Chapter 9 - The Line in the Limestone
The West Loop site was an acre of mud, twisted rebar, and the gray skeletons of three half-built luxury towers that had been intended to be the jewel of the Crane fortune.
By midnight, the storm had returned, the snow turning the mud into a black sludge that swallowed the wheels of the construction trucks.
Sebastian Crane was standing inside the temporary leasing office—a glass trailer that smelled of propane heat and blue prints—when the black cars arrived. He was alone except for his security manager and a young lawyer who looked like he had been crying in his car.
Dante stepped through the door first. He didn't have his coat on tonight. He wore his black silk shirt, his gloves, and a long silver chain that held the key to the family vault in Palermo.
I walked behind him, my midnight-blue silk dress protected by a long oilskin coat I had borrowed from Enzo. My boots were caked in mud, but my head was up. I didn't feel small in the glass room. I felt like the wall.
"Sebastian," I said.
My ex-husband turned around. His hair was messy, his tie gone, his eyes wild with the specific panic of a man who had spent his whole life relying on contracts only to find himself in a room where the paper was burning.
"Evelyn," he gasped, reaching for the desk as if it could keep him from falling. "You... you can't be here. The lawyers said you were under a restraining order."
"The lawyers are currently at the federal building in Loop," Dante said, stepping into the light of the propane heater. "They are explaining to the district attorney why your company has been using city pension funds to guarantee private loans in Switzerland. The judge—Miller—has already signed the affidavit. He was very cooperative once Enzo showed him the photos of his daughter’s villa in San Diego."
Sebastian looked at his security manager, but the man had already stepped back into the corner, his hands raised to his shoulders.
"You ruined me," Sebastian whispered to me, his voice cracking like dry wood. "Three years I gave you a name. I gave you a house on the Gold Coast. And you bring these... these animals into my business?"
"You didn't give me a name, Sebastian," I said, walking up to the desk until I could see the sweat on his forehead. "You gave me a lease on a corner where I wasn't allowed to speak. You threw me out with twenty-six dollars because you thought the world was only as big as your mother’s dining table. But the world is much bigger than that. And it has room for me."
Dante stepped beside me. He didn't look at Sebastian. He looked at the lawyer in the corner.
"The quit-claim deed for the Wacker Drive property," Dante said. "Sign it."
The lawyer didn't look at Sebastian for permission. He pulled a gold pen from his pocket and signed the blue paper with a speed that looked almost comical.
Dante took the paper, folded it once, and dropped it into my coat pocket. "The third-floor nursery needs a terrace," he said to me. "The view of the river will be excellent for Nico's ferns."
As we walked out into the mud and the snow, Sebastian ran to the door of the trailer, his face pressed against the glass like a child locked out of a shop. "Evelyn!" he screamed through the wind. "Evelyn, you're nothing without the Crane name! You're just a fat girl from Bend!"
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Dante stopped in the black sludge. He didn't turn around, but his hand found mine in the dark, his leather glove rough and warm against my bare fingers.
"The Crane name is dead, Mr. Crane," Dante said into the storm. "In this city, the only name that goes is Bellandi. And she is the one who holds the key."
