10. Lorenzo
LORENZO
There are people you choose to think about.
And then there are people who invade your mind without permission.
The first kind are easy.
Business partners.
Enemies.
Problems waiting to be solved.
You think about them when necessary, then move on.
The second kind are dangerous.
Because no matter how many reports you read, meetings you attend, or fires you put out, your thoughts keep finding their way back to the same person.
Again and again.
My father understood that long before I did.
I was thirteen when he called me into his office overlooking the lake.
He sat behind his desk reading through ledgers while I stood beside him pretending to listen.
Without looking up, he said, “The most expensive thing a man can own isn’t his house, his business, or his money.”
I frowned.
“What is it, then?”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“Anything that can distract him from all three.”
At the time, I thought he was talking about business.
Years later, I realised he was talking about people.
Because money can be recovered.
Power can be rebuilt.
Empires can be replaced.
But the wrong person?
The wrong person can walk into your life, settle beneath your skin, and make you forget the value of everything else.
The grandfather clock in my office strikes two.
The lake beyond the windows is black.
Rain drifts across the glass in thin lines.
Most of the estate sleeps at this hour.
Mine never truly does.
There are always goons changing shifts.
Vehicles moving between sectors.
Deliveries being logged.
Reports being filed.
The estate breathes even when everyone inside it is asleep.
I set a folder aside and lean back in my chair.
Three monitors glow on the far side of the desk.
Normally, they stay dark.
I employ men to watch cameras so I don’t have to.
That is the point of employing them.
Yet somehow tonight they remain on.
One screen shows the eastern perimeter.
Another shows the access roads leading toward the processing sector.
The third?—
Room 207.
And despite having an entire city demanding my attention, my thoughts return to Victoria.
I stare at it for several seconds before reaching for the whiskey beside me.
The room is sizable.
Victoria sits on the edge of the mattress.
Still dressed.
The security badge remains untouched on the desk beside her.
She isn’t reading.
Isn’t sleeping.
Isn’t crying.
Most people in her situation would be doing one of those things.
Instead, she is staring through the window, thinking.
The camera has no audio.
I cannot hear her.
But I know that look.
People planning their next move always wear it.
The same expression sits on politicians before elections.
The difference is that most of those people understand the board they are standing on.
Victoria doesn’t.
I take a drink.
The whiskey burns.
She rises from the bed.
Walks toward the window.
Pauses.
Then presses one hand lightly against the glass.
Watching the estate.
Trying to understand where she has landed.
A knock sounds against my office door.
“Enter.”
Hugo DeLuca walks in carrying a thick folder beneath one arm.
He looks exhausted.
Which usually means he has found something useful.
“Please tell me there would be no escalation more than what it is presently.”
I gesture toward the chair.
“Sit down.”
His eyes drift briefly toward the monitors.
His mouth twitches.
“I see you’ve developed an interest in estate security.”
I ignore that.
He sits.
Sets the folder down.
“You know,” he says, loosening his tie, “for the record, I appreciate the clean-up after Warehouse Four.”
I glance at him.
“The South Terminal?”
“Yes.”
He exhales.
“The city administration spent all morning trying to determine what happened. Fortunately, there wasn’t much left for them to examine.”
“Interessante.”
Hugo rubs one hand across his face.
“For once, I’d like a week where my job doesn’t involve explaining mysterious events along the waterfront.”
“You chose the profession.”
“No.”
He points at me.
“You chose the profession. I merely bill hourly.”
I almost smirk.
Then I slide the whiskey bottle toward him.
He accepts immediately.
That alone tells me how his day has gone.
After a drink, he opens the folder.
“Now tell me why I was dragged away from dinner.”
“Victoria’s mother.”
His expression changes.
The humour disappears.
“I suspected that.”
“I want everything.”
“You’re going to need to be more specific.”
I stand and move toward the windows.
Rain continues falling over the lake.
Behind me, paper shifts.
Hugo waits.
“Start with her finances.”
“Done.”
“Business interests.”
“Already working on it.”
“Personal relationships.”
That gets his attention.
He lowers the glass.
“Personal relationships?”
