Chapter 9
They did not go to Washington.
Not immediately.
Emily insisted on doing something Dante considered almost offensively sensible.
They investigated first.
For forty-eight hours, she reconstructed seventeen years of payments while Dante's remaining intelligence network traced Senator William Hale's connections.
They found patterns.
Construction companies receiving federal contracts.
Freight corporations linked to Marino routes.
Campaign donors connected to Moretti shell companies.
Nothing alone proved a crime.
Together, the pattern was impossible to ignore.
Hale had risen alongside the network.
State prosecutor.
Attorney general.
Governor.
Senator.
Every promotion coincided with someone else disappearing, retiring, being indicted, or dying.
Dante sat across from Emily in the library.
“He didn't work for Thomas.”
“No.”
“Thomas worked for him.”
“Possibly.”
Dante looked at her.
“You've started saying possibly like me.”
“I hate it.”
“It's responsible.”
“I hate that more.”
Leo wandered into the room holding a puzzle piece.
“Saturn is missing.”
Emily looked at him.
“What?”
“My puzzle.”
He held up the piece.
“This isn't Saturn. It's Jupiter.”
Dante watched him.
“Where did you last see Saturn?”
Leo frowned.
“In Uncle Tom's car.”
Emily became still.
“What?”
“The puzzle piece was in my pocket when he took me.”
Dante leaned forward.
“Leo, did you see anything inside Thomas's car?”
Leo shrugged.
“Papers.”
“What kind?”
“Boring.”
Emily crouched beside him.
“Do you remember anything written on them?”
Leo began rubbing his fingers together.
She immediately softened her voice.
“You don't have to remember.”
He stared at the puzzle piece.
“There was a bird.”
Dante and Emily exchanged a glance.
“A bird?”
“Gold bird. On a folder.”
“What kind?”
Leo thought.
“Eagle.”
Federal seal?
Emily retrieved images on her phone.
“Like this?”
Leo shook his head.
She showed another.
“No.”
Another.
Leo pointed.
“That.”
It was the seal of the United States Senate.
Emily's pulse accelerated.
“Anything else?”
“Numbers.”
Of course Leo remembered numbers.
“What numbers?”
“Two-one-four.”
“214?”
“And C.”
Dante stood.
“Office number.”
Emily searched.
United States Capitol office directories.
Senator William Hale.
Hart Senate Office Building.
Suite 214C.
She looked at Dante.
“The ledger isn't somewhere in Washington.”
Dante understood.
“It is inside Hale's office.”
The question became how to obtain it without committing enough federal crimes to make their existing legal situation seem quaint.
Agent Sloan provided the answer.
Emily called her.
Sloan arrived at Lake Forest that evening.
She listened without interruption.
When Emily finished, the agent leaned back.
“You want me to obtain a search warrant for a sitting United States senator based on a dead mobster's note and the memory of a traumatized kidnapping victim.”
“When you phrase it that way, it lacks elegance.”
“It lacks probable cause.”
Dante spoke.
“Hale appears in Michael Davies's records.”
“Seventeen-year-old records.”
“He attended Clara's funeral.”
“Half of Chicago attended Clara's funeral.”
Dante frowned.
Sloan continued.
“You need current evidence.”
Emily looked toward the spreadsheets.
“What qualifies?”
“Financial transaction. Communication. Witness. Something connecting Hale to Thomas's current operation.”
Emily's mind returned to Anthony Greco.
Greco had called Carlo.
Thomas had communicated with his network.
Money moved.
Numbers always moved.
“Thomas paid the men who attacked me.”
Sloan nodded.
“Presumably.”
“They were paid cash.”
“Yes.”
“But somebody withdrew it.”
Dante looked at her.
Emily continued.
“Criminals love cash because they think it has no history. But the cash had to come from somewhere.”
They traced it through Carlo's men.
One attacker had deposited $9,800 into his girlfriend's account two days before the apartment attack.
Another had paid $7,000 cash toward a motorcycle.
The bills were sequential.
Federal agents traced the bank shipment.
The cash came from a withdrawal made by a consulting company.
Lake Shore Strategic Solutions.
The company had received $300,000 three days earlier.
From a political consulting firm.
That firm worked exclusively for William Hale's reelection committee.
Sloan stared at the transfer chain.
“Now I can work with this.”
The warrant took twelve hours.
The search happened before dawn.
Dante and Emily watched from Lake Forest as news helicopters gathered above Washington.
At 8:17 a.m., Sloan called.
“We found something.”
