Chapter 16 #2
“The driver was beaten,” Pietro said. “His daughter was recovered from a locked apartment. The tracker was where he said it was.”
“I know.” I pressed my thumb against the edge of the desk. “I know it is real. I am not saying he lied.”
Sal came to stand beside me.
“But?” he asked.
“But Gianni does not give people a clean answer unless he needs them to believe it.” I looked at the little black square. “He wants us looking at Kiryl.”
“Of course he does,” Sal said. “He threatened him.”
“I know, I know.”
The answer came too fast. Too weak.
Because the driver’s daughter was real. Her fear was real. The bruises on his ribs were real. The tracker was real.
I could not call it a trick just because I was frightened. Sal touched my shoulder.
“We protect Kiryl,” he said. “And we protect you. We can do both.”
I looked up at him.
“We will do both,” he said.
It should have settled me.
Instead, I watched Pietro leave to prepare the convoys, and I thought of Gianni’s empty smile.
A man like him never placed one piece on the board without looking at what would move around it.
*
I arrived at eleven-fifteen.
A legal suite on the thirty-second floor of a downtown office tower. Glass walls. Private elevators. A view of the river that made Chicago look clean from far enough away.
Nothing about it felt clean.
Sal walked beside me through the lobby in a dark suit. Angela stayed on my other side with a file case. Two guards followed at a distance.
At the examination-room door, Sal stopped. His hand found mine.
“You do not have to prove anything to me in there,” he said. “My family and I know that you are extremely capable, honey.”
“I know.”
“You do not have to answer anything outside the scope of your capacity.”
“I know.”
“And if you want out—”
“I tell you.”
His eyes held mine.
“You tell me,” he repeated.
I nodded.
He kissed my knuckles once, formal enough for a hallway full of cameras. Tender enough that I felt it in my chest.
Then he stepped back.
The examiner was an older woman in a grey suit. Her office had no personal photos. No books except legal reference volumes. A recorder sat on the table between us.
Angela took a seat against the wall.
“You understand this is voluntary?” the examiner asked.
“Yes.”
“And that you may pause or end the interview?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask why have you agreed to this interview?”
“Because Gianni Scordato has claimed I am incapable of making independent decisions. I disagree.”
The woman clicked her pen.
“Do you believe you are currently under pressure from Salvatore Scordato? Coercion?”
“Everyone in my life is under pressure. That is not the same as coercion.”
“Do you live in a residence controlled by him?”
“I currently reside in a secured Caruso property due to credible threats from my father and Gianni Scordato.”
“Does Mr. Scordato control your movement?”
“No.”
“Your money?”
“No.”
“Your communications?”
“No.”
“Your sexual relationship?”
The question sat in the white room like dirt on a clean plate.
Angela shifted in her chair.
I kept my face still.
“My sexual relationship is consensual.”
“Mr. Scordato is significantly older than you.”
“By several years. Not several centuries.”
The examiner did not smile.
“I understand there is a dominance-based component to the relationship.”
I looked at her.
“Excuse me?”
“I said that I understand there is a dominance-based component to the relationship.”
“You understand that from whom?”
“From materials submitted by opposing counsel.”
How did he know? I felt dirty, scared, exposed.
Gianni had found the one private softness I had offered freely and dragged it into court so strangers could decide whether it made me broken.
“Answer the question, please,” the examiner said.
“I engage in a private consensual dynamic with Salvatore.”
“Does he call himself your Daddy?”
My cheeks heated. Not shame. Rage.
“Sometimes.”
“Does he discipline you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Does he tell you what to eat, when to sleep, where to go?”
“He reminds me to eat and sleep when I neglect myself under stress. I decide whether to accept that care.”
“Can you distinguish personal desire from corporate judgment?”
“Yes.”
“Can you refuse him?”
“Yes.”
“Have you?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“Give an example.”
I thought of the time I’d used my safeword. I didn’t want to share it.
“I decline to answer that question. It’s personal to me.”
The examiner looked at me sharply.
“Have you made decisions about corporate assets at Mr. Scordato’s direction?”
“I have made decisions to protect workers whose wages Gianni froze. I have restricted Gianni’s access to companies in my name. I have chosen independent trustees for an employee relief fund. The decisions were mine.”
