Chapter 4 - The Internal Affairs Trade
The private lounge on the thirty-second floor was built for corporate executions of a different kind. The table was solid black walnut, surrounded by high-backed chairs that kept a man’s spine straight whether he wanted it to be or not.
When Captain Thomas Vance of the Chicago Police Department walked in, he wasn't wearing his uniform. He wore a rumpled wool coat over a cheap suit, his face flushed from the midnight drive and the sheer, unadulterated panic that had been delivered to his doorstep via a handwritten note on Moretti stationary.
Dominic was sitting at the head of the table, a single crystal glass of mineral water in front of him. Marco stood behind his chair, his broad shoulders blocking the heavy oak exit doors, his arms crossed over his chest.
"Dominic," Vance said, his voice tight as he took a seat without being asked, trying to project an authority he didn't possess in this building. "What the hell is this about? My dispatch tells me two of your guys assaulted Detective Perez outside an apartment on Archer. He’s currently in the ER at Mercy with a dislocated shoulder and a broken jaw."
"He fell," Dominic said smoothly, taking a slow sip of his water.
"Fell?" Vance barked, a nervous sweat breaking out along his hairline. "He fell down a flight of stairs into a pair of brass knuckles, Moretti? Come on. He’s a lead investigator on the west side narcotics task force. We can't just bury this. The union is going to want heads."
Dominic reached into his coat pocket, pulled out Jenna’s cracked phone, and slid it across the polished walnut table until it rested directly in front of the captain. The screen was illuminated, displaying the message history between Jenna and Ryan Perez over the last six months—hundreds of texts detailing threats, photos of her bruised ribs, and log numbers of police cruisers parked outside her workplace to intimidate her.
"Open it, Thomas," Dominic said.
Vance frowned, picking up the device with two fingers. As his eyes scanned the messages, the flush on his cheeks slowly faded into a dull, sickly gray.
"Perez is a liability," Dominic said, his voice dropping an octave into a cold, hard mountain of sound. "He’s been using city assets—cruisers, database logs, precinct surveillance—to stalk and terrorize an employee of my logistics firm. He thought he could do it because she was a nobody from the south side. He thought he could do it because he had your signature on his overtime vouchers."
"Dominic, listen to me," Vance began, leaning forward, his voice turning frantic. "I didn't know about the girl. I swear to God, I didn't know he was hitting her. Ryan’s a hothead, sure, but he gets results on the street. He’s the one who kept the South Tacoma crews out of our hair last summer."
"He’s a dog with rabies, Thomas," Dominic countered, his gray eyes locking onto the captain's face with a lethal precision. "And when a dog gets rabies, you don't promote him to sergeant. You put him behind the barn."
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. "Here is the trade. Tomorrow morning, Internal Affairs will receive an anonymous packet containing Perez’s offshore banking logs from the Atlantic City accounts—the ones he used to launder the narcotics cash he took from the west side dealers. You will sign the suspension order before the noon news broadcast. He will be stripped of his badge, his pension, and his union protection."
Vance swallowed hard, his eyes darting toward Marco by the door, then back to the chiseled stone of Dominic’s face. "And if I can't get the board to agree? The chief is stubborn, Dominic. He doesn't like being told how to clean his house."
"Then I will clean the whole house, Thomas," Dominic said quietly. "I will release the surveillance footage of you at the Cicero casino with the underboss of the Detroit outfit last November. The chief won't just fire Perez; he’ll be looking for a new captain before the weekend is over."
The silence that followed was absolute, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. Captain Vance looked down at the cracked phone, his hands trembling slightly as he slid it back across the table.
"He’s done," Vance whispered, his voice stripped of all its previous authority. "The suspension will be on the wire by nine AM. But Dominic... if Ryan goes down, he’s going to talk. He knows about the harbor clearances you bought last spring."
May you like
Dominic stood up, his massive frame towering over the police captain as he buttoned his suit jacket. "Let him talk, Thomas. Let him talk to the walls of a federal cell in Cook County. Let's see who listens to a crooked cop with no teeth."
He turned his back on the captain, walking toward the private elevator. "Clear the room, Marco. The air in here smells like a precinct."
