Chapter 4 - The Outfit’s InvitationThe word moved through the Chicago underworld like rot through an old porch timber: The Han Circle had a new auditor, and she was three feet tall.
At first, the older bosses—the remnants of the Giancana and Accardo lines who still met in the back of a steakhouse on Taylor Street—laughed it off. They thought Marcus was losing his mind, retreating into the eccentricities of a cripple who had spent too many years staring at the snow from behind twelve-foot limestone walls.
Then Frankie "The Tooth" Scalia’s body was found in the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car parked two blocks from the FBI field office on Roosevelt Road.
He wasn't beaten. He wasn't shot.
His ledgers—every single black-market shipping manifest, protection racket payout, and union kickback sheet for the entire South Side—had been shredded into confetti, soaked in water, and stuffed down his throat until he choked.
On top of the shredded paper was a single, greasy piece of lined notebook paper with a blue crayon mark: F-
That night, the phone on Marcus Han’s mahogany desk rang at three in the morning.
Marcus picked it up on the first ring. He didn't say hello.
"Marcus," a gravelly, ancient voice rasped through the encrypted line. It belonged to Salvatore "Sal" Moretti, the eighty-two-year-old patriarch of the Outfit. "You’ve gone off the deep end, kid. Using a civilian... using a baby to run your books? The feds are sniffing around Briar Hill like hounds on a fresh deer."
Marcus looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the dark lawn. The snow was falling again, thick and heavy, blurring the lights of the security cameras.
"Sal," Marcus said, his voice like grinding stones. "Your boys took my terminal in Gary. You thought I was weak because I sit in a chair."
"I thought you had brains, Marcus! You’re bringing a kid into a war zone—"
"She’s not in a war zone," Marcus interrupted softly. "She’s doing her homework. And by the way, Sal? Check your third-quarter accounts for the garbage haulers' union. You’re missing four hundred grand. Amara found it while she was looking for her eraser."
A long, heavy silence stretched across the line.
"Who the hell is Amara?" Moretti whispered.
May you like
"She’s my auditor," Marcus said. "And if any of your capos come within five hundred yards of Briar Hill Road again, I won't send Leo. I’ll let her do your taxes."
Marcus hung up the phone before the old man could answer.