“Who she’s fucking.”
“Victoria?”
“No.”
Understanding settles immediately.
“Her mother.”
I nod.
“Current partner. Previous partner. Anyone with access to her.”
Hugo studies me.
“Interesting.”
I turn back toward him.
“Why?”
“Because that wasn’t the direction I expected.”
“Humour me.”
He opens the folder again.
“There are inconsistencies.”
“What kind?”
“The kind I dislike.”
I wait.
Hugo flips through several pages.
“Victoria’s father died.”
“Go on.”
“Certain holdings move unusually fast afterwards.”
My eyes narrow.
“How fast?”
“Months.”
That is fast.
Far too fast.
Families don’t reorganise major structures within months of losing a patriarch unless preparations were in place beforehand.
Or unless somebody already knew it was coming.
“You think he was murdered.”
“I think I don’t like coincidences.”
The lawyer closes the folder.
“Which is why I’m digging.”
I move back behind the desk.
“Dig deeper.”
“Into the death?”
“Into everything.”
He sighs.
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“The wedding,” I say, setting my glass down. “Victoria disappeared from a cathedral full of witnesses.”
“Yes.”
“She made it from the ceremony to nowhere.”
Hugo nods.
I study him for a moment. “If Isabella Vitale was there, if she saw her daughter bolt into the rain, then Francesco knew exactly who she was and where to find her.”
The lawyer’s expression sharpens.
“Think about it. If Victoria is truly that valuable, her mother becomes the obvious pressure point the second Victoria vanishes.”
Hugo doesn’t interrupt.
“Francesco could have grabbed Isabella that day. Taken her to the South Terminal. Used her to draw Victoria out.” I spread a hand. “But nothing happened. No threats. No message in the streets of Chicago. Isabella is left completely alone.”
“That is interesting,” Hugo says.
“It’s telling.”
The room goes quiet.
I watch the thought work its way through his head.
“If Francesco was desperate to get Victoria back,” I say, “using her mother would have been the fastest move on the board.”
Hugo’s gaze drops to the desk.
For several seconds, he says nothing.
Then a quiet sound of recognition escapes him.
“Huh.”
Like a fact that had been sitting in plain sight, finally arranging itself into a pattern.
He slowly nods.
“I’ll find out why.”
“Tonight.”
“You don’t ask for much.”
“That’s why I pay well.”
His eyes roll.
“Christ.”
I sit.
“So?”
“So I’ll get back to you as soon as I have answers.”
The lawyer rises, collects the folder, finishes the last of his drink, and then heads toward the door.
Halfway there, he stops.
“One question.”
“What.”
His gaze drifts briefly toward the monitor showing Room 207.
Then back to me.
“Why her? What do you plan to do to her?”
I don’t answer.
Because I don’t have one.
Hugo studies my face for another second.
Apparently deciding not to push his luck.
Then he leaves.
The office door closes.
Silence returns for a while, then the door opens almost immediately as if Mateo has been waiting outside.
He steps in.
The heavy wool of Mateo’s coat carries in the cold rain from outside. He stops at the edge of the Persian rug, hands tucked in his pockets, eyes already on the wall monitors behind my desk.
On camera four, Victoria is wiping down the stainless-steel surface of the logging desk with a white cloth.
Mateo doesn’t say a word about the screen and doesn’t have to.
I rarely touch the security feeds—monitoring the bays is a task left.
My silence fills the room with an explanation I refuse to give him, but I can already read the tight line of his jaw.
He thinks I’m losing my focus. He thinks a woman from the Vitale house is drawing my eyes away from the clearing houses.
“The word is out,” Matteo says, pulling his hands from his pockets and crossing his arms. “We dropped Sal Carboni’s watch outside the Ricardo social club in Cicero.
Francesco knows his accountants didn’t make it to the morning clearing.
The Volkovs are already pulling their logistics coordinators out of the North Side rail yards. They don’t like operating in a fog.”
“Good,” I say, keeping my eyes on the glass of the monitor. “That was the point.”
“But Francesco isn’t backing down,” Matteo adds, taking a step closer to the desk.
