Chapter 2 - A Debt That Shouldn't Exist
Chloe didn't sleep.
Dominic's apartment building had security downstairs, cameras in the elevators, and locks that looked strong enough to protect a bank vault.
None of that mattered.
Every sound woke her.
Sam slept in the second bedroom.
At 3:17 a.m., Chloe checked on him for the fourth time.
He was curled beneath a blanket, finally warm.
She closed the door.
Dominic stood at the other end of the hallway.
She jumped.
"You can't just appear like that."
"It's my building."
"That doesn't make it less creepy."
He handed her a phone.
"Temporary number."
"I have a phone."
"Yours is compromised."
"How do you know?"
"Because Varga found you at the diner."
Chloe stared at him.
"Who is he?"
Dominic didn't answer immediately.
"A man who built a business by making people believe they had fewer choices than they actually did."
"And you?"
"What about me?"
"How did you build yours?"
Dominic met her gaze.
"Go to sleep."
"That's not an answer."
"No."
He walked away.
The next morning, Chloe entered Laura for the first time as an employee.
The restaurant was beautiful enough to make her angry.
Mahogany walls.
Brass fixtures.
White linen.
People spent more on one dinner there than she earned in a week.
Dominic introduced her to Elena Ruiz, the general manager.
Elena was forty-five, efficient, sharp-eyed, and completely unimpressed by Dominic.
"You brought me another project?" Elena asked.
"Employee."
"Same thing when you're involved."
Chloe liked her immediately.
Within a week, Elena discovered Chloe was far better with numbers than Dominic had expected.
Within three weeks, Chloe had found duplicate supplier invoices.
Within two months, she had reorganized payroll, caught a liquor distributor overcharging them, and discovered that one assistant manager had been stealing.
Dominic never praised her.
He simply gave her more responsibility.
It irritated her.
It also made her work harder.
Three months passed.
Varga's men disappeared.
Sam started at a better school.
The apartment became almost normal.
Then Chloe found the envelope.
It had been slipped beneath her office door at Laura.
No name.
Inside was a photocopy of a ledger page.
MICHAEL BENNETT.
$40,000.
Below it:
COLLATERAL: C.B.
Chloe stared.
C.B.
Chloe Bennett.
Her hands went cold.
There was also a date.
The debt had supposedly been created six months after her father stopped gambling.
She knew because that was when he'd entered treatment.
She carried the page upstairs.
Dominic was meeting with Paulie.
She dropped it onto his desk.
"Explain."
Dominic looked down.
His face gave away nothing.
"Where did you get this?"
"My office."
Paulie moved toward the door.
Dominic stopped him.
"Wait."
Chloe folded her arms.
"Did you know?"
"Know what?"
"That my name was collateral."
"No."
"Did you know the debt was fake?"
Dominic looked at the date.
"No."
"You're lying."
"I'm not."
"But you suspected something."
"Yes."
Her anger sharpened.
"Why?"
Dominic opened a drawer.
He removed the wallet from the alley.
Then the brass card.
He turned it over.
There was a tiny embossed symbol in one corner.
A crown inside a circle.
"I've seen this mark before."
"Where?"
"Old ledgers."
"Whose?"
Dominic was silent.
"Yours?"
"My father's."
Chloe stepped back.
Suddenly the room felt smaller.
"Your family knew mine."
"I don't know."
"That's another lie."
"No. It's an answer you don't like."
She hated that distinction.
Dominic picked up the photocopy.
"This isn't Varga's normal accounting."
"How would you know?"
"Because I've seen his books."
Chloe stared at him.
He didn't explain.
"The debt was manufactured," Dominic continued. "Or transferred from somewhere else."
"Why?"
"That's what I intend to find out."
"No."
Dominic looked up.
"We find out."
"Chloe—"
"My name is on the page."
"And that's exactly why you shouldn't be involved."
She laughed once.
"You brought me into your restaurant. Put me in your building. Paid the debt. Now that the reason finally appears, you want me to stay out?"
"Yes."
"Not happening."
For several seconds they simply looked at each other.
Paulie cleared his throat.
"I can leave."
"Stay," they both said.
Paulie sighed.
That afternoon, Dominic arranged a meeting with Varga.
Not in an alley.
Not in a club.
At Laura.
Chloe wasn't invited.
She came anyway.
Varga arrived at four.
He was sixty, silver-haired, immaculate.
He smiled when he saw Chloe.
"Michael's girl."
Chloe's skin crawled.
Dominic stepped between them.
"Sit."
Varga smiled wider.
"I remember when you were twenty-two and couldn't get anyone to sit when you asked."
"You're remembering a world that doesn't exist anymore."
Varga sat.
Dominic placed the ledger copy on the table.
"What is this?"
Varga glanced at it.
"A debt."
"It's fabricated."
"Everything is fabricated until someone agrees to pay it."
Dominic's eyes hardened.
"Why Chloe?"
Varga looked at her.
"Ask her father."
"He's dead."
"Convenient."
Chloe stepped forward.
"My father stopped gambling before that date."
Varga shrugged.
"Maybe gambling wasn't what he owed for."
Dominic leaned across the table.
"What did Michael Bennett have?"
For the first time, Varga stopped smiling.
That was the answer.
Dominic saw it.
So did Chloe.
"What did he have?" she repeated.
Varga stood.
"Our business is concluded."
Dominic didn't move.
"I paid forty thousand dollars for a debt that never existed."
"You've wasted more on wine."
"This isn't about the money."
"No."
Varga looked at Chloe again.
"It certainly isn't."
Then he left.
Chloe waited until the door closed.
"What was that?"
Dominic was already thinking.
"Your father had something."
"Money?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"Something worth creating a fake debt to get close to his family."
Sam arrived from school an hour later.
Chloe tried behaving normally.
He knew immediately that something was wrong.
"Did that guy come back?"
"No."
"You're lying."
Chloe looked at Dominic.
"Apparently everyone thinks I'm bad at it."
"You are," Sam said.
Dominic almost smiled.
Sam removed his backpack.
"I found something."
Chloe's heart stopped.
"What?"
"When your old apartment got messed up, some of my stuff got moved here."
He opened his backpack.
"I forgot Dad gave me this before he went to the hospital."
He removed a small wooden box.
Dominic stood.
Chloe stared.
She remembered it.
Her father had kept it in his bedroom closet for years.
"I thought it was just his junk," Sam said.
There was a tiny lock.
Dominic examined it.
"Do you have the key?"
Sam shook his head.
Chloe picked up the box.
Something rattled inside.
She turned it over.
Scratched into the bottom were two letters.
D.R.
Dominic's face changed.
Chloe looked at him.
"What?"
He took one slow step closer.
"My father's name was Dante Rossi."
The room went silent.
Chloe's fingers tightened around the box.
Then someone knocked on the apartment door.
Three slow knocks.
Paulie checked the security monitor.
His face drained of color.
"Dominic."
"Who is it?"
Paulie looked at him.
"Michael Bennett."
Chloe stopped breathing.
May you like
Her father had been dead for four months.
But the man standing outside the door was wearing her father's coat...
