Chapter 2 - The Empty Throne
Three weeks after the signing, the Davenport alliance was officially consecrated in the papers as Chicago’s most formidable corporate unification.
To the public, Reed Kincaid was the reclusive titan of logistics and marine shipping; Carolyn Davenport was the heiress to the Midwest’s largest commercial real estate empire. The gossip columns praised their restraint, their classic elegance, and the inevitable triumph of their coming autumn wedding.
Behind the closed, soundproof doors of Kincaid Manor’s boardroom, reality was far uglier.
“The south rail lines are leaking margin,” Victor Davenport said, slamming a leather-bound folder onto the long conference table.
The older man sat to Reed’s right, occupying the seat that had belonged to Reed’s uncle for twenty years before the man was buried in an unmarked grave outside Joliet.
Victor’s silver hair was combed back with pomade; his eyes, small and predatory, fixed on Reed with an insolence that grew bolder with every passing week.
“My team looked at your distribution routes through Gary,” Victor continued, tapping his manicured finger against the mahogany. “You’re wasting manpower guarding empty yards. We replace your private security details with Davenport contractors. We streamline the payroll. We cut the dead weight.”
Around the table, ten Kincaid captains sat across from ten Davenport men. The Kincaid men looked at Reed, waiting for the signal to reach inside their jackets. For eight years, anyone who spoke to Reed Kincaid in that tone would have had his teeth collected in an envelope before the hour was up.
Reed sat at the head of the table.
He had not slept more than two hours a night in twenty-one days. Dark, bruised circles shadowed his eyes. His cheekbones, usually sharp, were hollowed out; the tailored collar of his bespoke suit hung slightly loose against his neck.
In twenty-one days, he had eaten only what Jonas physically forced him to swallow: dry protein bars, cold sandwiches from downtown delicatessens, water that tasted like copper. Every time he sat in the formal dining room, the food brought out by the new catering staff—men in stiff white jackets who bowed too low and spoke in trembling voices—tasted like sawdust and salt.
He couldn't stomach it. His body rejected it.
“The Gary yards remain under Kincaid command,” Reed said. His voice was gravel, dry and scraped raw.
Victor scoffed. “Reed, we’re partners now. The contract explicitly gives Davenport Logistics joint operational control over the rail corridors.”
“The contract,” Reed said, lifting his eyes to meet Victor’s, “gives you thirty percent of the net haulage. It does not give you my perimeter security. If a single Davenport contractor sets foot in the Gary yards without Jonas’s clearance, I will have them shot for trespassing and dumped in the canal.”
A heavy silence descended over the room. The Davenport lieutenants stiffened.
At the far end of the table, Carolyn Davenport smiled, a slow, condescending curve of her scarlet lips. She set down her gold fountain pen and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the polished wood.
“Reed, darling,” Carolyn said, her voice smooth, laced with that practiced, aristocratic patience she used when dealing with difficult servants. “Let’s not be dramatic in front of the board. Victor is only trying to optimize our returns. You’ve been… noticeably fatigued lately. The entire house feels it. You’re up wandering the corridors at three in the morning. You barely touch your meals. Perhaps you should let my father handle the logistics while you take a few days at the lodge in Lake Geneva.”
Reed turned his head slowly toward her.
Carolyn looked stunning. Her blonde hair was pinned in an immaculate chignon; an eight-carat diamond ring—not the one he had given her, but one she had bought for herself on his credit line—gleamed on her finger. She looked like an empress.
And when he looked at her, he felt nothing.
Not hatred. Not desire. Not even irritation.
He felt the same profound emptiness one feels when looking at a plastic mannequin in a department store window. She was a transaction. A signature on a page. A strategic move designed to keep the city quiet.
And for this mannequin, he had let the only real thing in his life walk out into the rain.
“The meeting is adjourned,” Reed said, rising from his chair.
Victor’s face darkened with mottled red rage. “We haven’t discussed the river terminal, Kincaid! You can’t just dismiss us—”
Reed didn’t even look back. He walked out of the boardroom, his long strides carrying him down the gallery toward his private study.
Jonas fell into step half a pace behind him.
“Tell me you have something,” Reed muttered under his breath, his hands balling into fists inside his trouser pockets.
“Nothing in Illinois,” Jonas replied in a low rumble, keeping his voice down as they passed the security monitors. “Nothing in Wisconsin. We pulled traffic camera footage from the I-94 corridor the night she left. It was a torrential downpour; three-quarters of the license plate scanners were malfunctioning due to the storm.”
Reed pushed open the door to his study, entered, and slammed it shut behind Jonas.
The room smelled of old paper and stale tobacco. Reed walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the rear grounds. Outside, early spring had failed to warm the earth; the trees were bare, skeletal fingers clawing at an overcast gray sky.
“She had less than two thousand dollars in cash,” Reed said, his voice trembling with an exhaustion that verged on madness. “She has an old car that needs an alternator replacement every six months. She has no family. She has no friends from her foster days that we could identify. How does an ordinary woman stay hidden from a multi-million-dollar surveillance network for three weeks?”
“Because she’s not ordinary, Reed,” Jonas said quietly from the doorway. “And she doesn’t think like the people you usually hunt.”
Reed turned around, his eyes wild. “What does that mean?”
“You’re searching for her using mafia protocols,” Jonas said, crossing his arms. “You’re looking for someone who runs to an associate, someone who checks into a cheap motel under a fake name, someone who pawns jewelry or calls an old flame. Nenah doesn’t have associates. She doesn’t have jewelry. She grew up in group homes where survival meant learning how to blend into the floorboards until the adults forgot you were in the room.”
Jonas took a step forward, his weathered face dead serious.
“She’s not hiding from you, Reed. She’s living. And the world is very big when you don’t need much to survive.”
Reed gripped the back of his leather desk chair until his knuckles turned chalk-white. A pain, sudden and sharp, blossomed behind his breastbone—a deep, tearing ache that had nothing to do with physical injury.
He remembered the night on the kitchen floor.
The smell of raw onion. The cool linoleum beneath their knees. Her dark hair falling across her cheek, and the way she had looked at him—not with reverence, not with fear, but with that quiet, devastating understanding.
*“You’re the only person in eight years who’s talked to me without wanting anything at all,”* he had told her.
And what had he given her in return?
A ring on another woman’s finger. A political contract. An unspoken expectation that she would remain in his basement, frying his eggs and warming his bed in the shadows, while Carolyn Davenport hosted society galas on the floor above her head.
He hadn’t just broken an unspoken trust. He had insulted her dignity.
“Keep looking,” Reed choked out, his throat burning. “Don’t stop the search teams. Double the bounties for any sighting of the vehicle. Private investigators only. No syndicate muscle—if Davenport’s people find out I’m using resources to hunt a missing cook, they’ll start asking questions.”
“They’re already asking questions, Reed,” Jonas warned. “Victor isn’t blind. Carolyn isn’t stupid. They know your head isn’t in the business. And in this city, a boss who looks away for five seconds usually ends up in a pine box.”
“Let them try,” Reed snarled, a flash of his old, lethal ruthlessness cutting through the haze of fatigue. “Let them try to take this chair. I’d welcome the excuse to paint the ballroom with their blood.”
He turned back to the window.
May you like
Somewhere out there, beyond the gray horizon of Lake Michigan, she was breathing cold air. She was waking up without him. And for the first time in his thirty-four years of life, Reed Kincaid realized that all the power in the city of Chicago couldn't buy back five minutes of peace.
***
