Chapter 1 - The Woman Who Wouldn't Fall
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Nora Pell woke up beneath a parked car with blood running into her right eye.
For several seconds, she couldn't remember where she was. The concrete beneath her cheek was cold, and the fluorescent lights overhead flickered like dying stars. Somewhere nearby, an engine idled.
Then she remembered the black SUV.
The men.
The blow to the back of her head.
And the flash drive she had hidden inside her coat.
She tried to sit up.
Pain exploded through her ribs.
Nora gasped and collapsed against the concrete, pressing one hand over her mouth to keep from making another sound. Her right ankle was swollen inside her boot. Something was wrong with it. Something was also wrong with her breathing, because every inhale felt like dragging broken glass through her chest.
She had no glasses. One sleeve was torn. Her phone was gone.
But the flash drive remained.
She pushed herself upright against a concrete pillar and checked her coat pocket with trembling fingers.
There.
Forty-two floors above her, Raphael Corsetti was conducting a private meeting in the north penthouse of the tallest building he owned.
He was the most dangerous man in Chicago's underworld, a businessman in public and the head of a criminal empire in private. His enemies called him ruthless. His allies called him disciplined. The people who worked closest to him knew he had a particular hatred for surprises.
Nora had worked for him for two years.
She had managed financial records, traced suspicious payments, and repaired the messes that other people were too frightened to acknowledge. She knew which accounts were legitimate, which companies existed only on paper, and which men could not be trusted with a simple expense report.
More importantly, she knew Raphael had never asked her to lie.
Until someone started using his name to move millions of dollars through accounts he had never approved.
Three days earlier, Nora had found the first discrepancy.
Two days earlier, she had identified the shell company.
Yesterday, she had copied the original transaction records.
And an hour ago, someone had tried to kill her.
Nora looked toward the elevator bank.
The nearest elevator required a security card she no longer possessed. The emergency stairs were accessible from the far side of the garage.
She could call for help.
If her phone had not been taken.
She could wait for someone to find her.
If the people who had attacked her had not already arranged for nobody to look.
Nora pushed herself to her feet.
The first step nearly brought her down.
The second made her vision blur.
She reached the stairwell by holding the wall and pulling herself forward one painful inch at a time.
The building had forty-two floors.
She knew because she had once complained that the emergency stairs were absurdly inconvenient.
Now every floor was a separate negotiation with her body.
By the tenth landing, she could barely breathe.
By the twentieth, she had stopped trying to count her steps.
At the twenty-seventh, she sat down for eleven seconds, staring at the gray concrete beneath her shoes.
Then she remembered the last message on her stolen phone.
If Corsetti sees the original ledger, everyone involved is finished.
She stood again.
By the thirty-fifth floor, her fingers were leaving red smears on the handrail.
By the fortieth, she was crying without noticing.
At the forty-second, she stumbled into the corridor outside the north penthouse.
A young security guard turned at the sound.
"Miss Pell?"
Nora kept moving.
"Is he in?"
"Miss Pell, what happened to you?"
"Is he in?"
The guard swallowed.
"Yes. He's in a meeting."
"Good."
She reached the black walnut door and knocked.
Raphael opened it himself.
His expression changed the moment he saw her.
"Nora?"
"Sorry I'm late."
Her knees gave way.
He caught her before her head struck the floor.
For one terrible second, Raphael Corsetti stood perfectly still, holding a woman whose blood was soaking into his shirt.
Then he shouted for a doctor.
Nora tried to lift her hand.
"The ledger," she whispered.
"Don't talk."
"They're inside your house."
"Who?"
Her eyes searched his face.
"The people you trust."
Then she went limp in his arms.
Raphael lowered her carefully to the floor, one hand supporting her head.
He had ordered men shot for less than what had happened to her.
But as he looked at Nora's broken body, he understood something that frightened him more than any enemy ever had.
Someone had crossed his security perimeter, attacked the one person in his organization who could expose their crimes, and left her to die.
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And they had done it believing Raphael Corsetti would never discover the truth.
They had made their first mistake.