Emily activated speaker.
“What?”
“A hidden safe behind a wall panel.”
Dante leaned forward.
“Ledger?”
“Better.”
Sloan paused.
“Video archive.”
Emily's skin prickled.
“How much?”
“Twenty-three years.”
Hale had recorded meetings.
Insurance.
Thomas's philosophy.
Power through dependency.
Hale apparently believed the same thing.
The videos showed Thomas.
Carlo.
Rourke.
Police commanders.
Union leaders.
Corporate executives.
And Giovanni Marino.
One video dated seventeen years earlier showed Giovanni arguing with Hale.
Dante watched the recording in absolute silence.
“You don't touch Davies,” Giovanni said.
Hale sat at the opposite end of the table.
“He has evidence.”
“He's a civilian.”
“He's a liability.”
Giovanni slammed his fist down.
“He has children.”
Thomas appeared in frame.
“My brother is becoming sentimental.”
Giovanni turned toward him.
“If anything happens to that family, I'll bury you myself.”
The recording ended.
Dante stared at the frozen image of his father.
For most of his life, Giovanni Marino had been a brutal man.
But in this one moment, he had tried to save Michael Davies.
Emily touched Dante's hand.
“He tried.”
“It wasn't enough.”
“No.”
Dante looked at her.
“But he tried.”
Another recording answered the question of Clara.
Thomas and Hale sat alone.
Nine years earlier.
“Dante is resisting,” Thomas said.
“He'll come around.”
“No. Clara is influencing him. She wants him out.”
Hale leaned back.
“Then remove the influence.”
Thomas was silent.
Hale stared directly at him.
“Do I need to explain what that means?”
The recording ended.
Dante walked away from the screen.
Emily followed.
He stood at the window.
For nine years, he had imagined the explosion thousands of times.
If he had driven.
If he had checked the car.
If he had left five minutes earlier.
If.
If.
If.
Now the truth stood before him.
Clara had died because she wanted him free.
Emily approached.
“She was trying to save you.”
Dante closed his eyes.
“I punished her for it for nine years.”
“What?”
“By becoming exactly what she wanted me to escape.”
Emily's throat tightened.
“You were grieving.”
“I became worse than my father.”
“Sometimes.”
He looked at her sharply.
Emily did not retreat.
“You want me to lie?”
“No.”
“You did terrible things.”
“Yes.”
“You cannot undo them.”
“I know.”
“But you can decide what happens next.”
Dante looked at the federal agents carrying boxes across the television screen.
“What happens next may involve a prison cell.”
“Then I will complain about the visitation schedule.”
He laughed quietly.
Emily wrapped her arms around him.
The news broke at noon.
Senator William Hale had been arrested.
Conspiracy.
Bribery.
Racketeering.
Obstruction.
Multiple homicide investigations reopened.
Chicago erupted.
Thomas began negotiating.
Former officials started talking.
The network collapsed with astonishing speed because it had never been built on loyalty.
Only fear.
Once Hale could no longer protect them, everyone protected themselves.
That evening, Dante received a call from Agent Sloan.
He listened for nearly three minutes.
Then ended it.
Emily watched him.
“What?”
“The U.S. Attorney wants a cooperation agreement.”
“For you?”
“Yes.”
Her heartbeat accelerated.
“What terms?”
“Full disclosure of Marino operations. Assets. Routes. Financial structures. Names.”
“And in exchange?”
“Reduced charges.”
“How reduced?”
Dante looked at her.
“No guarantee yet.”
Emily's hope dimmed slightly.
“But?”
“They are willing to consider immunity on historical conspiracy charges tied to Hale and Thomas if I dismantle the active criminal organization and surrender the illicit assets.”
Emily stared.
“Your empire.”
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
“Almost.”
“Will you do it?”
Dante looked around the enormous estate.
The glass.
The stone.
The evidence of generations of violence converted into wealth.
Then he looked at Emily.
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
She stepped closer.
“Just like that?”
“No.”
His hand settled around her waist.
“Not just like that.”
He looked toward the kitchen, where Leo was arguing with Tommy about whether Pluto should still be considered a planet.
“For the first time in my life, there is something I want more.”
Emily's chest tightened.
“What?”
Dante touched his forehead to hers.
“A life that doesn't require you to calculate the cost of bloodstains.”
She laughed.
He kissed her.
Outside, federal vehicles continued moving through the gates.
The Marino empire was dying.
Dante had expected grief.
May you like
Instead, he felt something he had almost forgotten.
Relief.
