Chapter 7 - On Her Knees in the Snow
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"I didn't know Ricky was selling them to the Albanians!" Valerie shrieked, lying through her teeth as she pressed her back flat against the hydraulic lift post, looking from Arthur’s murderous glare to Lucas’s cold, unblinking eyes. "Ricky just asked me when you were going to be out of town so he knew when he didn't have to guard the garage! Arthur, baby, you know I love you—I wouldn't steal from you!"
Arthur didn't look like a man in love anymore.
He looked like a fifty-four-year-old crime boss who had just realized that he had thrown away a thirty-two-year marriage, a billion-dollar empire, the respect of the entire Chicago Commission, and his three sons for a twenty-six-year-old gold-digger who had been robbing his trucks behind his back with the Albanian mob!
"You lying little—" Arthur lunged forward, raising his hand to strike her across the face.
Lucas caught his father’s wrist mid-air, stopping the blow with an iron grip that made Arthur wince.
"Uh-uh, Dad," Lucas said coldly, shoving his father’s arm back down. "You lost the right to play the betrayed boss at ten o’clock last night when you didn't lift a finger for Mom. You don't get to wash your hands on her face now just because she made a fool out of you too."
Just then, the rumble of three heavy V8 engines echoed from the entrance of the Bridgeport alley outside the open garage bay.
Three black Range Rovers with tinted windows rolled into the lot and blocked the street exit. The doors flew open, and Luan Krasniqi—the scar-faced thirty-eight-year-old head of the Albanian crew on the West Side—stepped out onto the snowy asphalt flanked by eight men carrying Kalashnikovs beneath their long wool coats.
Wait—they weren't aiming their rifles at Lucas.
Because at eight o’clock that morning, Lucas had called Luan Krasniqi personally, handed back the three kilos of cocaine untouched as a gesture of peace between the Sterling brothers and the West Side, and given Luan the full ledger showing that Ricky and Valerie Vane had been skimming ten percent out of the bags before resealing them—and planning to blame the shortage on Luan’s own cousin!
Luan Krasniqi walked up to the open garage line, nodded once in deep respect to Lucas, and pointed a gloved finger at Ricky tied to the chair and Valerie cowering by the lift.
"We got no beef with Donna Evelyn or the Sterling boys, Lucas," Luan said in his thick Balkan accent. "Thank you for returning our property. Now hand over the thief and his sister—they owe us four hundred thousand dollars for the cut product and the heat they brought on our warehouse."
Ricky let out a high-pitched scream behind his duct-taped mouth as two of Luan’s massive enforcers walked into the garage, cut his chair loose, and dragged him kicking and thrashing toward the back of the Range Rover.
"No! Ricky!" Valerie sobbed, dropping to her knees on the oily concrete floor in her four-inch red heels and white fur coat as Luan’s second enforcer reached for her arm. She scrambled across the dirty floor on her hands and knees and wrapped both arms around Arthur’s trouser legs! "Arthur! Save us! Pay him the four hundred thousand! You’re Arthur Sterling—tell them I’m with you!"
Arthur looked down at her clinging to his knees, then looked at Luan Krasniqi’s eight automatic rifles, and then looked at his youngest son, Lucas, whose six soldiers hadn't raised a single gun to defend Arthur Sterling’s mistress.
"I don't have four hundred thousand dollars, Valerie," Arthur said, his voice hollow and dead as he pulled his leg out of her grasp and stepped back toward the office wall. "My accounts are frozen. And you stole from my trucks."
Valerie stared up at Arthur in horror as he abandoned her without a fight—just as he had abandoned Evelyn the night before.
Panic tearing every shred of pride out of her throat, Valerie crawled across the grease-stained concrete toward Lucas’s boots, tears and black mascara pouring down her cheeks.
"Lucas, please!" Valerie wept, pressing her forehead practically onto the toe of his leather boot. "Don't let the Albanians take me! Tell your mother I’m sorry! I’ll go up to Lake Forest right now and get down on my knees in the snow in front of her whole staff and beg her forgiveness! I’ll wash her floors! Just don't let Luan put me in that truck!"
Lucas looked down at the woman groveling in the motor oil at his feet.
He didn't kick her away. Instead, he pulled out his phone, hit a single speed-dial button on FaceTime, and angled the camera downward toward the garage floor.
On the screen of Lucas’s phone, sitting in the sunlit conservatory of the Lake Forest estate sipping hot Earl Grey tea from a fine bone-china cup with the faint bruise on her cheekbone barely visible now, was Evelyn Sterling.
"She wants to tell you something, Ma," Lucas said calmly, holding the phone down in front of Valerie’s face.
"Mrs. Sterling! Donna Evelyn, please!" Valerie sobbed into the camera, her manicured hands clasped together in frantic prayer as she knelt on the freezing concrete. "I'm so sorry I touched you last night! I was crazy—Arthur lied to me and told me you were already separated! Please tell your son not to hand me over to the Albanians—I’m begging you, please save my life!"
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Through the speaker of the phone, Evelyn looked down at the weeping twenty-six-year-old girl for three silent seconds.
"Luan," Evelyn said calmly over the phone speaker, addressing the Albanian boss standing ten feet away. "Take her brother to work off his debt on your cargo boats in Duluth, and take the white fur coat off her back to cover the interest—Arthur bought it with my trust money anyway. Leave the girl alive on the sidewalk so everyone in Chicago can see what Arthur Sterling traded his family for."
