Chapter 1 - The Man in the Rain
Rain turned Chicago into a city made of mirrors.
Red brake lights stretched across the pavement. Neon signs shimmered in puddles. The wind drove cold water sideways between the buildings, finding every opening in my thin jacket and soaking straight through the white waitressing blouse beneath it.
Three consecutive shifts had left me feeling as if I were walking on broken glass.
I kept moving anyway.
That was what I did.
Keep moving.
One more block.
One more shift.
One more month.
One more promise that things would eventually become easier.
My name was Eliza Ki, and at twenty-five years old, I had become frighteningly good at surviving things I once believed would break me.
My mother’s illness.
Her death.
The hospital bills.
Dropping out of community college.
Losing the little apartment we had shared.
Starting over in a studio where the heater worked only when it felt charitable.
I had survived all of it.
That night, all I wanted was a shower and six uninterrupted hours of sleep.
Construction narrowed the sidewalk ahead. A line of pedestrians squeezed between temporary fencing and the curb.
Then everyone stopped.
Not gradually.
Instantly.
A strange silence rippled through the crowd.
I lifted my head.
Three black SUVs had pulled beside the curb.
Two men emerged from the first vehicle. Black suits. White shirts. Dark glasses despite the rain and fading evening light.
Neither carried an umbrella.
Their eyes swept the street.
People moved away.
I should have done the same.
Then the rear door of the center SUV opened.
A polished shoe appeared.
The man who stepped onto the pavement was tall enough to stand above almost everyone around him.
Broad shoulders.
Dark suit.
Black shirt beneath it, open at the collar.
Dark hair swept back from his face.
A watch flashed beneath his sleeve as he opened an umbrella.
Something about him changed the space around him.
People did not simply notice him.
They adjusted themselves to him.
I knew that type of power existed in Chicago, but I had spent my life making sure I never got close enough to see it.
Until then.
He started toward the narrow section of sidewalk.
His men formed around him.
I kept my head down and tried to pass.
Then his phone rang.
He listened.
His face hardened.
One of the guards touched an earpiece.
Another looked toward the intersection.
I should have turned around.
Instead, I continued forward.
A businessman rushing the opposite way slammed into my shoulder.
My foot slid on the wet pavement.
I stumbled.
And crashed directly into the stranger.
My hands hit his chest.
Strong hands caught my arms.
For half a second, I forgot how to breathe.
His suit was cold from the rain, but beneath it his body was warm.
He smelled faintly of cedar, expensive cologne, and something darker I could not identify.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
His men moved instantly.
The atmosphere tightened.
He did not look at them.
He looked at me.
Dark eyes.
Not black, exactly.
Brown so deep they appeared black beneath the city lights.
His gaze moved slowly over my face.
Not rudely.
Not casually.
As though he were trying to remember something.
“Your name.”
It was not a question.
I swallowed.
“Eliza.”
His hands remained around my arms.
“Eliza what?”
“Ki.”
Something changed.
It was almost invisible.
His fingers tightened slightly.
“Ki?”
“Yes.”
He studied me.
“Your father?”
I blinked.
“What?”
“Was he Italian?”
The question was so strange that I almost laughed.
“My mother said he was. I never knew him.”
The man became very still.
Rain struck the umbrella above us.
Cars moved through the intersection.
Somewhere behind him, a guard said something quietly.
The stranger appeared not to hear.
“You’re soaked,” he said.
“I noticed.”
One corner of his mouth moved.
It was not quite a smile.
“You always answer strangers like that?”
“Only strangers who interrogate me after I accidentally fall into them.”
This time, he almost smiled.
Then an engine roared.
A sedan took the corner too quickly.
One of his guards shouted.
The stranger moved before I understood what was happening.
He shifted between me and the road.
His hand moved to my waist, guiding me backward toward the building.
The sedan splashed through a deep puddle and continued down the street.
Nothing happened.
But every guard remained tense.
The stranger looked after the vehicle for a moment.
Then he looked back at me.
The softness was gone.
For a second, I saw the man everyone else had apparently recognized before I did.
Dangerous.
Controlled.
Accustomed to being obeyed.
His hand entered his jacket.
My heart jumped.
He removed a cream-colored card.
No name.
No company.
Only a telephone number embossed in black.
He placed it in my hand.
“If you need anything, call.”
I stared at the card.
“I don’t even know who you are.”
He looked at me for another long moment.
“You will.”
Then he walked away.
His men followed.
I stood under the awning of a closed store, watching him enter the center SUV.
