Chapter 4 - The Midnight Knock
The rain had turned into a freezing sleet by the time Santiago’s black armored Maybach rolled down the potholed alley in Pilsen.
Neon signs for pawnshops and laundromats bled crimson onto the greasy asphalt. Two of Santiago's bodyguards stepped into the flickering streetlight, weapons hidden beneath their leather bombers, securing the perimeter of a decaying brick tenement building.
Santiago climbed four flights of stairs that smelled of boiled cabbage and damp drywall. He didn't knock with a warrant or a threat; he knocked twice, firm and measured, with the gold signet ring on his pinky finger.
The locks clicked open. The heavy steel door cracked, held by a brass chain.
Ruby looked out through the shadow. She wore faded jeans, woolen socks, and an oversized gray sweatshirt. She looked exhausted, her hair damp, but the moment she saw Santiago’s towering silhouette, her eyes sharpened like scalpel blades.
"If you're here to have me killed for knowing your sister's medical details, do it in the alley," she said through the gap. "My landlady is an old woman who doesn't need to scrub blood out of the linoleum."
"Eleanor," Santiago said quietly.
She froze. The silence stretched so taut it threatened to snap.
Slowly, she unlatched the chain and swung the door open. The apartment was barely twelve feet wide. A hot plate, a mattress on the floor, a single shelf of battered psychology textbooks, and a folding chair.
"So Tomas is as thorough as they say," she said, leaning against the doorframe, crossing her arms defensively.
"Sophia is starving herself," Santiago said, cutting straight through the pretense. "She destroyed her room. She refuses water. The doctors want to restrain her and insert a feeding tube."
Eleanor’s clinical composure cracked. A flash of horror crossed her features. "If you let them tie her down, you will shatter whatever neural pathways she has left. She will retreat into catatonia and never come out."
"Then come back."
"I am not your maid, Mr. Moretti."
"I know what you are," Santiago stepped into the small room, his sheer size consuming the air. "You are Dr. Eleanor Vance. You were burned out of your clinic by Carlo Valenti. You ran from the U.S. Marshals. And you came to Chicago under a dead girl's name to treat the one patient you couldn't save from afar."
Eleanor looked up at him, her chin rising in defiance. "I didn't come to use Sophia as an experiment. I came because I read the coroner’s report from the night your father died. I knew what she saw. I knew that every high-priced quack you hired was diagnosing her with organic brain damage because it was easier than sitting in the dark with her demons."
Santiago stared down at her. "Name your price. Five hundred thousand? A million? An offshore account in the Caymans?"
Eleanor scoffed, a bitter, sharp sound. "You mobsters think every soul has a barcode. Keep your dirty blood money."
"Then what do you want?"
Eleanor stepped closer, her eyes flashing green fire. "Conditions. Absolute, non-negotiable conditions. I don't wear an apron. I don't answer to your housekeepers. I live in the suite adjacent to Sophia. I control her diet, her therapy, her environment. And most importantly—you don't enter her room unless I give you permission."
Santiago’s guards behind him shifted, outraged by the audacity. No one dictated terms to the Don.
Santiago looked at the woman before him. She had lost her brother, her career, her very name—yet she stood ready to die for a girl she had known for three weeks.
"One more condition," Santiago said, his voice dropping into a dangerous rumble. "The Valenti family has four hitmen tracking you. If you stay in this shithole, you will be dead before sunrise. You come to my estate, Dr. Vance, and you are under Moretti protection. No one touches you. In exchange, you bring my sister back from the dead."
Eleanor stared into his dark, obsidian eyes. She extended her hand.
"Deal, Mr. Moretti."
May you like
Santiago took her small, cold hand into his scarred palm. A strange, electric tension flared between them—an unspoken pact sealed in the heart of Chicago’s underworld.
***
