Chapter 3 - The King of Chicago Steps Forward
From the kitchen swinging doors, my mother, Mara Carter, burst into the dining room holding a white cloth towel. Her face was drenched in panic, her eyes darting across the room searching for me.
“Rory! Rory, baby!” Mom cried out.
Then she froze.
She saw me in the arms of the most feared man in Illinois.
“Mommy!” I called out, waving my small hand.
Mom dropped her dish towel, her knees nearly giving out as she rushed forward, tears streaming down her pale, exhausted cheeks.
“Please, sir! Don't hurt her!” Mom begged, dropping to her knees on the floor in front of Vincent Kane. “She’s only four! She doesn't understand anything! Take whatever I have, just let my daughter go!”
Kane didn't shout. He didn't step back.
He reached down with his right hand, gripped my mother gently by her elbow, and pulled her smoothly to her feet.
“Stand up, Mara,” Kane said softly, his deep voice stripped of all threat. “In any establishment carrying my syndication mark, an honest working mother never drops to her knees for anyone. Especially not for thieves.”
Mom looked up, her tear-stained hazel eyes searching Kane’s cold, handsome features in utter disbelief.
Kane turned his icy grey gaze onto Harrison Sterling.
“Harrison,” Kane said, each word landing like an iron hammer. “Do you know what building you are standing in?”
Sterling swallowed hard, pulling at his silk tie. “I... of course, Mr. Kane! Sterling’s Bistro!”
“No,” Kane corrected him with chilling precision. “You are standing on the ground floor of the Kane Commercial Heritage Trust. You lease this kitchen from my family for eighty thousand dollars a quarter. And when I signed that lease three years ago, I gave you one explicit rule: Pay every line cook, dishwasher, and waitress twenty percent above union scale before you touch a single dollar of dividend.”
Sterling’s eyes darted frantically toward the exit. “Mr. Kane! I have paid them! Business has been slow due to supply chain inflation! Mara is exaggerating her hours!”
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Kane pulled my crumpled notebook page from his pocket, holding it two inches from Sterling’s trembling nose.
“Seventy-seven days, Harrison,” Kane whispered, the menace in his voice making the hair on Sterling’s neck stand straight up. “Five thousand four hundred and thirty dollars and thirty cents. And nineteen purple stars.”
