Chapter 5 - The Black SedanMargot saw the black sedan again Friday morning.
It was parked half a block from the apartment.
This time she memorized the license plate.
Illinois.
K71 4PX.
She wrote it in the gray notebook.
Then she did what poor people often did with danger.
She went to work.
Danger was expensive.
Missing work was also expensive.
Until recently, Margot had always been more afraid of the second.
At 8:03, she entered Santoro Holdings.
At 8:05, Raphael looked through the glass wall of his office and knew something was wrong.
Margot had begun to hate that.
He stepped out.
“What happened?”
“Good morning to you too.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
His gaze dropped to the notebook in her hand.
“You write ‘nothing’ down now?”
Margot tightened her grip.
Raphael held out his hand.
She stared at it.
“No.”
“Margot.”
“You don’t get to inspect my notebook whenever you want.”
“You showed me almost the entire thing.”
“Work pages.”
“What did you write this morning?”
“Groceries.”
His eyes narrowed.
“No lies.”
She exhaled.
“Fine.”
Margot opened to the page and turned it toward him.
Raphael read the license plate.
His entire demeanor changed.
“Where?”
“Outside the apartment.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“You saw it before.”
Not a question.
Margot hesitated.
Raphael’s jaw tightened.
“Last night.”
“You told me you were inside.”
“I was inside.”
“You were still on the street when I asked.”
“That is an extremely technical interpretation.”
“It is the only interpretation.”
Dante emerged from Raphael’s office.
“What happened?”
Raphael tore a sticky note from Margot’s desk, copied the plate, and handed it to him.
“Run it.”
Dante disappeared.
Margot folded her arms.
“You’re overreacting.”
Raphael looked at her.
“No.”
“It could be anybody.”
“It could.”
“A neighbor.”
“It could.”
“A ride-share driver.”
“It could.”
“You agree with me.”
“No.”
His calmness infuriated her.
“What exactly do you want me to do?”
“Nothing alone.”
“I’ve spent most of my adult life doing things alone.”
“That arrangement has changed.”
“No, it hasn’t.”
Raphael stepped closer.
“Someone removed records from my company. You found the pattern. Two days later, someone is watching the apartment where you are staying.”
“We don’t know they were watching me.”
“Then we will confirm it.”
“And if they were?”
“You get security.”
“No.”
“That was not a negotiation.”
“It is when the security is attached to my body.”
He stared at her.
Margot stared back.
Dante returned.
The look on his face ended the argument.
“Plate is stolen.”
Margot felt the air leave her lungs.
Raphael’s eyes never left hers.
“Security.”
She swallowed.
“One person.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Raphael.”
“Three.”
“That’s childish.”
“Four.”
“Fine. Two.”
“Excellent.”
Dante muttered, “I’m witnessing diplomacy.”
Raphael ignored him.
By noon, Margot had two plainclothes security officers assigned to her.
She hated everything about it.
One was a woman named Sofia Ramirez who spoke little and observed everything.
The other was Marcus Cole, a former Chicago police detective who looked as though he had never smiled voluntarily.
Margot tried losing them twice.
Sofia found her both times.
“Mr. Santoro said you might do that,” she explained.
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“What else did he say?”
“That you dislike being controlled.”
“At least he’s learning.”
Sofia’s mouth twitched.
Meanwhile, the archival trail deepened.
Lakefront Strategic Services connected to another company.
That company connected to an attorney.
The attorney connected to a trust.
The trust owned a warehouse in Cicero.
A warehouse purchased twelve days after Mercer Industrial burned.
Margot placed the documents across the map room table.
“Someone moved operations.”
Raphael looked at the deed.
“Yes.”
“After the fire.”
“Yes.”
“Moretti?”
“Possibly.”
“Vincent?”
Raphael did not answer.
Margot leaned back.
“You hate this.”
“Hate what?”
“Suspecting him.”
Raphael looked toward the closed door.
For several seconds, he was not the man Chicago feared.
He was a man discovering that twenty-three years of trust might have been misplaced.
“My father brought Vincent into the company,” he said. “He attended my mother’s funeral. When my father was killed, Vincent kept half the board from selling.”
Margot stopped.
She had not known Vittorio Santoro had been killed.
The newspapers called it a boating accident.
Apparently Chicago had many euphemisms.
“How?”
Raphael’s eyes moved to hers.
“No lies?”
“That was the agreement.”
“He was shot.”
Margot’s stomach tightened.
“By Moretti?”
“We never proved it.”
“When?”
“Twelve years ago.”
“And you took over?”
“The next morning.”
She imagined him younger.
Thirty, perhaps.
Standing beside his father’s body one night and sitting at the head of a corporate boardroom the next.
Something inside her softened despite every warning she had given herself.
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“That’s young.”
“I didn’t feel young.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t.”
Their eyes held.
Then Raphael looked away first.
At 4:40 p.m., Margot discovered the photograph.
It was tucked behind an environmental inspection report from 1999.
The image showed Mercer Industrial after the fire.
Blackened bricks.
Collapsed roof.
Firefighters.
Police.
Three men standing near a chain-link fence.
One was Vittorio Santoro.
Margot recognized him from old newspaper photographs.
The second was Samuel Moretti.
The third man stood partly turned away.
Margot stared.
Her fingers went numb.
No.
She picked up the photograph.
Brought it closer.
The third man wore a city inspection jacket.
Dark hair.
Thin shoulders.
A familiar tilt of the head.
Margot had only twelve photographs of her father.
She knew every one.
“Raphael.”
He looked up.
Something in her voice brought him across the room immediately.
Margot pointed.
“Who is that?”
Raphael examined the picture.
His face changed.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Margot saw it.
“You know him.”
Raphael said nothing.
Her heart began beating faster.
“Who is he?”
He looked at her.
And Margot already knew.
The room felt suddenly too small.
“Stephen Ellery,” Raphael said quietly.
Her father’s name.
Margot took one step backward.
“You knew.”
“Not before this week.”
“You knew this week.”
Raphael did not deny it.
“How long?”
“Since Tuesday.”
Today was Friday.
Three days.
Margot laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“No lies.”
“I did not lie.”
“You deliberately didn’t tell me.”
“I needed to understand the connection first.”
“He was my father.”
“I know.”
“You knew my father was connected to the warehouse fire we were investigating and said nothing.”
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt more.
Margot turned away.
Her father had died when she was ten.
A hit-and-run.
Late at night.
No witnesses.
The driver was never found.
Her mother spent years believing police would reopen the case.
They never did.
Margot looked back at the photograph.
“What was he doing there?”
“He was a city safety inspector.”
“I know his job.”
“He inspected Mercer six months before the fire.”
“And?”
Raphael’s expression hardened.
“He filed a report.”
“What report?”
“A report saying the warehouse contained illegally stored weapons and hazardous materials.”
Margot’s mouth went dry.
“Where is it?”
“Missing.”
Of course.
Another missing document.
“What happened after he filed it?”
“We don’t know.”
Margot’s hands began shaking.
Raphael noticed.
He reached toward her.
She stepped away.
“No.”
His hand dropped.
“My father died eight months after that fire.”
“I know.”
“Hit-and-run.”
“Yes.”
“You knew that too.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t think that was relevant?”
“I thought it was extremely relevant.”
“That’s worse.”
Her voice broke.
Margot hated that.
She had survived eviction without crying.
Slept on concrete without crying.
Carried everything she owned through train stations without crying.
Now one photograph had cracked something open.
Raphael moved closer but stopped before touching her.
“I was trying to determine whether my father had anything to do with Stephen’s death.”
Margot looked at him.
The words landed like ice water.
“And?”
“I don’t know.”
The room tilted.
She grabbed the table.
Raphael’s voice became quieter.
“My father was capable of many things.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
“Could he have killed him?”
Silence.
Margot’s heart broke in that silence.
Raphael finally said, “Yes.”
One word.
No lie.
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, Raphael looked almost as devastated as she felt.
“My father could have ordered it,” he continued. “So could Moretti. So could someone else exposed by Stephen’s report.”
Margot gathered the photograph and notebook.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“The apartment?”
She stopped at the door.
“No.”
“Margot.”
“I need somewhere that doesn’t belong to you.”
She walked out.
Sofia and Marcus immediately followed.
Raphael did not stop her.
That hurt too.
Three hours later, Margot checked into a cheap hotel near O’Hare using money she could no longer pretend she needed to ration quite as desperately.
She sat on the bed.
Opened the gray notebook.
And looked at the photograph.
Her father.
Vittorio Santoro.
Samuel Moretti.
Three men.
One dead in a hit-and-run.
One shot twelve years later.
One dead of cancer.
Every man in the picture was gone.
Yet their secrets remained alive.
Margot turned the photograph over.
There was handwriting on the back.
She had not noticed it earlier.
Four words.
Written in blue ink.
Stephen has the original.
Margot stared.
Her father’s name.
The original.
Her pulse accelerated.
Then someone knocked on the hotel-room door.
Three slow knocks.
Margot froze.
Sofia stood in the adjoining room.
Marcus was downstairs.
Nobody was supposed to know where she was.
Another knock.
Then a man’s voice.
“Ms. Ellery?”
Margot reached for her phone.
May you like
The voice continued.
“I have something that belonged to your father.”
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