Chapter 7 - THE CAMPAIGN DONOR
The kitchen table in Apartment 402 was covered in cups of hot black coffee and thick slices of bakery bread Leo had hastily toasted when we arrived.
I sat at the edge of the table, the cracked leather ledger resting between my elbows like a live wire.
My father sat across from me, his reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose as he carefully turned to the smudged page near the front of the book—the page where the ink stopped halfway through writing a name.
“I remember the night this was written,” my father said quietly, his thumb tracing the cracked leather spine. “Arthur came home late. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn't hold his coffee cup. He said the syndicate was being sold out from the inside—not by rivals on the street, but by the men sitting in glass offices downtown.”
Luca leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes fixed on my father. “Who was it, Arthur? Who was the junior partner helping my uncle’s legal counsel siphon the trust funds?”
My father looked up from the page, his faded blue eyes meeting Luca’s with a grim, heavy certainty.
“His name was Charles Sterling,” my father said.
The name dropped into the quiet apartment like a thunderclap.
Charles Sterling.
Currently serving as the senior state prosecutor heading the multi-agency task force investigating organized crime in Chicago. And as of last week, the keynote speaker slated to announce his official candidacy for the United States Senate at a grand gala downtown.
“Sterling?” Luca’s voice dropped into a dangerous, razor-sharp register. “Sterling was just an associate at the municipal firm back in ninety-two. My uncle’s lawyers hired him to handle property zoning.”
“He wasn't just handling zoning,” my father corrected bitterly. “Sterling was the one who orchestrated the break-in at your grandfather’s workshop. He’s the one who framed Arthur for the ledger theft so the syndicate would hunt him down, forcing him to go into hiding for thirty years while Sterling used those stolen offshore accounts to fund his entire political rise.”
I stared at my father, the blood rushing in my ears. “If Sterling has the rest of the stolen records... he’s the one who tipped off the D.A.’s office about your estate tonight, Luca.”
“Of course he did,” Luca said, a cold, lethal smile spreading across his face—the look of a man who had just found the exact throat he was looking for. “Sterling wants my restaurants, my real estate trust, and my family’s name wiped off the map so he can seize our remaining commercial properties under federal forfeiture laws before his Senate campaign begins.”
Leo looked up from the counter, his eyes wide with alarm. “Wait a minute—if he’s a federal prosecutor and a candidate for the Senate, what can we possibly do against him? He has the entire police department and the D.A. in his pocket!”
“He doesn't have the ledger,” I said softly, looking down at the cracked leather book in my hands.
“And without this book,” Luca added, pushing off the counter and walking toward the table, “Sterling’s offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands are untraceable. But with the serial numbers and bank routing codes your grandfather meticulously recorded on these pages...”
He reached out, tapping his finger against a column of numbers near the back of the ledger.
“We have the exact paper trail of every bribe Sterling took from my family over the last thirty years.”
“And how do we get it to the public before he announces his candidacy on Friday?” my father asked, leaning forward in his chair.
Luca looked from my father to me, a fierce, determined light burning in his dark eyes.
“We don't go to the police,” Luca said. “We go to the annual Chicago Press Gala on Thursday night—where every major news outlet, federal investigator, and political donor in the state will be gathered in one room.”
May you like
He reached out, gently placing his hand over mine where it rested on the ledger.
“And you, Emma... are going to serve him the main course.”