“Would you have made them without Mr. Scordato’s influence?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a conscience. And a fucking brain.”
The examiner leaned back.
For one second, I thought I had won something.
Then Sal’s secure phone began screaming outside the door.
Not ringing.
An alarm.
I turned.
The door opened hard. Sal stood there with his phone in one hand. His face had gone white beneath the olive tone of his skin.
“Kiryl’s convoy is under attack,” he said.
The room vanished.
“What?”
“Industrial overpass. Union lorries have blocked both ends. Communications are jammed.”
A burst of broken audio tore from his phone.
Gunfire.
Then Tonio’s voice, loud and ragged.
“Move the vehicle! Move it now—”
A second sound came through.
My brother.
“Lena!”
Everything inside me broke toward the door.
Sal caught my hand.
“Pietro and Tonio have him,” he said.
“I heard him.”
“I know.”
“I have to go.”
“No.” His fingers tightened around mine. “Not into an active ambush.”
Serafina’s voice cut through the phone. “Salvatore. Get to the convoy. We need you.”
His eyes closed once.
I felt the choice in his grip.
Then he spoke into the phone.
“Pietro has command. Tonio is with Kiryl. I stay with Yelena.”
“Sal—”
“I stay.”
He ended the call.
I stared at him.
“You should go,” I said.
“No.”
“Please. Sal, he is my brother.”
“And you are mine to protect.”
That’s when the fire alarm started. A harsh mechanical shriek. Sprinkler lights flashing red. A voice over the building speakers instructed us to evacuate calmly.
Nobody moved calmly.
Smoke curled beneath the far door of the legal suite.
“Electrical fire on the loading level,” one of Sal’s guards said into his earpiece.
Sal’s arm came around me at once.
“Stay against me.”
Angela grabbed her file case. “The stairwell?”
“Protected stairwell,” Sal said. “Now.”
We moved fast through the corridor. Office workers spilled from glass doors, coughing, carrying coats, staring at the smoke as if it might explain itself.
I stayed pressed to Sal’s side. His hand held the back of my neck. Not forcing. Anchoring.
“Keep going,” he said and I stepped out in front, surging forward.
The protected stairwell waited at the end of the hall. We were ten feet away when the fire doors dropped. Steel slammed down between us. The sound shook the floor.
Sal’s hand was ripped from mine.
We were separated.
“No!”
I hit the barrier with both palms.
On the other side, Sal had already turned. His fist drove into the reinforced door once. Twice.
He looked at me, fear in his eyes.
“Yelena!”
“I’m here!”
The guards pulled me back from the door as smoke thickened in the corridor.
Angela stood beside me, pale but upright.
“Emergency access?” I asked.
“One minute,” a guard said. “Maybe two.”
Sal hit the door again.
“Take the service corridor,” he shouted through the steel. “Do not let anyone separate the two of you.”
Then men in firefighter gear came around the corner.
Three of them. Black turnout coats. Breathing masks. Emergency credentials clipped to their chests.
One guard moved toward them.
“Stairwell is sealed,” he said. “We need—”
I saw the nearest firefighter’s mask. The hose ran wrong. Not connected properly. Loose at the side where it should have sealed.
Nobody trained for smoke wore it that way.
“Wait,” I screamed. “He’s not—”
The man drew a pistol from beneath his coat.
The first shot hit our guard in the shoulder. He went down hard. The corridor exploded.
The second guard fired back. Angela grabbed my arm, dragging me toward the service door, but one of the fake firefighters caught her across the side of the head with the butt of his weapon.
She fell.
“Angela!”
I lunged for her. A hand closed around my hair. I drove my elbow backward. It hit ribs. The man grunted. I twisted and shoved my thumb into the gap beneath his goggles.
His scream went high and ugly, and he released me, rubbing at his face.
I grabbed the examiner’s clipboard from the floor. The metal edge cut into my palm as I swung it at the next man’s throat.
He blocked it.
I bit his gloved hand as hard as I could.
Fabric. Rubber. Blood beneath it.
He cursed in Russian.
That gave me half a second.
I kicked his knee sideways. Something gave. He dropped.
The injured guard fired again from the floor. A shot cracked past my ear. Plaster burst from the wall.
I heard Sal desperately scream, “Behind you!”