Chapter 6 - The Audit of Judge Miller
The federal courthouse on Dearborn Street is a monolith of gray granite and bulletproof glass.
On a rainy Thursday morning, three days after our late-night strategy session in the library, Julian and I sit in a parked black Lincoln Navigator parked directly across the street from the main entrance, watching the steady stream of attorneys, plaintiffs, and federal judges filing through the revolving doors.
In my lap sits a thick manila folder containing forty-eight pages of certified bank routing numbers, offshore wire transfers to the Cayman Islands, and property deeds registered in the name of Judge Miller’s twenty-four-year-old nephew—a man who works as a low-level clerk in the municipal water department yet somehow owns a three-million-dollar brownstone in Lincoln Park.
"Are you sure the IRS field office in Chicago still owes your family a favor?" I ask, adjusting the brim of my wool trench coat.
"They don't owe me a favor, Talia," Julian replies, keeping his eyes fixed on the revolving doors. "They owe me their pensions. Two decades ago, when the federal government tried to gut the regional tax division during the budget crisis, my father quietly underwrote the private life insurance policies of thirty senior investigators in this district so they could keep working without starving."
He turns his head, looking at me with a faint, dry amusement.
"When the Castellane family makes an investment in federal law enforcement, we collect our dividends in discretion."
"Well, your dividends are about to mature," I say, sliding the manila folder across the console into his lap. "Everything Judge Miller needs to be indicted for honest services wire fraud, tax evasion, and judicial corruption is inside that folder. The routing numbers match his nephew's purchase ledger down to the exact penny."
Julian opens the folder, flipping through the pages with the practiced ease of a man who has reviewed a thousand execution orders. When he reaches the final page, a dark, terrifying smile touches his mouth.
"You're a ruthless accountant, Talia Brennan," he murmurs, closing the folder.
"I'm an auditor, Julian," I correct him, turning my face toward the window. "We just spend our whole lives looking for people who think they can hide a lie inside a column of figures."
He reaches across the console, his large, scarred hand gently resting over mine where it grips my leather portfolio. His skin is warm, rough, calloused from decades of handling things that ordinary people only read about in newspapers.
"When this is over," Julian says softly, his voice dropping an octave, "when Falcone's empire is dismantled and your father's debts are cleared to the last cent... what do you want to do?"
I look down at his hand over mine.
For twenty-six years, every man who had ever touched me had done so with a price tag attached—my father trading me for a shipping terminal, Rocco eyeing me like a piece of used machinery, Adrian Salerno offering fifty million dollars to play the part of a silent warden.
With Julian, there is no contract. There is no auction block. There is only the quiet, dangerous hum of two predators recognizing that they hunt better as a pair.
"I want to open a bakery," I say, my voice steady and clear. "A real one. On the North Side. Where the flour is fresh, the ledger is clean, and nobody ever asks me to put poison in the amaretto cream."
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Julian’s fingers tighten over mine, a firm, unyielding pressure that anchors me against the storm outside.
"Done," he says. "I know a fantastic commercial real estate broker in Lincoln Park. She owes me three favors, and she doesn't ask questions."
