Chapter 2 - the eviction notice
The silence in the master bedroom was thick enough to suffocate.
Carmine stepped forward, his heavy leather shoes crunching over the shards of broken porcelain. He glanced at Fay on the floor, then down at the paper resting against Dominic's wheel. Luca stayed by the threshold, his hand still resting against his jacket, his eyes darting between Dominic and the window.
"Step away from him," Carmine ordered Fay, his gravelly voice tight.
Fay didn't scurry. She slowly released her hold on Dominic’s leg, pushed herself up from the floor, and brushed off her peach apron. Her hands were slightly trembling from the physical effort of holding down a two-hundred-pound man during a spasm, but her chin remained up.
Dominic reached down, his long fingers snatching the paper before Carmine could touch it.
"Out," Dominic said.
Mrs. Gable cleared her throat, adjusting her pearls. "Mr. Corso, I can have security remove her immediately—"
"I said out. All of you." Dominic's voice wasn't loud, but the raw authority in it made the air turn cold.
Carmine's jaw tightened. He held Dominic’s gaze for two seconds, clearly unhappy, before giving a slight nod. "We’re right outside the door, Dominic."
Carmine, Mrs. Gable, and Luca backed out into the corridor. The heavy double doors clicked shut.
Dominic unfolded the crumpled eviction notice. His eyes scanned the text with surgical precision. The paper demanded immediate payment of four thousand dollars or full vacation of property 4B on Elm Street. At the bottom was the corporate seal of Ironwood LLC, and below it, a scribbled signature: *Sal Moretti.*
Dominic’s fingers tightened on the paper, wrinkling the edges.
Sal Moretti was Dominic's former south-side lieutenant. Moretti was also the primary suspect Carmine had been investigating for the car bombing that shattered Dominic's spine six months ago. Moretti had vanished the night of the attack, along with twelve million dollars in offshore bonds.
"Who gave you this?" Dominic demanded, his eyes boring into Fay.
Fay smoothed her apron. "My landlord. A man named Sal."
"Sal Moretti?"
"He never gave me a last name," Fay replied evenly. "He drives a black Escalade, wears gold chains, and told me that if the rent wasn't in his lockbox by Friday morning, two men with crowbars would throw my things on the sidewalk."
Dominic leaned back, his sharp mind racing. "And how did you end up applying for a job in this house?"
"An agency in town," Fay said. "They had a listing for a private estate needing immediate live-in domestic staff. The pay was high enough to clear the debt in two weeks. I didn't care whose house it was."
Dominic studied her fair, open face. She had no fear of him, but she also had no artifice. Her clothes were cheap, her shoes worn at the heels. She wasn't an assassin. She was too exhausted to be an operative.
"Do you know who owns the building you live in, Miss Willis?"
"A slumlord," she said bluntly.
"I do," Dominic said coldly. "Ironwood LLC is a subsidiary of Corso Enterprises. And the man collecting your cash is a thief who stole from me before trying to put me in the ground."
Fay stared at him, her lips parting slightly. "You own the building?"
"I own the district," Dominic snapped. He stared at the signature on the paper. "Moretti isn't hiding in Miami or Mexico. He’s collecting cash rents off my own unregistered south-side properties right under Carmine's nose."
A flash of real power flickered behind Dominic's eyes for the first time in months. The lethargy that had trapped him in this chair was breaking under the heat of a fresh trail.
"Take the tray," Dominic ordered, handing her the eviction notice. "Clean up the mess. And don't speak a word of this to anyone. Not Carmine. Not Mrs. Gable."
"What about my rent?" Fay asked, refusing to budge.
Dominic gave a harsh, incredulous smirk. "You're standing in front of the most dangerous man in the city, asking about four thousand dollars?"
"I don't have anywhere else to sleep, Mr. Corso."
"Do your job, and your rent is paid," Dominic said, rolling his chair back toward the window. "Now pick up the glass."
Fay knelt down again, gathering the fragments into her dustpan.
Twenty minutes later, Fay carried the trash bag down the grand servant staircase into the back pantry. As she tossed the broken china into the heavy metal bin, something caught her eye.
Beneath the newspapers in the estate medical waste bin sat an amber prescription bottle.
Fay frowned. She picked it up. The label was fresh, dated yesterday, prescribed to Dominic Corso. It read: *Baclofen - 20mg.*
Fay had spent two years taking care of her paralyzed father before he passed away. She knew neuro-medications by heart. She twisted the childproof cap open and tipped a pill onto her palm.
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The pill wasn't Baclofen. It was a white oblong tablet stamped with the code *DZ-10*—Diazepam, a massive sedative designed to depress muscle response entirely.
Someone wasn't treating Dominic's spasms. Someone was chemically paralyzing him.
