Chapter 4 - The Viper's Web
Back in Chicago, the storm broke, not from the skies, but from within the Kincaid syndicate’s own vaults.
At 2:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, Jonas Heath bypassed the security guards outside Reed’s private quarters and unlocked the master suite door with his own master key.
Reed was sitting in an armchair by the unlit fireplace, wearing his trousers and a half-buttoned dress shirt, holding an empty tumbler. He hadn't turned the lights on.
“You don't knock anymore, Jonas?” Reed asked, his voice hollow.
“We have a structural leak,” Jonas said, closing the door and throwing the deadbolt. “And not the kind you can patch with cash.”
Reed set the glass down on the side table. The lethargy that had clung to him for three weeks evaporated in an instant, replaced by the razor-sharp survival instinct that had kept him alive since youth.
“Victor?”
“Worse. Carolyn,” Jonas said, stepping into the room and tossing an encrypted flash drive onto Reed’s lap. “She’s been having her personal financial team audit our secondary offshore holdings in Panama and the Cayman Islands. The ones tied to the Davenport treaty.”
Reed picked up the drive. “That’s standard procedure under the pre-nuptial merger terms. She has audit rights to verify our liquidity.”
“She’s not auditing liquidity, Reed. She’s cloning the account keys,” Jonas said, his voice grim. “My boy in cyber surveillance caught a mirror siphon running through a shell company registered in Zurich. Three hundred million dollars in liquid operating capital. If those transfers clear by Friday, the Davenport family won't need to ask you for operational control of the rail yards or the docks. They’ll have the cash to buy out our regional captains directly.”
Reed stared at the small piece of metal in his hand.
The betrayal was so brazen, so classic in its mafia ambition, that it almost made him laugh.
He had traded Nenah Blake for a corporate viper who was already measuring the width of his neck for a guillotine.
“Where is she now?” Reed asked quietly.
“Downstairs in the east parlor, having late-night tea with her father,” Jonas replied. “They think you’re in your cups. They think you’re broken over whatever ghost you’ve been chasing.”
Reed stood up. He walked to the mirror above the mantelpiece, looking at his reflection.
He looked like a corpse. His skin was gray, his beard overgrown by three days, his tie crooked. He had allowed himself to drown in regret, and in doing so, he had invited the wolves into his den.
“Victor thinks I’ve lost my stomach for blood,” Reed murmured.
“They both do,” Jonas said. “Victor told Captain Moretti yesterday that the Kincaid family needed ‘modern corporate governance’ instead of an old-school autocrat. Moretti didn't say no. He didn't say yes, either. The captains are smelling weakness, Reed. If you don't cut this off, there won't be an alliance by next month. There will just be the Davenport family sitting in your house.”
Reed’s eyes sharpened. The cold, mechanical brutality that had made him the most feared man in Illinois flickered back to life, icy and absolute.
“Lock down the Cayman accounts,” Reed commanded. “Don't confront her yet. Reroute the mirror siphon into a dead-end escrow account under Jonas Heath’s personal trust. Let her think the funds are transferring smoothly to Zurich. Let Victor commit his capital to the buyout contracts with Moretti.”
“And then?” Jonas asked.
“And then we butcher them both,” Reed said softly. “In front of every captain in this city.”
Reed buttoned his shirt, reached for his jacket, and pulled it on.
“Did the northern sweep find anything?” he asked, the transition so abrupt it caught Jonas off guard.
Jonas hesitated.
For twenty years, Jonas had been the most loyal soldier in the Kincaid organization. He had buried Reed’s father. He had pulled Reed out of a burning limousine when the Colombians bombed the Drake Hotel.
“Jonas,” Reed said, his voice dropping an octave. “Don't lie to me. You’re the only man left in this city whose throat I haven't considered cutting.”
Jonas sighed, reaching into his inner pocket and pulling out a grainy, black-and-white photograph printed on cheap thermal paper.
“It’s not definitive,” Jonas said. “A private investigator we hired out of Duluth was running automated plate scans on salvage yards and rural mechanics along the Minnesota border. A repair shop in Grand Marais had a gray Honda Civic registered to a Nenah Blake towed into its back lot three weeks ago for a transmission swap.”
Reed snatched the photograph from Jonas’s hand.
The image was taken from fifty yards away, through a telephoto lens. It showed a small, weather-beaten diner on the edge of a frozen lake.
Walking through the back door, carrying a metal trash can, was a woman in a canvas coat and a white apron. Her face was half-turned away from the camera, but the tilt of her head, the quiet, deliberate posture of her shoulders, and the way her dark hair escaped from beneath a knit cap were unmistakable.
Reed’s breath stopped.
His heart, dead and frozen for twenty-one days, slammed against his ribs with a violence that made him gasp.
It was her.
She was alive. She was six hundred miles away, washing dishes in a godforsaken timber town while the lake wind tore at the clapboard walls.
“She’s alone?” Reed whispered.
“Working at a place called *The Blue Heron*,” Jonas said. “Living above an auto shop. Paying cash. Keeping her head down.”
Jonas took a step closer, his eyes warning Reed.
“Reed, listen to me carefully. Davenport has his own eyes in Duluth. He has shipping interests along the iron range. If Victor’s men see you moving personal security assets north right now, while this coup is brewing, they’ll know you’re distracted. Or worse—they’ll find out why you’re looking at that town.”
Reed’s hand tightened around the photograph until the paper crumpled.
“If Victor Davenport so much as hears her name,” Reed said, his voice dropping into a register of pure, lethal venom, “I will skin him alive in the Daley Center plaza.”
He shoved the photograph into his breast pocket, directly over his heart.
“Get the car ready, Jonas.”
“Reed, the boardroom meeting with the captains is at nine tomorrow morning!” Jonas urged, his voice tight. “If you aren't there, Victor takes the floor!”
“Then reschedule it for midnight tomorrow,” Reed said, walking past Jonas toward the door. “Tell Victor I’m finalizing the terminal transfer in Milwaukee. If he complains, tell him he can explain his objections to a firing squad.”
“And Nenah?” Jonas asked, trailing him down the private hall. “What are you going to do when you get to that diner, Reed? Bring her back to this war zone?”
Reed paused at the threshold of the back stairs, his hand resting on the banister.
May you like
“I’m going to make sure she’s breathing,” Reed said, his voice cracking with an unbearable, raw hunger. “And then I’m going to end Victor Davenport so completely that no one in this country will ever dare speak her name again.”
***
