Chapter 2: The First Dominoes

By Tuesday, I had not replaced her.

By Tuesday, I was fighting for my life.

The problem with building an empire based on shadows is that you need someone to remember where all the light switches are.

Clara had been my memory.

At 10:00 AM on Wednesday, my burner phone rang.

It was Mayor Sterling.

“Arthur,” his voice was tight, high-pitched.

“Where is the envelope?

Clara usually drops it off at the country club by nine.”

“There’s a slight delay,” I lied, leaning back in my chair and rubbing my temples.

A migraine was beginning to pulse behind my eyes.

“It will be handled.”

“It needs to be handled today, Arthur!

The committee meets at noon to zone the waterfront.

If I don’t have the assurances, I can’t guarantee the vote.”

I hung up on him.

I couldn’t guarantee the vote because the offshore account used to pay the Mayor was currently locked behind Clara’s encryption.

At 2:00 PM, the Moroni brothers arrived at my gates.

They were not smiling.

“Vance,” the older brother, Carmine, barked as he entered my study.

He didn’t wait to be invited to sit.

“We got a problem.

The shipment at the south gate?

Customs is holding it.

They’re asking for the clearance codes.

We tried calling Clara, but her number is disconnected.”

“Clara is no longer with the organization,” I said, keeping my voice utterly flat.

Carmine stopped.

He looked at his brother, then back at me.

A slow, dangerous realization dawned in his eyes.

“What do you mean, no longer with the organization?

She’s the only one who talks to Agent Miller at Customs.

Miller won’t even look at us.”

“I will handle Miller,” I said.

“Like hell you will,” Carmine sneered, leaning over my desk.

The respect he usually showed me was evaporating by the second.

Without Clara’s invisible web holding these alliances together, I was just a man with a nice suit and a big house.

“That shipment is worth four million.

You better find those codes, Vance, or our truce is dead.”

When they left, I swept my arm across the desk, sending a heavy crystal lamp shattering against the wall.

Gregory rushed in, his hand on his weapon.

He took one look at the shattered glass and my heaving chest, and slowly took his hand off his gun.

“No word?” he asked quietly.

“Put every man we have on the streets,” I growled.

“I don’t care what it costs.

I don’t care who you have to bribe, threaten, or break.

Find her.

Check the airports, the train stations, the bus terminals.

She had eighty thousand in cash.

She couldn’t have gone far.”

“Boss…”

Gregory hesitated.

“The men… they’re talking.”

“Let them talk.”

“They’re saying that if you can’t control your own secretary, maybe you can’t control the city.”

I crossed the room in two strides, grabbing Gregory by the lapels of his suit and slamming him against the oak-paneled wall.

“I control everything!

Do you understand me?

Find her!”

I released him, breathing heavily.

Gregory straightened his suit, his face unreadable.

“Yes, Boss.”

As he walked out, I realized something cold and awful.

For five years, I had believed I was the grandmaster moving the chess pieces.

In the span of forty-eight hours, Clara had shown me that I wasn’t the player.

I was just the King—the most vulnerable piece on the board, capable of moving only one square at a time, entirely dependent on the Queen to protect him.

And my Queen had just flipped the board.