“He’s doubled his guards. He knows someone has the signatures, even if he doesn’t know it’s us yet.
He’s offering a hundred thousand to anyone who can bring him the name of the driver who cleared the river docks on Sunday. ”
“Let him spend his money.”
Matteo follows my gaze back to camera four. Victoria has set the cloth down. She stands there for a moment, her fingers resting against the metal edge of the table, her head slightly bowed as if counting the seconds before she can leave.
“The inventory reports from the Crucible are already logged,” Mateo says, his voice dropping into that low, cautious register he uses when he’s testing the ice. “Tommaso checked the batch weights twenty minutes ago. Everything balances, Lorenzo.”
“I’m verifying the security of the lower sector.”
“Boss, you don’t verify lower sectors,” Mateo says.
There is no disrespect in his tone, only the bluntness of a man who has carried a firearm for my family since we were twenty.
“The girl has been in that bay since noon. She hasn’t spoken to the floor runners.
If she’s a risk, she belongs in the basement rooms under the guard quarters.
Not with a staff badge and a room in the east wing. ”
“She’s a guest.”
“She’s a Vitale,” Mateo counters, his eyes narrowing as he watches her on the screen. “Usually, when one from that side of town gets this complicated, we return it for a boundary agreement, or we put it in the ground. You’re keeping her right where everyone can see her.”
I stand up, the movement enough to make him pause. I don’t use the desk lamp to shadow the room; the cold, grey light from the monitors is enough.
“She isn’t a trade piece, Mateo. And she isn’t going in the ground.”
“Then what is she doing in the logistics bay?”
“Learning the manifests,” I say, walking toward the window that faces the dark north gardens. “She starts her proper training tomorrow morning with the shipping clerks. Until she knows how the river cargo is logged, she’s useless to me.”
Mateo doesn’t move from the rug. “You don’t train hostages, Don Lorenzo.”
“She isn’t a hostage.” I look out at the perimeter fence, where the small red lights blink against the wet pine trees.
I don’t explain the rest to him.
I don’t tell him that Victoria’s signature is the only thing that validates the three maritime leases Francesco needs to survive the winter. I don’t tell him that if the Volkovs get their hands on her, they will take the entire northern shoreline without firing a single shot.
Mateo sees a liability with a big last name, a girl who could bring a federal inquiry down on our heads before the month is out.
But he didn’t see the way she sat on the passenger seat, shivering through her soaked wedding dress, refusing to shed a single tear while I finished off the Volkov man at the river shore.
Every other woman brought through these gates tries to use her tears or her face to buy an hour of mercy. Victoria used her mind. She stood on her bare feet, her voice steady despite the chill in her bones, and accepted the offer to work here just to show me why she was worth more alive.
Even for her to abscond from the wedding the way she did, and against one like Francesco, shows a lot of guts.
There is a cold, clean wire in her spine that half those on my payroll lack.
“The shift is over,” I say, turning back from the glass. “Go check the northern gate guards. I want the patrols on a two-hour rotation until dawn.”
Mateo looks at me for a short beat, searching my face for something he can’t find.
He recognises the flat tone of my voice. He knows the boundary line when he hits it.
“Understood, Don Lorenzo,” he says.
He turns and closes the door behind him, the latch clicking into place.
I walk back to the desk.
On camera four, Victoria is out of view. The shower area lies beyond a frosted glass partition. There are no cameras inside that section. Only the faint shadow of her silhouette passes behind the glass before disappearing completely.
I lean back in my chair.
I have access to any kind of woman. Models, actresses, and socialites have thrown themselves into my orbit for my money, my influence, or the name I carry. Yet no woman has ever occupied my thoughts the way Victoria does.
It makes no sense.
Her fiancé is tearing Chicago apart to get to her.
Her life has been stripped down to survival inside my compound.
Still, every time I look at the screens, I look for her first.
I reach for the control panel and switch off the lower-sector feeds. One by one, the monitors go dark until only the reflection of the city remains in the window.
I take my coat from the chair and step into the corridor, but Victoria follows me anyway.
Not in sight.
In thought.
And somehow, that’s worse.