Chapter 2 - The Blood Behind the Throne
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The heavy oak doors of the Palmer House ballroom boomed shut behind them, cutting off the rising roar of three hundred scandalized voices inside.
In the private marble elevator lobby, Evelyn didn't cry, and she didn't tremble. She stood with Julian’s tuxedo jacket draped over her silver silk evening gown as the express car plummeted toward the subterranean valet garage where their armored matte-black Maybach and two Mercedes G-Wagons were idling.
Inside the elevator cab, the silence among her three sons was terrifying.
Julian—the eldest, the cold-blooded corporate shark who managed Sterling Global Holdings—already had his encrypted smartphone out, his thumbs flying across the screen. Damon—the middle son, who ran the family’s union docks, trucking corridors, and security divisions—was staring at the red mark on his mother’s right cheek with a muscle jumping violently in his jaw. And Lucas—the youngest, the hot-blooded street captain who controlled the South Side clubs and casinos—was breathing like a caged panther.
"Give me the word, Ma," Lucas ground out, his voice shaking with barely leashed violence. "Just one nod. Before Dad even walks her out to the valet ramp, I’ll have two guys put Valerie in the trunk of a Lincoln and drop her in the Calumet Sag Channel."
"You will do no such thing, Lucas," Evelyn said calmly, stepping out onto the concrete garage floor as the doors slid open. "Killing a twenty-six-year-old idiot in a parking garage brings the FBI down on your heads by breakfast—and worse, it lets your father pretend he was just a victim of a crazy woman’s temper."
"She slapped you in front of the entire Chicago Commission, Mom," Damon said, opening the heavy ballistic door of the Maybach for her and holding an ice pack wrapped in a clean linen towel from the car’s trauma kit against her bruised cheek. "If we let Valerie Vane walk around this city breathing tomorrow morning after putting her hands on the matriarch of this family, every rival crew from Milwaukee to Detroit will think the Sterling brothers have gone soft."
"She won't be breathing easy tomorrow morning, Damon," Evelyn said, taking the ice pack into her own hand and sliding onto the cream leather bench seat as all three of her sons climbed into the spacious rear cabin facing her. "Because killing someone takes ten seconds. Making both of them beg for what they threw away takes until Friday."
Julian looked up from his tablet, a cold, razor-sharp glint lighting his dark eyes—the exact look he had inherited from Evelyn’s late father, Don Lorenzo Conti, the legendary boss who had handed Arthur Sterling the keys to Chicago thirty years ago.
"Forty minutes ago, while Dad was busy ordering vintage Bordeaux for the head table," Julian said smoothly, "my compliance monitoring software flagged an irregular wire transfer out of Dad’s personal discretionary line at Chicago Private Bank. Half a million dollars wired to a premier luxury brokerage in the Gold Coast—closing tomorrow morning at ten on a four-million-dollar penthouse condo on Astor Street in the name of V.V. Lifestyle LLC."
Lucas let out a harsh bark of laughter. "He bought that little tramp a four-million-dollar penthouse on Astor Street?!"
"He put down five hundred thousand in earnest money and signed a personal guarantee for the remaining three point five million drawn against the Sterling Family Irrevocable Trust," Julian corrected, his mouth curving into a lethal smile. "Which brings us to the little detail Dad seems to have forgotten after ten years of letting me run the legal paperwork."
Evelyn’s lips curved slightly beneath the ice pack. "Clause Nine of the 2016 pre-nuptial and corporate restructuring agreement."
"Wait—what’s Clause Nine?" Lucas leaned forward on his knees, looking from his mother to his older brother.
"Thirty-two years ago, when your father had nothing but a rusty revolver and a leather jacket, my father gave him the South Side routes on one condition," Evelyn explained evenly as the Maybach pulled out into the snowy downtown night toward her private lakefront estate in Lake Forest. "Every legitimate holding company, every harbor lease, every casino deed, and fifty-one percent of the voting shares in Sterling Global were placed in my name and held in trust for my three biological sons. Ten years ago, when your father finally insisted on a legal marriage ceremony to satisfy the high-society real estate boards, he asked Julian to merge our holdings into a single joint corporate umbrella."
"And I did," Julian said silkily. "Right after I inserted a standard Moral & Fiduciary Forfeiture Clause on page eighty-four—which Dad signed without reading because he was late for a golf game with the Mayor. Under Clause Nine, if Arthur Sterling commits documented public infidelity or diverts family trust capital to an outside romantic third party without the co-signature of the Matriarch and at least two of the three Class-A heirs..."
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Damon’s eyes lit up with dark satisfaction. "His forty-nine percent voting power automatically suspends and reverts to the board."
"Which consists of the four of us sitting in this car," Evelyn finished quietly. "Julian, freeze every corporate credit line, every bank account, and the three-point-five-million-dollar closing wire for the Astor Street penthouse effective at 8:00 AM tomorrow. Damon, pull every security guard, driver, and dock crew off your father’s personal detail tonight and reassign them to the Lake Forest gates. If Arthur wants to play house with Valerie Vane, let’s see how long she loves a mafia boss who can't pay for his own gas."
