Chapter 2 - The Digital Scavenger Hunt
Leo called me back within three hours.
By then, I was sitting in the leather swivel chair of my downtown high-rise office—a sterile, minimalist suite overlooking the sprawling Chicago skyline. The financial spreadsheets on my desk were a convenient fiction; the real work happened in the encrypted terminal screens glowing against the dark glass.
"You're not going to like this, boss," Leo’s voice crackled through the encrypted earpiece.
"I rarely like anything that ruins my morning coffee, Leo. Spit it out."
"It’s not a digital hack," Leo explained, his fingers clacking furiously against a mechanical keyboard in the background. "There’s zero evidence of a malware installation on Grace’s phone, no unauthorized router logins, no rogue Bluetooth connections. Your home network is clean as a whistle."
I frowned, swirling the dark roast in my ceramic mug. "Then how are they reaching her? She doesn't leave the house except for groceries and her painting supplies at the community center."
"That’s just it, Elias. They aren't reaching her through a screen. They’re reaching her the old-fashioned way. Flesh and blood."
A cold spike of adrenaline pierced my chest. "Explain."
"I pulled the traffic camera footage from the intersection two blocks away from your cul-de-sac. Yesterday afternoon, around two o'clock—right around the time Mrs. Turner claims she heard the screaming—a late-model sedan pulled up right by the side gate of your property. A man got out. He didn't knock on the front door. He walked straight down the alley, hopped the low wooden fence into your backyard, and stayed inside the perimeter for roughly eighteen minutes."
My fists clenched so hard the ceramic mug groaned under my grip. Someone had walked into my home. Into the sacred space I had carved out for Grace to keep her safe from my world.
"Did you get a plate?" I asked, my voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register.
"Plates were stolen off a junked Honda in Gary, Indiana," Leo replied, sounding unimpressed. "Classic amateur-hour move, but the guy knew what he was doing. He wore a baseball cap pulled low, kept his face tilted away from the automated lenses. But I ran facial matching heuristics on his gait and height against our internal database of local underworld runners. Guess who popped up?"
"Don't play guessing games with me, Leo."
"Marcus Vance."
The name hit the room like a physical blow.
Marcus Vance. A mid-level enforcer and information broker who used to work for the Kovalev Syndicate—a Russian-backed outfit I had systematically dismantled three years ago during a brutal turf war over the shipping ports on Lake Michigan. Vance had slipped through the cracks of that war, hiding out in the industrial outskirts of Cicero while the dust settled. I had assumed he fled the state.
Instead, he had been sitting in my backyard.
"Vance," I murmured, tasting copper in my mouth. "Why would Vance target Grace? He knows me. He knows what I did to his bosses. If he wanted revenge, he would have come after me directly with a piece of iron, not played hide-and-seek with my wife."
"That’s the kicker, boss," Leo said, his tone turning grave. "Vance isn't operating on his own steam. He's broke. Two months ago, his gambling debts in the underground clubs off Cicero Avenue caught up with him. Someone bailed him out. Paid off fifty grand in marker debts overnight."
"Who?"
"That’s what I spent the last two hours digging into. The money didn't come from a local bank. It was funneled through a shell corporation registered in Delaware. But the signature on the wire transfer escrow account? It traces back to a legal firm representing Victor Sterling."
Victor Sterling.
The name detonated a string of memories I thought I had buried six feet under. Sterling was a ruthless corporate raider and old-money power broker on the Gold Coast. Ten years ago, before I consolidated my grip on the city's independent syndicates, Sterling and I had clashed over a multi-million-dollar real estate acquisition downtown. I didn't just beat him out of the deal; I exposed his offshore tax evasion schemes to federal investigators, forcing him to pay a crippling nine-figure settlement that nearly stripped him of his family estate.
He didn't go to prison, but he lost his crown. And men like Victor Sterling don't forgive humiliation. They wait. They watch. And when they find your soft spot, they drive a dagger straight through it.
"He didn't just want to hurt me," I whispered, the puzzle pieces snapping into a horrifying picture. "He wants to take everything I built, piece by piece, starting with the only pure thing I have left."
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"What are your orders, Elias?" Leo asked, the keyboard falling silent. "Do we pick Vance up off the street and squeeze him until he sings?"
"No," I said, standing up from my desk, my eyes fixed on the Chicago skyline outside the floor-to-ceiling glass. "Picking him up is too easy. Vance is just the messenger dog. I want to invite him into my house. And I want to show him what happens when you bite the hand that feeds you."
