Chapter 2 - The Weight of the Ledger
The front doors of the Callaway-Rossi estate—though everyone in Chicago just called it the fortress on the bluff—did not open with a latch. They opened with a heavy pneumatic hiss that sounded like an engine dying in the snow.
Leo Rossi came through them at six o'clock.
He didn't take off his coat immediately. It was a black wool Chesterfield with wide shoulders that had been tailored in London before the war, and it carried the smell of charcoal smoke, cold lake water, and the particular brand of Virginia tobacco he smoked when he was deciding whether to burn a warehouse or buy it. Behind him came Mateo Calder, his collar turned up against the sleet, carrying a leather dispatch case that looked heavy enough to break a man’s wrist.
Victoria was waiting in the rotunda under the bronze chandelier—the one shaped like a cluster of grapes that David Rossi had bought off a bankrupt duke in Genoa.
"Leo," she said, her voice dropping into that smooth, cello-like register she reserved for him. She didn't touch his arm; she knew better than to touch Leo Rossi when he had salt on his boots. "The shipment from Milwaukee was short again. Three crates of the German small-arms parts. The receiver at the dock says the union men are skimming."
Leo didn't stop walking. His boots—thick-soled and crusted with gray slush—left dark tracks across the white marble floor that Beatrice would have to scrub out before midnight.
"They aren't skimming," Leo said. His voice was lower than Victoria’s, almost conversational, but it had the density of lead pipe. "The Milwaukee yards belong to O’Banion’s people now. We’ll take the difference out of their freight lines on Friday."
He tossed his coat toward a footman who materialized from the shadow of the staircase like a moth from a curtain. He didn't look at Victoria until he reached the second step of the grand staircase, where he paused, one hand resting on the carved mahogany banister.
"Where is Lily?"
Victoria’s smile was a very small, very neat thing. "She was acting out during the geography lesson, Leo. Miss Gable couldn't do a thing with her. She threw her slate at the window and locked herself in the nursery with that wretched toy. I had to... well, I had to take measures. Children of her age need boundaries, particularly now that she’s developing that nervous wheeze. It comes from coddling."
Leo’s hand stayed on the banister. The fingers didn't tighten; they simply stopped moving. The knuckles were large, covered in fine, dark hair, and scarred across the second joint from an old butcher’s knife or an old argument—nobody in the house was quite sure which.
"Whose measure?" Leo asked.
"Mine," Victoria said, her chin lifting slightly. "Someone has to be an adult in this house, Leo. You’re at the docks until midnight, and the servants are—well, they have their own limitations."
Leo turned on the stair. He didn't look angry. That was the thing people who didn't know him always got wrong. Leo Rossi didn't shout. Shouting was for men who wanted an argument; Leo only wanted an outcome.
"Beatrice," he called out.
The name didn't travel far, but it didn't have to. Beatrice was coming out of the butler’s pantry with a tray of fresh tallow candles and a box of matches. She stopped at the edge of the rotunda, her heavy black skirt brushing the marble baseboard. She didn't look at Victoria. She looked at the third button of Leo’s vest, which was bone-colored and had a small crack running through the center like a river delta.
"Sir?" she said.
"Where is my daughter?"
"In the nursery, Mr. Rossi," Beatrice said, her voice flat and even. "Miss Kensington had her moved to the old sewing room on the third floor after the geography lesson. The one with the iron grate over the radiator."
Victoria’s head snapped around. "That is an absolute lie—"
"The sewing room has no latch on the inside," Beatrice continued, still looking at the bone button. "Miss Kensington told the nurse to put the heavy oak chest against the door so the child couldn't kick it open while she was having her 'episode.'"
Leo’s gaze shifted from Beatrice to Victoria. It took perhaps two seconds. In those two seconds, Victoria seemed to shrink, her cream-colored wool trousers suddenly looking too thin for the draft that came off the lake, her pearl buttons too small to keep her together.
"Mateo," Leo said.
"Yeah, boss?"
"Go up to the third floor. Move the chest. Bring Lily down to the library. Put a fire in the grate."
"On it," Mateo said, already turning toward the service stairs with the dispatch case still under his arm.
Leo descended the two steps he had climbed, his boots clicking against the marble with the regular, heavy beat of a pendulum. He stopped two feet from Victoria. He didn't tower over her the way Beatrice did; Leo wasn't a large man, not by the standards of the dock-workers or the beef-handlers who unloaded the trucks. He was lean, wire-drawn, and wore his clothes like a second skin that had been scorched on by grease and gunpowder.
"Victoria," he said.
"Leo, please, the woman is a kitchen drudge—she hates me because I won't let her steal the laundry soap—"
"Pack your bags," Leo said.
The rotunda went very quiet. Even the grandfather clock in the corner seemed to hold its pendulum.
"You’re joking," Victoria whispered, her voice cracking for the first time. "After four years? After I helped you manage the foundation board when the federal investigators were looking at the import ledgers? After I sat with Lily while you were in St. Louis?"
"You put a six-year-old child in an unventilated room with an iron latch because she dropped a slate," Leo said. His hand came up—not to strike her, but to adjust his cuffs, pulling back the white linen to reveal the gold band of a watch that didn't tick. "You don't understand the arithmetic of this house, Victoria. My father built this place with four hundred thousand dollars in stolen timber and three dead inspectors in the river. I keep it standing by knowing who is useful and who is an expense."
He looked past her, toward the stairs where Mateo was coming down now, carrying a bundle of blue wool and a gray stuffed rabbit by one long, dangling ear.
May you like
"You are an expense," Leo said. "The car will be around in twenty minutes. Don't leave the pearls; my mother’s sister gave those to the house, not to you."
He didn't wait to see her face. He walked past her, his coat brushing her sleeve with the dry sound of autumn leaves, and went to meet his daughter.
