Chapter 9: Dinner With a Man Who Ordered My Death
Victor arrived at seven on Friday.
He came the way he always came — unhurried, well-dressed, carrying a bottle of wine he'd selected himself because he considered my cellar adequate but not inspired.
He kissed me on both cheeks in the old way, the way our family had always done, and handed the bottle to the housekeeper without looking at her.
"You look better," he said, settling into the chair across from my desk.
"You've had some color in your face lately.
Is that the new medication?"
"Fresh air," I said.
"I've been going out more."
"Good.
Good." He crossed one leg over the other.
"Luke said you wanted to go over the quarterly numbers.
I pulled the Caruso Pacific summary if you want to start there."
"Let's start there," I said.
He opened his leather folder.
Began walking me through figures I already knew.
I let him talk.
I watched his hands — steady, practiced, the hands of a man who had been managing accounts and managing people for thirty years.
Luke was in the hallway.
Two of my men were at the exits.
The conversation in this room was being recorded on a device in the third desk drawer.
"The Evanston property," I said, interrupting him mid-sentence.
He looked up.
"Sorry?"
"The Evanston mailbox.
Registered to Thomas Reilly.
How long has Caruso Pacific been using that account?"
Victor's expression didn't change.
That was the tell.
A man who didn't know what you were talking about would show confusion.
Victor showed nothing.
"I'm not sure I know what you mean," he said.
"Two hundred thousand dollars, Victor.
Three weeks before November fourteenth.
Dennis Holt."
The leather folder closed.
"Danny—"
"Don't." My voice came out flat and final.
"Don't do the thing where you look confused.
Don't do the thing where you ask me where I heard that.
We are past that."
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then something in his face settled, like a man putting down something heavy he'd been carrying for a long time.
"How much do you know?" he said.
"Everything.
The shells.
The account.
Holt.
Vane.
Ryan Carter."
At Ryan's name, something shifted in his eyes.
Not guilt exactly.
Something more like calculation.
"The Carter boy was an accident," he said.
"He was twenty-four years old."
"He picked up something he wasn't supposed to see.
That decision was Vane's, not mine.
I didn't order—"
"You ordered me." I said it quietly.
"You ordered the man who sh0t me.
You sat beside my hospital bed and you cried and you managed my accounts for eight months and you handed them back to me and you have sat in this chair in this room a hundred times since then." I stopped.
"Why?"
Victor was quiet.
"Tell me why."
"Because your father left everything to you." His voice was even.
Almost gentle.
"You were twenty-eight years old.
You'd been in the operation for four years.
I had been in it for thirty.
I built half of what you inherited.
I watched your father hand it to you because you were his son and I was only his brother." He paused.
"I thought — if you were gone, it would come to me.
Legally.
Cleanly."
"And when I didn't die."
"When you didn't die, I had a problem.
And then you recovered faster than anyone expected.
And then you were back." He looked at his hands.
"I told myself it was over.
I told myself I would spend the rest of my life making it right in every way I could without ever saying it out loud."
"And Ryan Carter."
"I told you.
That was Vane."
"Vane acted on information your operation produced.
Ryan Carter is d*ad because of a chain of decisions that started with you."
Victor said nothing.
I reached into my desk drawer and set a small device on the table between us.
A recorder.
Running since he'd walked in.
His eyes went to it.
"There are two men outside this room," I said.
"One of them is going to drive you to a meeting with a federal prosecutor I've been in contact with for the past forty-eight hours.
You're going to tell them everything.
Vane.
Holt.
The account.
All of it.
In exchange, my attorney has negotiated a cooperation agreement.
You will not spend the rest of your life in a cell.
But you will spend it without the Caruso name, without the accounts, and without ever setting foot in this city again."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then Luke opens the front door and the two CPD detectives standing on my porch — the ones who are not on Vane's payroll — come in instead.
And you get no agreement at all."
Victor looked at the recorder.
At the door.
At me.
"You'd do this to family," he said.
"You did it first," I said.
"And Ryan Carter had a family too."
Victor picked up his leather folder.
Set it back down.
Picked up the wine glass the housekeeper had poured when he arrived and hadn't touched.
He set it down without drinking.
"All right," he said.
He stood.
Straightened his jacket.
Looked at me one last time with an expression I could not name and did not try to.
"I am sorry, Danny," he said.
"For what it's worth after everything.
I am genuinely sorry."
"I know," I said.
"Go."
Luke opened the door.
May you like
Victor walked out.
I sat in the quiet of my study and listened to his footsteps cross the marble floor of the entrance hall, and then the sound of the front door, and then nothing.
