Chapter 3 - Bread and Water
The Maybach moved through the rain-slicked streets of Chicago like a phantom. Outside, neon signs from pawn shops and all-night laundromats blurred past the tinted glass. Inside, it was so quiet I could hear the faint ticking of the analog clock on the dash.
I sat pressed against the far door, the warm brown paper bag resting on my knees. The rich scent of roasted chicken and herbs filled the cabin. My stomach gave a loud, pathetic growl.
I closed my eyes, mortified.
Gabriel didn’t smile, which I was grateful for. He reached into a small refrigerated compartment between the seats, retrieved a glass bottle of sparkling water, uncapped it, and set it into the holder beside me.
“Drink,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been on your feet since four this afternoon. Drink the water, Clara.”
I reached out, my hand trembling slightly, and took the bottle. The water was crisp and cold. It eased the dry burning in my throat.
“Eli,” Gabriel said after several long minutes of silence. “Is he asleep?”
“Mrs. Higgins is watching him,” I replied, staring out at the rain streaking horizontally across the window. “She lives on the second floor. She’s seventy-two and arthritic, but she lets him sit in her parlor and read his library books until I get home. I pay her five dollars an hour.”
“What does he read?”
“Whatever he can carry home. Last week it was astronomy. This week it’s ancient Roman architecture.” A small, genuine smile touched my lips before I could stop it. “He told me yesterday that our apartment building lacks ‘structural integrity’ because the lintels are sagging.”
For the first time that night, Gabriel’s lips curved into a faint, real smile. It changed his entire face. The ruthless mob boss vanished for a fraction of a second, replaced by a man who looked unexpectedly human.
“He’s not wrong,” Gabriel said. “Most tenement buildings in Humboldt Park were thrown up after the fire with cheap pine and lime mortar. They weren’t built to last fifty years, let alone a hundred.”
“It’s all I can afford,” I said softly.
“For now.”
The car turned onto my street. The streetlights here were yellow and flickering, half of them shattered by teenagers with air rifles. Rusting sedans were parked bumper-to-bumper along the curbs. In front of my building, three young men in heavy winter parkas were huddled beneath the stoop awning, passing a blunt between them.
As the massive, dark Maybach slowed to a crawl beside the curb, the three men instantly froze.
They saw the car. They saw the sleek lines, the blacked-out windows, the distinct city tags. One of them tapped his friend’s shoulder, muttered something beneath his breath, and all three immediately pushed off the stoop and walked briskly away down the alley.
Power didn’t need to announce itself here. It was recognized in the shadows before it even opened its mouth.
The car stopped. Leo kept the engine idling, his eyes scanning the mirrors.
I reached for the door handle. “Thank you, Mr. Hart. For the ride, and for... stopping Dennis.”
“Wait,” he commanded softly.
I paused, looking back at him.
Gabriel pulled a small, heavy silver card from his pocket. It wasn't an ordinary business card; it was thick, textured parchment with his name and a single private telephone number embossed in dark ink.
“Tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, a car will pick you and Eli up,” he said.
I pulled my hand back from the door as if the card were hot metal. “What? No. Mr. Hart, I appreciate the charity, but I don’t need a savior. I’m looking for another archival job. I have an interview at the Newberry Library next week—”
“The Newberry position is an unpaid junior fellowship,” Gabriel interrupted flatly. “It pays a two-hundred-dollar monthly stipend. You cannot feed your son on that, Clara.”
I stared at him, cold anger rising to combat my shock. “Have you been researching my entire life?”
“I run an organization that relies on information to survive. Arthur Vance was a loyal friend to my family. When he died, I should have looked into his affairs sooner. I didn't. That was an oversight.” He extended the card toward me. “I have a collection of twelve hundred fifteenth-century trade ledgers, court records, and ecclesiastical manuscripts in my private residence in Lake Forest. They were damaged during a water pipe burst three weeks ago. My current curators want to pulp them. I want them saved.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Fifteenth-century?”
“Venetian and Milanese,” he said, his voice dropping lower, holding a strange, hypnotic cadence. “Handmade rag paper. Iron gall ink. Bound in split pigskin and blind-stamped calf. They need washing, deacidification, and resewing. There is no one in the Midwest with the technical skill to touch them without destroying them. Except you.”
My fingers twitched. Every instinct as a craftsman, every love for the craft my father had poured into my veins, pulled at me like a physical chain.
“How much?” I managed to whisper.
“Ten thousand a month,” Gabriel said without flinching. “Full medical and dental for you and Eli. Private tutoring on the estate grounds while you work. And an apartment in the carriage house on the north lawn.”
The number made my head spin. It was more money than my father’s shop had cleared in its best two years combined.
“And what do you want from me?” I asked, my voice trembling with sudden suspicion. “Men like you don’t hand out carriage houses and ten thousand dollars a month for old paper.”
Gabriel leaned forward slightly. The shadows fell across his eyes, turning them into dark pools.
“I want the ledgers restored, Clara. But more than that, I want to know what is written in the margins. Because whoever flooded that vault didn’t do it by accident. They did it to erase names.”
He pressed the card into my palm, his warm, calloused fingers brushing against my cold skin. An electric spark seemed to jump between our hands.
May you like
“Be ready at ten,” he said. “Don't make me wait.”
***