Chapter 10 - THE UNFINISHED RECKONING
The small service dumbwaiter door inside the kitchen pantry slid upward with a faint, metallic hiss of well-oiled cables. Inside was a narrow, steel-lined compartment designed for heavy linen bundles, descending into a dark, vertical shaft that dropped forty-two floors down to the foundation of the hotel.
Clare climbed inside, her red housekeeping uniform bunching around her knees as she curled into the confined metal box. She looked out through the small access door at Nicholas, who stood in the pantry light holding the black pistol, his unbuttoned white shirt exposing the jagged keloid bullet scars across his chest.
"When you reach the basement," Nicholas instructed, resting his hand on the cable release lever, "follow the yellow floor conduit until you hit the employee exit on Adams Street. Don't look back. Don't call the police. And don't ever return to this hotel."
"Nicholas..." Clare gasped, her hand reaching out from the box to touch his calloused fingers on the lever. "What happens to you?"
Nicholas looked down at her, his expression unreadable, his eyes ancient and dark.
"I died two years ago, Clare," Nicholas said softly. "Tonight, I just make it official for my brother."
With a single, smooth pull of his muscular arm, Nicholas engaged the manual cable release.
The steel box dropped into the black shaft with a rush of cool, subterranean air, the pantry light disappearing in an instant as the mechanical cables whined softly in the dark.
Upstairs on the forty-second floor, the heavy mahogany double doors of Suite 4227 swung open.
Nicholas Duca stepped out onto the gray polished marble of the hallway, bare-chested beneath his open white dress shirt, the black pistol hanging loose at his side.
At the far end of the corridor, Julian Duca stopped mid-stride. He turned his head slowly, his ebony cane poised over the stone floor, his clove cigarette burning down between his fingers.
Julian’s jaw slacked. The cigarette slipped from his mouth, tumbling onto the pristine marble floor, sparking against the polished stone as his eyes dilated in total, catastrophic horror.
"Nicholas...?" Julian whispered, his voice cracking into a thin, terrified squeak that betrayed thirty years of unearned power.
Nicholas raised his dark eyes, his lips curling into a slow, merciless smile as he began walking down the center of the corridor, his bare feet making no sound against the marble.
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"You should have checked the river, brother," Nicholas said, his deep voice rolling down the hallway like thunder before the storm.
Down in the dark, cold depths of the basement laundry tunnels, Clare Bennett stepped out of the service shaft into the damp evening air of Chicago—hearing the first, muffled crack of a gunshot echo through the concrete structure high above, carrying the final, bloody sentence of the Duca family into the gathering night.
