Chapter 19 - The Price of Dawn
We hid in the sub-grade boiler annex beneath the old grain terminal on the south branch of the Chicago River—a derelict brick cavern Marcus had used as a staging depot for non-union materials twenty years ago.
The blizzard howled outside, beating against the frosted glass of the clerestory windows, but down beside the cast-iron stove, the air was warm and smelled of woodsmoke.
Ethan sat stripped to his waist on an overturned packing crate, his teeth gritted as I cleaned a grazing gunshot wound along his left ribcage with iodine and torn strips of clean flannel.
The bullet had torn through the flesh without breaking the bone, leaving a jagged red furrow that bled steadily down his flank.
He didn't make a sound, but his knuckles were white where he gripped his knees.
"You should have let Roman take the ledgers," Ethan murmured, his voice strained through the pain.
"And let him turn my father’s work into a laundering front?" I answered, wrapping the clean gauze tightly around his torso, tying the knot with firm, unforgiving fingers. "My father died trying to take those records out of your family's hands. I’m not surrendering them in the first firefight."
He looked up at me, his dark eyes hollowed by shock, smoke, and an intimacy we hadn't shared since the night before our separation.
"You have enough evidence in that bag to put fifty men in federal prison, Claire," he whispered. "Including me."
My hands paused on the edge of the bandages.
The truth was sitting on the wooden floor between us, bound in Julian’s faded red ledgers.
Ethan was named in the 2018 municipal contracts.
He had signed off on the payoffs to the structural engineers who cleared the unsafe highway overpasses south of the Loop; he had done it to protect his father’s position, to preserve the family’s fragile empire from collapsing into an all-out street war.
If I gave the ledgers to the United States Attorney, Roman would go to Terre Haute for the rest of his natural life.
And Ethan would go with him.
"Why did you come back to the theater tonight, Ethan?" I asked, my voice barely audible above the roar of the river wind outside. "You walked away. You gave me your word you were leaving Chicago."
Ethan reached out with his uninjured hand, his fingers hesitating before touching the cold edge of my wrist, right where my pulse raced against his skin.
"Because my brother’s men don't leave survivors, Claire," he said, his voice thick with an emotion he had spent ten years trying to bury under tailor-made suits and corporate silence. "And I would rather spend the rest of my life in a concrete cell looking at the sky, than live in a palace knowing I let them put you in the ground."
I pulled my hand back slowly, not out of malice, but because the gulf between us could not be bridged by a single night of shared blood.
"Tomorrow morning, I'm taking the ledgers to the Federal Plaza," I told him, looking into his eyes without flinching.
May you like
Ethan closed his eyes, bowed his head, and nodded once.
"I know," he whispered. "I'll walk into the building with you."
