Chapter 6
Marco entered the study forty-five minutes later.
The double doors closed behind him with a dull, heavy click.
Dante was standing behind his mahogany desk, looking out over the Chicago river basin. In the adjacent room, through the reinforced glass partition, Mia was asleep on the massive leather sofa, curled beneath an alpaca throw, her hand tucked beneath her cheek. Beside the sofa, in an antique bassinet that Marco had dispatched two men to purchase from an upscale boutique on Michigan Avenue thirty minutes earlier, Lily was sleeping soundly, her belly full, her breathing deep and even.
"Report," Dante said without turning around.
Marco opened a slim black dossier.
"The mother’s name is Sarah Vance," Marco said. "Twenty-six years old. Former dental assistant. Father of the first child took off before she was born; father of the infant was an ironworker named Callahan who died in an industrial crane collapse on the south docks fourteen months ago. The company’s insurance settled for pennies on the dollar through a shell firm, which left her with zero benefits and fifty thousand in outstanding medical debt from the delivery."
Dante turned slowly. "Where is she?"
Marco looked down at the paper, his jaw setting. "Cook County morgue. She was brought in at 3:15 Sunday morning. Overdose. Fentanyl-laced heroin found in a stairwell behind an abandoned transit station on Cermak."
The room went completely, perfectly still.
"Did she leave an address?"
"An apartment on South Loomis," Marco said. "Rent was four months in arrears. The landlord had already filed an emergency eviction warrant with the sheriff's department. It was scheduled for execution this afternoon at two."
Dante walked over to the desk, picked up an unlit cigar from the crystal humidor, and rolled it between his fingers.
"Who owns the building on Loomis?"
Marco checked the sheet. "A holding company called Apex Residential. It’s managed by Leo Moretti’s secondary syndicate branch."
Dante stopped. His eyes lifted, fixing on Marco with a glare so cold it could have withered grass.
"My cousin Leo."
"Yes, Dante. The building is part of the south-side rental portfolio Leo acquired three years ago. The eviction paperwork was signed by Leo’s property manager, a man named Henderson."
"And the bodega where the clerk threw a starving seven-year-old girl into the rain?"
"Corner of Loomis and 24th," Marco replied. "Belongs to Tariq, one of Leo’s loan-sharking fronts. Tariq runs numbers out of the back room and kicks up ten percent to Leo’s crew on the first of every month."