Chapter 6 - The Cold Blood of the Hart
By Wednesday morning, the rumor mill of Chicago’s criminal underworld was ablaze with whispers.
The Vale baby is dead. The Hart girl butchered her fiancé's nephew in the nursery. Dominic Vale has locked Evelyn Hart in a basement on the South Side.
In the high-rise penthouse of the Hart Corporation building overlooking Michigan Avenue, Julian Hart poured himself a glass of twenty-year-old Scotch.
He was a tall, silver-haired man of fifty-five, dressed in a custom-tailored Brioni suit, wearing gold-rimmed reading glasses. He looked less like a mob lieutenant and more like a senior partner at a Wall Street hedge fund.
Opposite his desk sat his brother, Marcus Hart—Evelyn’s father.
Marcus looked ten years older than his age. He sat slouched in a heavy leather chair, his breathing labored, a golden cane resting between his knees. His face was pale, lined with the deep, permanent exhaustion of a man whose body was failing him.
"It can't be true, Julian," Marcus rasped, his voice trembling as he clutched the silver handle of his cane. "Evelyn wouldn't touch a child. She was a doctor! She took an oath!"
Julian walked over, placing a comforting hand on his elder brother's frail shoulder, pouring a splash of water into a glass for him.
"Marcus, brother... you have to face reality," Julian said, his voice dripping with false, smooth sympathy. "Evelyn was disgraced two years ago. The stress of losing her career, forced into a marriage with a monster like Dominic Vale... it broke her mind."
"She’s my daughter!" Marcus shouted, coughing harshly into a handkerchief.
"And she has disgraced our family beyond repair!" Julian declared, his tone hardening into controlled righteous anger. "Dominic Vale calls me an hour ago, screaming that he has her locked in a warehouse near the river! He says if we don't surrender the northern shipping routes to him by Friday, he will send her to us in a wooden box!"
Marcus gasped, clutching his chest. "He... he threatened to kill my girl?"
"He’s a animal, Marcus!" Julian sneered, turning his back to pour another drink, hiding the cold, triumphant smile spreading across his face. "This merger was a mistake from the beginning. Dominic Vale used this marriage to get close to our territory, and now that his nephew is dead, he’s using it as an excuse to launch a full war against us!"
"What... what do we do?" Marcus stammered, looking up at his younger brother with eyes clouded by illness and grief.
Julian turned around, his face a mask of solemn, heroic determination.
"You stay here and rest, brother," Julian said smoothly. "I have already contacted our lieutenants. I’ve called in our allies from Detroit—the Falcone group. We will meet Dominic Vale at the Drake Hotel on Friday for the contract signing, as planned. But we won't be bringing pen and paper."
"Julian..." Marcus warned, his voice weak. "No more bloodshed..."
"It’s not bloodshed, Marcus," Julian lied softly, patting his brother's trembling hand. "It’s a corporate acquisition."
Fifteen minutes later, Julian stepped out of the penthouse office into the private executive elevator.
The moment the polished brass doors closed, he pulled a encrypted satellite phone from his jacket pocket and dialed a ten-digit number.
"It’s done," Julian spoke into the receiver, his voice devoid of all emotion. "My brother is completely broken. He believes Dominic has the girl. He’s handed full operational control of the Hart syndicate over to me for the Friday meeting."
A voice with a heavy Detroit accent crackled through the speaker: "And the baby?"
"Dead," Julian lied, chuckling softly to himself. "The maid did her job before Vale could stop her. The Vale family is grieving, chaotic, and completely blind."
"Good," the voice replied. "My men will be stationed on the third floor of the Drake Hotel. The moment you step out of the banquet hall, we wipe out Dominic Vale and his entire security detail. The northern and southern routes belong to us by midnight Friday."
"Remember our agreement," Julian warned coldly. "I get sixty percent of the shipping revenues, and your group stays north of 95th Street."
"Agreed. See you at the Drake, Julian."
The line went dead.
Julian slipped the phone back into his pocket, adjusted his silk tie in the mirror of the elevator, and smiled at his reflection.
May you like
He had waited twenty years to sit on the throne of the Hart empire. A disgraced niece, an infant child, and a foolish brother were merely minor accounting expenses on his ledger of ascension.
He had no idea that sixty floors below him, parked across the street in a blacked-out SUV, Evelyn Hart was sitting with a pair of high-gain directional headphones pressed to her ears, recording every single word that had just passed through his satellite phone.
