Chapter 2 - The Echo of the Name (Continued) / The Glass Tower
Forty floors above downtown Chicago, the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Moretti executive suite offered a panoramic view of a city that bent its knee whenever Vincent Moretti exhaled.
The office was a masterclass in intimidation: dark walnut paneling, leather chairs that swallowed you whole, and a massive mahogany desk unobstructed by computers or clutter. Only a single leather-bound ledger and a bronze statuary of a charging bull sat upon its surface.
Vincent Moretti sat behind the desk, swirling a finger of un-iced bourbon in a heavy crystal tumbler.
The amber liquid caught the city lights below, but Vincent wasn't looking at the skyline. He was staring at a manila folder lying open before him.
Inside the folder were ten pages of detailed intelligence.
Emily Carter. Age 34. Born and raised on the South Side. Father deceased—former union carpenter who lost his pension during the 2008 restructuring. Mother: Ruth Carter, currently hospitalized at St. Jude’s with advanced pulmonary fibrosis and kidney complications. Total personal debt: forty-eight thousand, three hundred and twenty dollars. Current bank balance: one hundred and eleven dollars.
Vincent took a slow sip of bourbon. The burn settled comfortably in his chest, but it didn't wash away the irritation that had been gnawing at him since three o’clock that afternoon.
For twenty years, people had reacted to him in one of two ways: they cowered, or they begged.
The waitress had done neither.
She had looked him dead in the eye—while wearing a faded polyester uniform with a grease stain on the pocket—and threatened to end him. Not with a gun, not with a lawsuit, but with the sheer, unapologetic fury of someone who had nothing left to lose.
“Boss.”
The heavy oak door swung open silently. Salvatore “Sal” Moretti—Vincent’s nephew and the primary enforcer of the family’s downtown operations—stepped into the room. Sal was thirty-eight, sharp-suited, with a broken nose that hinted at his younger days in the ring and eyes as dead as winter pavement.
“Everything set for the dock acquisition meeting tomorrow?” Sal asked, tossing a set of keys onto the credenza.
“It’s set,” Vincent replied without looking up from the folder.
Sal noticed where Vincent’s attention was. He walked over to the desk, glanced down at Emily Carter’s personnel file from the diner, and let out a dry, humorless chuckle.
“You’re still looking at that?” Sal shook his head. “Uncle, if she gave you lip, I can have two of the boys go down to South Side tonight and remind her how polite people are supposed to be to the family. It takes ten minutes.”
Vincent’s head snapped up.
The look in his gray eyes made Sal instinctively take half a step back. It was the same look that had cleared entire poker rooms in Cicero back in the nineties.
“Touch her, and I’ll break your other arm,” Vincent said, his voice dropping into a low, lethal register.
Sal swallowed hard, raising his hands defensively. “All right, all right. I’m just saying... she’s a nobody. Why are you wasting brain cells on a diner waitress?”
“She isn't a nobody,” Vincent murmured, closing the manila folder with a soft thud. “She’s the only person in Chicago this month who told me the truth to my face.”
“So what do you want to do with her?”
Vincent stood up, walking slowly toward the massive glass window. The sleet had turned into a steady, freezing rain, streaking the glass with silver tears.
“I paid her mother’s medical bills,” Vincent said quietly.
May you like
Sal stared at him in utter disbelief. “You what? You paid for a dying old lady’s hospital care because her daughter threw attitude at you?”
“I paid because a Moretti doesn't take charity from a waitress,” Vincent said coldly. “She threw a hundred-dollar bill at me for a two-dollar coffee. I settled the account. And tomorrow... tomorrow, I’m going to go back to that diner and see how brave she is when the bill comes due.”
