Chapter 2 - The Wolf’s Ring
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Arthur Sterling’s fingers tightened around the crystal stem of his goblet until his knuckles turned the color of chalk. Across the table, a city alderman quietly slid his chair six inches away from the real estate mogul, sensing a lightning strike about to hit.
"I have no idea what you’re implying, Roman," Arthur said, attempting an easy, aristocratic laugh that fell flat against the glass walls. "I merely told the girl my glass was full. If she’s hysterical because she broke a five-hundred-dollar plate, that’s hardly my—"
"Look at me when you lie, Arthur," Roman interrupted. His voice didn't rise by a single decibel, yet the sheer menace vibrating underneath it made Mr. Henderson back quietly toward the kitchen doors. "My head of security taught me how to read lips from forty feet when I was fifteen years old. I caught the words Mercy General and sweetheart."
Tessa’s heart slammed against her breastbone. Roman had been watching her from the head of the table even before the tray fell.
Roman turned half an inch back toward Tessa. "What is your name?"
"Tessa, sir. Tessa Cole."
"Who is on the fifth floor of Mercy General, Tessa?"
Tessa looked from Arthur Sterling’s sudden, icy glare to the dark, unfathomable steadiness of Roman Vane’s gunmetal eyes. Every instinct screamed that getting caught between a ruthless billionaire developer and the boss of the Chicago underworld would crush her to dust.
Yet Arthur had already threatened her ten-year-old sister’s life. Keeping quiet wouldn't save Chloe now.
"My little sister, Chloe," Tessa said, her voice trembling but clear in the dead silence of the room. "She’s ten. She’s in the pediatric cardiac ICU waiting for a valve replacement on Friday."
"And how does Mr. Sterling know your ten-year-old sister is at Mercy General?" Roman asked quietly.
"Because Mr. Sterling sits on the hospital’s charitable foundation board," Tessa said, her knuckles whitening around Roman’s bloodstained linen handkerchief as two years of exhaustion and terror boiled over her tongue. "And three months ago, before my father died of a heart attack, my dad was the structural safety inspector for the city who refused to sign off on the cracked concrete foundation of Mr. Sterling’s new high-rise on Wacker Drive. Ever since my dad died, someone has been blocking our insurance claims at Mercy General—and Mr. Sterling just asked me how a maid was going to keep her sister in an expensive bed past Friday."
A low, collective murmur rippled down the mahogany table. Two senators stared at their butter knives, refusing to make eye contact with Arthur.
In Chicago politics, bribing an inspector was Tuesday morning business. Threatening to pull the plug on a dead city worker’s ten-year-old daughter over a grudge was the kind of dirty, amateurish cruelty that made even seasoned crooks uneasy—especially in Roman Vane’s house.
Arthur shoved his chair back and stood up, his silver-haired composure snapping into red-faced indignation. "This is absurd! Are you seriously listening to the slander of a minimum-wage chambermaid whose father was under investigation for taking bribes?! I was expressing sympathy for her family’s situation! And frankly, Roman, I didn't come to your hotel tonight to be interrogated in front of the press committee by the help!"
"Sit down, Arthur," Roman said.
"I will not sit down! This dinner is over!" Arthur tossed his linen napkin onto the table and turned toward his two private bodyguards stationed by the elevator doors. "And as far as the South Branch riverfront parcel goes, Vane, you can find another co-investor—Sterling Developments is pulling out!"
"You aren't pulling out of anything except your teeth if you take one more step toward that elevator," Roman said silkily.
Before Arthur’s two bodyguards could even reach inside their suit jackets, Roman’s underboss, Matteo—a six-foot-four former Marine with a jagged scar across his throat—stepped directly behind them with two of Roman’s men, pressing the cold barrels of suppressed SIG Sauers squarely against the backs of their necks.
Arthur froze on the marble floor, the blood draining completely from his arrogant face.
Roman walked slowly around the broken porcelain until he was standing chest-to-chest with the sixty-year-old billionaire.
"Let’s get two things straight in front of our friends from Springfield," Roman murmured, adjusting Arthur’s crooked navy bow tie with two fingers while the onyx wolf ring gleamed inches from Arthur’s throat. "First, The Sovereign Hotel belongs to me. Anyone working under this roof—from the general manager down to the girl who scrubs the service stairs—is under my protection. When you threaten one of mine in my own dining room, you’re spitting on my shoes."
"Roman, listen—" Arthur stammered, sweat beading on his forehead.
"Second," Roman continued, his eyes turning to black ice, "Mercy General’s pediatric cardiac wing was built with ten million dollars from my late mother’s endowment fund. If Chloe Cole’s surgery is delayed by so much as five minutes on Friday morning, or if a single billing clerk from your foundation committee ever calls this girl’s phone again, I won't sue you, Arthur. I’ll buy the bank holding the construction notes on your Wacker Drive tower and have my union crews tear it down brick by brick with you locked in the basement. Do we understand each other?"
Arthur swallowed convulsively, every shred of his billionaire bravado evaporating under the close-range lethality of the man who actually owned Chicago.
"Yes," Arthur whispered hoarsely. "It was a misunderstanding. Her sister’s account won't be touched."
"Now look at Miss Cole," Roman commanded softly, "and apologize for making her drop my oysters."
For three agonizing seconds, Arthur Sterling looked as if he might choke on his own bile. Then he turned his pale face toward Tessa, who stood clutching the bloody handkerchief in her uniform apron.
May you like
"I apologize, Miss Cole," Arthur bit out through clenched teeth.
"Get him out of my sight, Matteo," Roman ordered without looking back. "And Mr. Henderson—dinner is concluded. Clear the room, and send my private doctor up to the penthouse lounge to stitch Miss Cole’s hand."