Only after the convoy began moving did I notice that one vehicle stayed behind.
It followed me home.
Not close enough to appear threatening.
Just close enough that I could not convince myself it was coincidence.
When I reached my apartment building, my front-door lock jammed.
My hands were shaking too badly to turn the key properly.
“Need help?”
I spun around.
One of the men from the sidewalk stood ten feet behind me.
I reached into my bag for the pepper spray I carried.
He stopped immediately.
“Miss Ki, I’m not here to frighten you.”
“You’re doing an impressive job anyway.”
His expression barely changed.
“Mr. Richi wanted to make sure you arrived home safely.”
Everything inside me went cold.
“Richi?”
The guard nodded.
And suddenly I knew.
Dante Richi.
Everyone in Chicago knew the name.
Politicians denied knowing him.
Business owners lowered their voices when discussing him.
Newspapers called him a controversial businessman.
People in neighborhoods like mine used less polite descriptions.
The Richi family had been connected to half the rumors whispered through Chicago for decades.
Waterfront contracts.
Construction.
Nightclubs.
Private security.
Political influence.
The kind of empire that existed partly in daylight and partly in shadows.
I stared at the guard.
“You’re telling me the man I ran into was Dante Richi?”
“Yes.”
For several seconds, I could only hear the rain.
The guard gently held out his hand.
“Your keys?”
Against my better judgment, I gave them to him.
He opened the stubborn door in seconds.
“Mr. Richi will be in touch.”
“That sounds more threatening than you probably intended.”
Something close to amusement appeared in his eyes.
“With Mr. Richi, intention can be difficult to determine.”
Then he left.
I locked myself inside.
From my window, I watched the SUV remain outside for several minutes.
Eventually, it drove away.
I placed the cream card on my kitchenette counter.
Dante Richi.
I had fallen into the arms of one of Chicago’s most feared men.
And somehow, what frightened me most was not that he had touched me.
It was the way he had looked at me when I told him my name.
As though Eliza Ki meant something to him.
Something I did not understand.
I slept badly.
At eight the next morning, my phone buzzed.
A message from my manager.
Don’t bother coming in today or ever again. Position filled.
I stared at the screen.
Three shifts covering someone else.
No warning.
No explanation.
Just gone.
Rent was due in seven days.
I had less than two hundred dollars.
My gaze traveled across the room.
Toward the cream card.
“No.”
I shoved it into a drawer.
I spent the day applying everywhere.
Restaurants.
Coffee shops.
Retail stores.
Hotels.
By late afternoon, my feet hurt even worse than the night before.
Nobody was hiring immediately.
Everyone would call.
Everyone would let me know.
Everyone smiled the same empty smile.
I bought the cheapest coffee I could find and sat near a window.
A black SUV passed outside.
My stomach tightened.
Coincidence.
It had to be.
But when I left, I saw another one two blocks later.
And when I returned home after sunset, there was a sleek black car parked outside my building.
A man stood beside it.
“Miss Ki.”
I stopped.
My hand moved toward my bag.
“Mr. Richi would like to speak with you.”
“I’m not interested.”
“It concerns your employment situation.”
I froze.
Nobody except my manager knew I had been fired.
At least, nobody should have known.
“How does he know about that?”
The man opened the rear door.
“You should ask him.”
I looked inside.
Empty leather seats.
Soft interior lighting.
A world completely different from mine.
Everything sensible inside me screamed to walk away.
But rent was due.
My job was gone.
And Dante Richi somehow knew.
I climbed into the car.
The door closed behind me.
Twenty minutes later, the vehicle stopped in front of a building I had walked past many times but never imagined entering.
A private elevator took me to the top floor.
The doors opened.
Dante Richi stood alone before a wall of glass overlooking Chicago.
He did not turn around immediately.
“You came.”
“You had someone waiting outside my home.”
“You could have refused.”
“I tried.”
That brought the faintest smile.
He turned.
Without the rain between us, he looked even more intimidating.
And somehow more human.
“There’s something you should know, Eliza.”
“What?”
He walked toward a desk.
A folder rested on top.
He opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
A much younger woman stood beside a man whose face had been partly torn from the picture.
The woman was my mother.
I stopped breathing.
Dante watched me carefully.
Then he said the sentence that changed everything.
“I knew who you were before you knew who I was.”
And suddenly losing my job no longer seemed like the worst thing that had happened that morning.
Because Dante Richi knew my mother.
May you like
And whatever story he was about to tell me had begun long before I ever stepped into the rain.
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