Chapter 13 - the third ledger
At three in the morning, the rain eased into a freezing mist that hung over the dark waters of the Chicago River. Nathan stood on the wooden dock behind the decaying red-brick shell of the old Moretti Textile Mill. Dressed in a dark leather jacket with two heavy sidearms concealed beneath his coat, he was accompanied only by Marco and two of his most trusted enforcers.
The heavy iron doors at the rear loading bay were locked with rusted chains, but the tarnished brass key slipped easily into a small, discrete keyhole concealed beneath a bronze wall sconce near the water line. The lock turned with a heavy, mechanical clunk that echoed inside the hollow brick structure like a muffled gunshot.
They stepped inside, their tactical flashlights cutting through thick curtains of suspended dust and hanging cobwebs. The air inside smelled of damp river mud, machine oil, and old wool. Spanning the center of the vast ground floor were rows of massive timber weaving looms, their iron frames rusted into black iron skeletons.
"Check the perimeter," Nathan instructed Marco quietly. "Set two men at the river entrance and keep the vehicle idling."
Nathan walked down the central aisle between the looms, his boots crunching on fallen glass. He stopped at loom number seven—the very machine his mother had operated when she first arrived in America as a young seamstress. He knelt down, sweeping away thirty years of dust from the heavy timber base.
Embedded flush into the floorboard beneath the loom frame was a rectangular plate of reinforced steel, fitted with three circular mechanical tumblers. It was not a modern digital safe, but an old-fashioned combination lock designed by European locksmiths in the late nineteenth century.
Nathan pulled out the parchment envelope he had taken from apartment 4B. Using his pocketknife, he carefully broke Domenico's black wax seal and unfolded the document inside.
The paper did not contain a ransom note or a threat. It was a handwritten confession written in his mother's elegant, slanted handwriting three days before her fatal car crash in 1996.
My dearest Nate, the letter began, If you are reading this, Domenico has carried out his final betrayal. The car accident he arranged for me was not meant to kill me, but to force me to surrender the third ledger. He believes the family wealth belongs to the syndicate council, but it was earned by the sweat of three hundred garment workers whose pensions he stole. The combination to the steel vault beneath loom seven is the date of your birth: 04-12-84.
May you like
Nathan felt a cold rage settle into his bones as he reached down to align the bronze dials: 04, 12, 84.
The steel plate clicked upward an inch. Nathan lifted the heavy door away, revealing a lined iron box sitting in the dry concrete recess beneath the floorboards. Inside sat three heavy leather-bound ledgers, a roll of microfilm, and a black-and-white photograph of his uncle Domenico standing beside a high-ranking city official, exchanging a leather satchel full of cash.
