Chapter 8 - Whispers of the Past
While the gardens of the Caruso estate bloomed with new life, the dark underbelly of Chicago’s criminal world did not vanish overnight.
Late one evening, while the girls were fast asleep and Elise was reading in the library, Reed sat in his underground office beneath the estate.
The room was sleek, filled with security monitors displaying every angle of the property, along with encrypted servers holding the vast financial records of the Caruso empire.
Marco stood across from the desk, tossing a thin dossier onto the glass surface.
"What's this?" Reed asked, opening the folder.
"It’s from Detroit," Marco said grimly. "The remaining bosses—the ones who financed Julian Vane’s hit—are getting restless. They see your push into legitimate business as a sign of weakness. They think you've gone soft because of the girl."
Reed didn't explode with rage as he once would have. He slowly flipped through the pages, examining the surveillance photos of the Detroit Capos meeting in a speakeasy near the border.
"They think I'm weak because I don't kill every man who looks at me sideways anymore," Reed said quietly, his voice cool and calculated.
"They're planning to contest our shipping routes along the Great Lakes," Marco warned. "If they take those routes, it hurts our legitimate logistics company. We need to hit them hard, Reed. Remind them who you are."
Reed closed the folder, leaning back in his leather chair. He looked up at a small framed photograph on his desk. It wasn't an old photo of Kate, nor was it a photo of his business empire. It was a photo taken just three weeks ago: Elise sitting on a blanket in the park, Maisie on her lap, Rosie kissing her cheek, all of them covered in ice cream, radiant with happiness.
"No," Reed said firmly.
Marco blinked, surprised. "No? Reed, if we don't fight back—"
"We don't fight back with guns, Marco," Reed corrected, a sharp, brilliant glint entering his eyes. "That’s the old way. The old way brings car bombs to my driveway. The old way puts my daughters in panic rooms. We fight back with power."
Reed pulled a thin black laptop toward himself and opened an encrypted banking terminal.
"Detroit’s entire operation relies on credit lines from the syndicate banks in New York," Reed explained, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "They owe forty million dollars to the Valenti family. I bought that debt yesterday morning."
Marco’s jaw dropped. "You bought their debt?"
"I own them now, Marco," Reed said with a cold, terrifying smile. "In five minutes, I am calling the Valenti family and foreclosing on all Detroit turf. I am seizing their docks, their warehouses, and their vehicles through legal default. They won't have enough money to buy a box of bullets, let alone hire mercenaries to come to Chicago."
Marco stared at his boss for a long moment, then slowly broke into a wide, admiring grin. "Jesus Christ, Reed. You didn't soft-off. You just got smarter."
"Violence is messy, Marco," Reed said, closing the laptop with a satisfying click. "Money and law are clean. And I have a family to get back to."
May you like
He stood up, adjusting the collar of his sweater, and walked toward the door.
"Tell the Detroit bosses that if they ever step foot in Illinois, I won't kill them," Reed added over his shoulder, his voice dropping into that familiar, lethal whisper. "I'll make them broke. And in our world, being broke is far worse than being dead."
