Chapter 15 - The Velvet Offer
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By Sunday evening, the war for Chicago was over before the Monday morning newspapers even went to print.
Faced with the loss of his Chicago hit squad, the federal seizure of his airplanes, and the audio recording of Camila confessing to wiring the car bomb that killed Matteo—which Dario had extracted and sent directly to the New York Commission elders—Pietro Morelli formally surrendered all claims to the Great Lakes shipping lanes at four o’clock that afternoon in exchange for Camila being handed over to federal prosecutors instead of Julian’s butcher in the shipyard.
For the first time in one hundred and eight days, the Vane estate in Lake Forest was quiet.
Nora sat by the tall arched window of the third-floor sitting room, dressed in a soft navy cashmere sweater Julian had left on her bed, watching the sunset paint the surface of Lake Michigan in streaks of molten gold and violet. Down at Northwestern Memorial, Leo was resting comfortably in his sixth-floor suite with two private nurses and four of Dario’s guards stationed around the clock, scheduled for his pre-transplant evaluation on Tuesday.
The heavy mahogany door clicked open, and Julian walked in.
He looked different tonight. The crushing, ghost-like exhaustion that had hollowed out his eyes for the past three and a half months was gone. He wore a simple white dress shirt with the collar unbuttoned and dark slacks, carrying a small silver tray with two cups of hot chamomile tea and a plate of lemon cookies from the Uptown bakery.
Nora stood up automatically out of two years of ingrained habit.
Julian set the tray on the low table between the armchairs and looked at her with a faint, wry curve of his mouth. "If you call me 'sir' or stand at attention one more time after saving your brother from three hitmen and disarming a mafia princess with your bare hands, we’re going to have a problem."
A small, breathless laugh escaped Nora’s lips as she sank back into the velvet armchair, her fingers brushing the small white butterfly bandage over her cheekbone. "Old habits die hard when Mrs. Gable has yelled at you for twenty-four months."
"Mrs. Gable retired at noon today with a pension in Florida," Julian said smoothly, sitting in the chair opposite hers and leaning forward with his forearms resting on his knees. "Along with everyone else who looked the other way while Marcus ran his mouth."
Nora picked up her teacup, suddenly feeling a strange, hollow ache in the center of her chest.
The crisis was over. Camila was in a federal holding cell awaiting life without parole. Leo’s surgery was paid for and guaranteed. Which meant the reason Julian had brought her up to the third floor—and the reason she had signed her life away to this house—no longer existed.
"What happens tomorrow, Julian?" she asked quietly, looking down into the amber tea. "The threat to Leo is gone. You don't need to keep me locked behind steel doors anymore, and after what happened with the staff downstairs... I don't think I can go back to wearing an apron in the east wing."
Julian went very still. He reached into the breast pocket of his white shirt, pulled out a thick cream envelope, and laid it on the table beside the lemon cookies.
"Inside that envelope is a fully funded trust in your name, the deed to a house in Lincoln Park five minutes from Leo’s high school, and a full four-year scholarship to the University of Chicago pre-med program," Julian said, his voice steady and unreadable. "Everything you spent the last seven years sacrificing your sleep for is yours. No strings. No lease. No waiting lists."
Nora stared at the envelope. It was everything she had ever prayed for at two in the morning in her tiny staff room.
May you like
Yet as she looked up at Julian’s handsome, guarded face, she remembered the cold calculation she had predicted in the butler’s pantry: One morning you’ll call me upstairs, say something very kind, and give me a generous severance so you never have to look at the woman who saw you break.
"You’re sending me away," she whispered, her throat tightening painfully.
