Chapter 1 - The Midnight Ledger
The neon sign of the hotel blinked red against the cracked windowpane, casting an erratic pulse across the worn linoleum of my kitchen floor. At 12:17 a.m., I was sitting at the wobbly table, threading a fine black needle to secure a heavy brass button onto a wool bellhop’s jacket. My fingers were stiff, calloused from years of stitching hems for ungrateful clients who always wanted their garments altered yesterday for half the price.
Then the phone on the counter shrieked.
I froze, the needle hovering a millimeter above the coarse fabric. No one called me past midnight unless it was an emergency, and the only kind of emergencies my life afforded were tethered to one man.
My father.
I snatched the receiver before it could ring a second time.
The voice on the line laughed before my father spoke—a jagged, hollow sound that made the hair on the back of my arms stand up. Then something heavy and metallic scraped across a concrete floor, and Arthur Hart whispered, “Ellie?”
My chair crashed backward, clattering against the wall.
“Daddy?”
“Don’t come,” he said, his voice thick with pain, muffled as if someone were pressing a hand over his mouth. “Please, baby. Don’t come here.”
A man in the background answered for him, his tone dripping with bored cruelty. “Tell her the address, Arthur, or lose another tooth.”
My fingers tightened around the plastic phone until my knuckles turned the color of chalk. The panic was instantaneous, cold, and blinding. It was the same panic I had lived with since I was ten years old—the terror of the phone ringing, the dread of the knock at the door, the sickening realization that no matter how hard I worked, my father’s mistakes would always catch up to us.
“Where are you?” I demanded, fighting to keep my voice from cracking.
“Moretti House.”
The name hit my chest like a lead weight.
Every person in Chicago knew that name. Moretti House was a labyrinth of luxury—a casino, hotel, and restaurant complex sprawling across the riverfront, operating as the kind of place desperate men entered believing luck might save them, only to leave stripped of everything they owned.
Lucian Moretti owned it. He owned the building, the docks, the shipping lanes, and enough cops, judges, and frightened loyalty that people lowered their voices to a terrified whisper whenever they mentioned him in public.
“Ellie,” my father whispered through the static, sounding smaller than life. “I’m sorry.”
The line went dead with a sharp click.
For several long seconds, I stared at the blank wall, my chest heaving. My gaze drifted down to the eviction notice tucked beneath a chipped saucer on the kitchen table. Rose’s Alterations—the tiny storefront with the lavender door that I had spent years dreaming about, saving every single dollar from double shifts at the dry cleaner’s—was supposed to become the first thing in my life that belonged only to me.
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One more year, I had promised myself just that morning while counting out crumpled bills. One more year of saving, and I won't have to rescue him anymore.
Instead, I grabbed my coat off the back of the chair, pulled the hood over my head, and ran out into the freezing Chicago rain.
