Chapter 5 - The Woman I Believed Had Been My Stepmother for Only Two Years Was Actually the Person Who Had Controlled My Father’s Entire NetworkThe truth about my father's second wife was horrifying.

I went to Apartment 4B prepared to throw out a woman who owed me three months’ rent. Instead, a seven-year-old girl opened the door with bleeding fingertips and returned to sewing beside her seriously ill mother—and before I could leave, a woman I was certain had vanished from my past whispered the name only people from my old life dared to call me. My name is Nathan Moretti. In Chicago, most people knew better than to say it twice. I owned restaurants, clubs, apartment buildings, and several businesses that never appeared under my name. But the men who worked for me knew what I really controlled. And they knew I didn’t forgive debts. So when Apartment 4B fell three months behind on rent, I decided to handle it personally. I knocked hard. Tiny footsteps approached. A little girl opened the door. She couldn’t have been older than seven. Her clothes were worn, brown hair falling across her thin face. Tiny drops of blood dotted her fingertips. Behind her sat an old sewing machine. “Where’s your mother?” The girl stiffened. “She’s sick.” I stepped inside. The apartment was nearly empty. Medicine bottles covered a small table. The refrigerator held almost nothing. “What’s your name?” “Lily.” “And the rent?” She disappeared for a moment and returned with a crumpled envelope. Forty-three dollars. “I’m making the rest.” I looked toward the sewing machine. “You?” She nodded. “I sew for people downstairs.” Then she sat back down. Her exhausted feet worked the pedal. The needle moved faster. Suddenly, it pierced her finger. Lily winced, wiped the blood onto her shirt— and kept sewing. I had watched grown men beg at my feet without feeling anything. But watching that child made something inside me turn cold. Because thirty years earlier, I had been the kid sitting beside a sewing machine while my own mother counted coins we didn’t have. Before the suits. Before the armed men. Before people started lowering their voices when I entered a room. I pulled several hundred-dollar bills from my wallet. “Stop.” Lily shook her head. “Mom needs medicine.” I looked toward the closed bedroom. “I want to speak with her.” Lily immediately stood. “You can’t.” “Why?” Her face went pale. “Mom said if Mr. Moretti ever came here, I must never let him see her.” My hand stopped over my coat. She knew my name. Before I could ask another question, something shattered behind the bedroom door. I moved toward it. Lily grabbed my sleeve. “Please!” Then a weak voice came from inside. “Nate?” I froze. Nobody called me Nate anymore. Nobody alive, anyway. I slowly opened the door. A sick woman lay beneath a thin blanket. Her face had changed. But those eyes hadn’t. Then I noticed the sewing machine through the doorway again. A tiny silver rose was carved into its wooden base. My mother’s mark. The machine she had sold thirty years ago— on the same night Sarah disappeared. And suddenly, the forty-three dollars in my hand didn’t matter anymore. I looked from Sarah... to Lily. And for the first time in years, the most feared man in the room was me.

15 chapters