Chapter 3 - The Threat in the Ledger
By five o'clock on Wednesday morning, the sedative had completely worn off, leaving Chloe with a dull, throbbing ache that seemed to reside deep within her marrow. The room was quiet, the rain outside having stopped, leaving the skyline of Chicago cast in a cold, slate-gray dawn.
The door to the room opened without a sound, but it wasn't Gabriel who walked in.
Arthur Hartwell, Vivian’s father, stood in the doorway. He was a massive man, built like an old iron furnace, his thick silver hair brushed back from a face that looked like it had been carved out of granite. He didn't wear a tuxedo; he wore a long, dark wool overcoat over a simple charcoal suit, his heavy boots making no sound against the slate floor.
Behind him stood two men in gray suits—men Chloe recognized as the senior security team from the Hartwell logistics terminals on the South Side.
"Miss Arden," Arthur said, his voice a deep, resonant rumble that seemed to vibrate the glass water pitcher on her nightstand. He walked over to the foot of her bed, his large, scarred hands resting on the metal rail. "You look remarkably intact for someone who took a tumble down fifteen feet of solid Carrara marble."
Chloe pulled the blanket tighter around her chest, her heart slamming against her fractured ribs. "Mr. Hartwell. If you're here to tell me your daughter didn't push me, you can save your breath. Gabriel knows exactly what happened."
"Gabriel is a young man with a very complicated ledger, Miss Arden," Arthur said, his eyes narrowing through his thick eyebrows. "He knows what is good for his business, and he knows what is good for his family. Right now, what is good for both is that my daughter’s wedding proceeds without any... domestic disruptions from an accountant who doesn't know when her contract has expired."
He leaned forward, his massive shoulders blocking out the morning light from the window. "My people spent the night going through your old apartment on Dearborn. We found the digital copies you made of our Baltic routing slips. They’ve been deleted. The backup drives you left in your sister’s safety deposit box in Evanston? Those have been retrieved as well."
Chloe felt a cold, paralyzing terror wash over her. "You broke into my sister’s bank?"
"We didn't break into anything," Arthur said smoothly, pulling a white paper receipt from his coat pocket and dropping it onto her blanket. "We simply reminded the branch manager that the Hartwell family trust owns forty percent of their municipal bond portfolio. It’s amazing how helpful people can be when their pension funds are on the line."
He stepped away from the rail, turning his back to her as his two security men stepped closer to the sides of the bed. "You’ve been a nuisance for three years, Chloe. When Gabriel sent you to London after your father’s firm went under, you should have stayed there. You should have taken the monthly stipend he set up for you and bought yourself a nice house in Surrey. But you just couldn't let him go, could you?"
"This isn't about Gabriel," Chloe hissed, her voice cracking with a mix of pain and fury. "This is about the truth. Your daughter is a criminal, Mr. Hartwell. She’s been using the Wren ships to move contraband through the federal docks."
"In this city, Miss Arden, the truth is whatever the senior partner says it is," Arthur said, looking back over his shoulder. "The wedding is in twenty-four days. You are going to stay in this clinic until the paperwork is signed. If I see your name on an SEC report, or if I hear that you’ve been speaking to the federal compliance officers at the port, your sister’s husband loses his license to practice law in this state by Friday afternoon. Do you understand me?"
Before Chloe could answer, the heavy wooden door was hit from the outside with a tremendous force.
One of Arthur’s security men was thrown backward into the room, his head striking the edge of the oak cabinet with a loud, hollow crack before he collapsed onto the floor.
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Gabriel Wren walked through the opening. He wasn't wearing his gray sweater anymore; he was in a dark blue suit, his tie perfectly straight, his eyes carrying a flat, terrifying serenity that made even Arthur Hartwell step back by an inch. Behind him stood Vincent and four men from the Wren dock crew, all of them carrying short-barreled automatic weapons beneath their long coats.
"Arthur," Gabriel said, his voice lower than the city traffic outside. "You're in the wrong hospital."
