Chapter 1 - The South Side Fortress
The tires of my old Buick station wagon groaned as they hit the potholed asphalt of 79th Street. The heater blew a thin, lukewarm draft of air that smelled of ancient vinyl and coffee grounds, barely putting a dent in the damp chill of the October fog. Next to me, Hannah sat curled into a tight, defensive ball. She had pulled my oversized wool cardigan around her shoulders, her fingers clutching the frayed hem so tightly her knuckles were white.
"Mom," she whispered, her voice barely carrying over the rattle of the engine. "We shouldn't have left. You don't know what they do when people defy them. Margaret... she has connections with the county commissioners. Grant has security guards who used to be off-duty cops. They'll say I stole something. They'll say I'm crazy."
"Let them talk, Hannah," I said, my grip tightening on the steering wheel until the calluses on my palms pressed deep into the plastic. "A man who hides behind his mother's skirt to abuse his wife doesn't have the stomach for a real fight. And Margaret Holloway has spent so long looking down at people she’s forgotten how to look up. They think because we work with our hands, we don't know how to use our heads."
We pulled into the gravel alley behind Carter’s Table. The neon sign was off, but the kitchen chimney was already venting a thin, sweet ribbon of hickory smoke—Frank was already prep-cooking the brisket for the lunch rush.
I helped Hannah out of the car. Her feet, bare and stained with the black loam of the Lake Forest estate garden, sank into the cold gravel. She winced, her knees shaking so violently I had to catch her by the waist to keep her from collapsing.
When we burst through the heavy back door of the kitchen, the warmth of the commercial ovens hit us like a physical wall. Frank, a mountain of a man who had been my line cook for fifteen years, stopped mid-slice. His heavy butcher knife remained suspended over a red slab of beef. He took one look at Hannah’s swollen jaw, the dried blood at the corner of her mouth, and the dirty pajamas she was wearing, and his dark face went completely still.
"Evelyn," Frank said, his voice dropping an octave into a low rumble. "Who did this?"
"The people with the stone gates," I said, guiding Hannah to a stool by the prep table. "Get the first-aid kit from the office, Frank. And lock the front door. We're not opening for breakfast today."
"You got it, Boss," Frank said. He didn't ask questions. On the South Side, when a woman comes home bleeding, you protect her first and ask questions when the ice pack is in place.
Within ten minutes, Artie Pendelton was sitting in the corner booth of the darkened dining room. Artie was seventy-one, a retired Teamster organizer who spent his mornings drinking black coffee and complaining about the state of the city's infrastructure. He still had the thick, scarred forearms of a man who had spent forty years loading freight docks, and he still carried the quiet, heavy authority of a man who knew where every local politician kept their secrets.
"The Holloways," Artie said, tracing the rim of his chipped mug. "They’re old money in the suburbs, Evelyn, but their distribution warehouses are right down here in the district. They run sixty trucks a day through the city. If Grant Holloway wants to play dirty, he’s going to find out that the road between Lake Forest and the highway runs right through our backyard."
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"He gave me seventy-two hours, Artie," I said, dabbing a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic against Hannah’s split lip. She flinched, but she didn't cry. The tears had dried on her cheeks, leaving pale, dusty streaks against the bruises. "He wants me to bring her back on her knees. He thinks he can starve us out."
"Seventy-two hours," Artie murmured, a slow, cold smile spreading across his weathered face. "That boy must not have read his history. He doesn't know what happens when you try to starve the South Side."
