ever heard before. He walked toward the balcony doors, his eyes tracking the dark, rain-slicked ribbon of the Kennedy Expressway below. "I need your address right now, baby. Tell me exactly where you are."
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"Twenty-four forty-two South Wolcott," the girl sobbed, her voice thinning out as the sound of distant, wailing sirens finally began to echo through the receiver. "Apartment 3B. The door is unlocked, mister. Please hurry."
"I'm coming," Roman whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped animal. "Don't hang up the phone. Keep talking to me, Luz. I'm already in the elevator."
