Chapter 6 - The Long Cold Ride
The private train car Dominic owned was called The Corsair—a restored Pullman from the 1930s with dark mahogany paneling, velvet curtains the color of dried blood, and a private dining room that had seen more corporate mergers and quiet executions than any boardroom in the Midwest.
The storm had grounded every flight out of O’Hare, leaving the rail lines as the only artery out of the frozen city. As the train clicked rhythmically over the frozen switches toward Manhattan, the snow outside the wide glass windows became a flat, white blur of Indiana farmland.
I sat at the small walnut dining table, my laptop open beside a silver pot of black coffee. My left foot was elevated on a velvet stool, wrapped in soft bandages under a thick wool sock. Dominic sat across from me, his reading glasses on, reviewing the asset sheets I had generated during the night.
"The Blackwell family owns three hundred warehouses along the Eastern seaboard," I said, pointing to the screen. "On paper, they’re a legitimate third-generation shipping dynasty. But their secondary line of credit—the one that funds their expansion into the Midwest—is backed by a holding group called Aegis Holdings. The principal investor in Aegis is a man named Vittorio Scalia."
Dominic’s hand paused over his coffee cup. He took off his glasses, his face turning hard. "Scalia. The underboss of the Five Families’ remnants in Brooklyn. The man who tried to take the Calumet docks from my father in '98."
"Yes, sir," I nodded. "Uncle Silvio didn't just authorize the Naples shipments for Gianni's gambling debts. He’s setting up a backdoor entry for the New York syndicates to bypass your distribution hub completely. The Blackwell merger isn't an expansion, Mr. Moretti. It’s a hostile takeover from the inside out. If the board signs the contract on Monday, Vanguard Maritime takes control of the physical infrastructure, and your uncle takes forty percent of the voting shares as the 'mediator' of the deal."
Dominic stood up, pacing the narrow length of the Pullman car, his tall frame blocking the winter light. "And if you hadn't stayed late to check the customs stamps, the third-quarter discrepancies would have been absorbed into the Blackwell audit. The trail would have been completely wiped by next week."
"They would have had everything they needed by the time the spring thaw arrived," I said.
He stopped beside my chair, looking down at me. The silence between us grew thick, the rhythmic clack-clack of the train wheels underneath acting as a heartbeat for the small room. He reached down, his fingers gently adjusting the wool blanket over my elevated foot. The gesture was so uncharacteristically domestic it made my pulse skip.
"You're still shivering, Emma," he said quietly.
"It’s just... the train draft, sir," I lied, looking down at my keyboard.
"No, it isn't," he murmured. He sat on the edge of the walnut table, his knee inches from mine. "You're waiting for the other shoe to drop. You've spent two years being the quietest person in the room because you thought safety meant being invisible. You thought if you kept your head down, the wolves wouldn't see you."
"They didn't see me," I said, a sudden spark of bitterness breaking through my composure. "They just saw a nuisance they could step on. Your brother didn't even look me in the eye when he took the badge, Mr. Moretti. He looked at my lanyard like it was a piece of trash he needed to clear off his desk."
Dominic reached out, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck, his thumb resting gently against the red line where the plastic clip had torn the skin. The heat of his palm was an electric current that seemed to melt the last lingering ice in my veins. He pulled me slightly forward, forcing me to look up into the gray steel of his eyes.
"They will never look at you like that again, Emma," he said, his voice low and vibrating with a promise that sounded like an oath. "When we walk into that room in New York, you aren't the girl who takes the minutes. You're the woman who holds the key to the vault. If anyone looks at you with anything less than absolute respect, I will let Marco show them what the snow feels like."
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"Is that a corporate guarantee, sir?" I whispered, my lips dry.
A slow, rare smile touched the corners of his mouth—a beautiful, dangerous thing that transformed his harsh features into something entirely different. "It’s a Moretti guarantee, Emma. And unlike the Blackwell contracts, it doesn't have an expiration date."
