Chapter 5 - The Velvet Trap
Dawn broke over Chicago in a dull, bruised wash of purple and gray.
By eight in the morning, the Drake Hotel was a flurry of silk, champagne, and bridal vanity. In the Presidential Suite on the tenth floor, Vivienne Beaumont sat before an ornate three-way vanity mirror while three stylists arranged an antique lace veil imported from Brussels into her dark, glossy curls.
Across the room, the door opened without an announcement.
Marcus Vance stepped inside, wearing a charcoal morning suit with a pearl stickpin in his silk cravat. His heavy, aristocratic face was unusually pale, his eyes darting toward the bridesmaids sipping mimosas near the balcony.
“Leave us,” Marcus barked at the stylists.
Vivienne frowned, turning gracefully on her velvet stool. “Marcus, please. The photographer arrives in twenty minutes, and my hair isn't pinned.”
“Get out,” Marcus repeated to the staff, his voice dropping into a menacing rasp that brooked no debate. The stylists gathered their pins and hairsprays in hurried silence, slipping past him into the corridor and pulling the double doors shut.
Vivienne stood up, her silk dressing gown sweeping across the Persian carpet. “What is wrong with you? Did something happen at the docks?”
“Crowe isn't answering his satellite phone,” Marcus hissed, leaning over the dressing table, his hands trembling slightly against his mahogany cane. “The freighter at Pier 42 caught fire at four-thirty this morning. The Coast Guard has the basin cordoned off, and the federal marshals are currently executing search warrants on the holding warehouses.”
Vivienne’s porcelain face froze. “What about the crates? Did Elias move the weapons to the cathedral?”
“I don't know,” Marcus whispered, running a hand over his silver hair. “My contact at the precinct says three unmarked bodies were pulled from the water, but neither Crowe nor Kroll has been booked. It’s a complete blackout.”
“Dominic?” Vivienne’s voice tightened with sharp, venomous suspicion.
“Dominic was seen leaving his Gold Coast residence at seven-fifteen in his armored Maybach, wearing his wedding morning coat,” Marcus said, pacing the room. “His security detail is standard. If he knew about the docks, he wouldn't be driving to the church right now. He would have raided my office before dawn.”
Vivienne exhaled a long, shuddering breath, her composure returning like a mask snapping back into place. She walked back to the mirror, picking up a lipstick brush with steady, delicate fingers.
“Then Elias was sloppy and got caught by the port authorities,” she said coldly. “It doesn't change the plan. We still have the caterer’s crew inside the cathedral. The secondary team has suppressed handguns concealed in the choir loft. When the lights go out at twelve-fifteen, Dominic dies just the same.”
“Vivienne, if Dominic suspects even a fraction of this—”
“Dominic suspects nothing!” she snapped, turning on him with blazing blue eyes. “He is an arrogant, sentimental fool who thinks marrying me legitimizes his vulgar little syndicate! He wants to be respectable, Marcus. Men who want respectability are blind to everything until the bullet hits their chest.”
She stepped into her Vera Wang wedding gown, a breathtaking masterpiece of tulle and French lace that cost more than my father had earned in five years of bookkeeping. She turned her back to Marcus.
“Zip me up,” she commanded. “And stop shaking. You’re sixty-two years old, Marcus. Act like a man who is about to run this city.”
Across the street, inside a nondescript surveillance van parked beneath the awning of an apartment building, I sat with a pair of high-gain monitor headphones pressed to my ears. Every word spoken in the bridal suite came through the audio capture software in horrifying, pristine clarity.
I lowered the headphones, looking across the cramped interior of the van at Dominic Pierce.
He was sitting in the corner, fully dressed in his bespoke wedding tuxedo. His cuff links were black pearls set in white gold. His hair was meticulously groomed. He looked every inch the handsome, untouchable king of Chicago arriving to claim his queen.
“Did you hear her?” I asked quietly.
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Dominic didn't look angry. The coldness in his eyes had hardened into something beyond rage—a terrifying, absolute void.
“I heard,” he said. He reached down, picking up a delicate velvet jewelry box from the seat beside him. He opened it, revealing a stunning sapphire necklace surrounded by two hundred round-cut diamonds. “A wedding gift for my bride. Beatrice, it’s time to go to church.”
