She missed one morning of work, and the mafia boss found her broken on the floor before anyone else noticed she was gone

The clinical suite on the fifth floor of the building on Desplaines Street smelled of high-grade isopropyl alcohol, autoclaved stainless steel, and the faint, bitter oil used to lubricate hydraulic surgical chairs.

Dr. Kenneth Althaus had spent twenty years as the chief of trauma at Cook County Hospital before Dominic Vale bought out his private practice’s debt, paid off his third wife’s divorce settlement, and set him up in a private facility that appeared on no city directory. The board outside the elevator said Midwest Industrial Health Services. Behind the frosted glass doors, the equipment was newer than the machinery at Northwestern Memorial.

"Two cracked ribs on the left side," Althaus said, his spectacles hanging from a blue cord around his neck as he held an illuminated film plate against the light box. "Seventh and eighth. Blunt force. Likely a steel-toed work boot or a heavy wooden mallet. The scalp laceration looks worse than it is—scalps bleed like butchered hogs—but she has a grade-two concussion. The pupils are reactive now, but she’s going to have a headache that feels like an iron wedge for three weeks."

Dominic did not look at the light box.

He was sitting in an armless aluminum chair beside the high, narrow examination bed. He had not removed his coat, though the sleeves were stained with dry, brown smears around the cuffs.

Hannah was asleep.

They had cut away the mustard cardigan and the gray skirt, replacing them with a stiff, white cotton gown that made her look even smaller than she was, despite her broad frame. Her face was swollen along the left cheekbone, a dark, plum-colored knot rising beneath the skin like a plum buried under flour. An intravenous line was taped to the back of her left hand, the clear saline dripping with mechanical regularity from a plastic bladder above the rail.

"The marks on her arms?" Dominic asked.

"Defensive," Althaus said, peeling off his latex gloves with a sharp snap. "She tried to cover her head. Whoever did it was tall—six-one, six-two—and he was standing over her while she was on her knees. The bruises on her upper arms are thumb prints. He dragged her out from under that table by her collar."

Dominic’s hand rested on the bed frame, his index finger tapping once, twice, against the chrome rail.

"Did they touch her?"

Althaus knew what the question meant. He didn't blink.

"No. Her underwear wasn't torn. No signs of sexual assault. This was an enforcement beating, Dominic. Pure discipline. The kind they give a debtor who thinks three weeks is the same as thirty days."

"She wasn't the debtor," Dominic said.

The doctor picked up a small glass bottle of antibiotic ointment and set it on the rolling tray. "To people like Leo Vitucci, Dominic, there are no debtors. There are only accounts. If the uncle doesn't have the legs to run, they find the person who pays the phone bill."

The door to the recovery room clicked open.

Marcus Reed stepped in, his overcoat damp from the sleet. He took off his flat cap, shook the water onto the linoleum, and gave Althaus a look that sent the doctor immediately into the adjoining laboratory, the door closing firmly behind him.

"Well?" Dominic said.

Marcus pulled a small, brown notebook from his pocket.

"Leo Vitucci isn't at the body shop on 47th," Marcus said. "He’s at the Italian-American Athletic Club on 24th Street. He’s having lunch with two city inspectors from the Department of Buildings and a deputy commissioner from Water Reclamation."

"How many boys does he have with him?"

"Four," Marcus replied. "Two by the door, two at the back near the kitchen. All local kids. Heavy, stupid, carry nine-millimeter Glocks they bought out of trunks in Gary. They think because the mayor’s nephew plays cards there on Thursdays, the building is bulletproof."

Dominic stood up.

The motion was so sudden, so fluid, that Marcus took half a step back, his hand dropping toward his hip out of sheer instinct.

Dominic walked to the small sink in the corner, turned on the cold tap, and held his hands under the stream. He washed the dry blood from his skin with the green liquid soap that smelled of pine needles, drying his fingers on a paper towel with methodical, surgical precision.

"Marcus."

"Sir?"

"Call the personnel office at Vale Harbor."

Marcus paused, his pen hovering over the small pad. "Personnel? Now?"

"Claire Whitmore," Dominic said, his eyes meeting Marcus’s in the mirror above the basin. "The woman who signed Hannah’s termination recommendation at 8:03."

"What about her?"

"Tell her to report to the basement archive at five o'clock today."

"The archive?"

"Yes," Dominic said, reaching for his leather gloves. "Tell her she is to personally reconcile the 2021 shipping manifests from the Duluth grain terminals. The hard copies. All forty-two cartons."

"Dominic," Marcus said, a rare note of caution entering his gravelly voice. "Those manifests were water-damaged during the river surge two years ago. They’re covered in black mold and dried mud. It takes three people with respirators just to turn the leaves."

"Then she should wear a cardigan," Dominic said, pulling the leather tight over his knuckles until the seams strained. "And tell her that if one page is missing by Monday morning, she can look for work in Rockford."

He turned and looked down at Hannah.

Her breathing had shifted. It was deeper now, the whistle in her nose clearing as the swelling in her nasal passages began to subside under the steroids Althaus had pushed through the IV. Her right hand, the one that had held the blue-lined tax sheets, moved an inch across the rough cotton sheet, her fingers seeking something to grasp.

Dominic reached down.

He did not take her hand—he was too large, his gloves too rough, his presence too heavy for a woman who had just been dragged across floorboards. Instead, he took the small almond biscotti he had kept in his breast pocket since 8:10 that morning, the one he had retrieved from the walnut table by his elevator after the bankers had fled.