Chapter 4 Believed Dead
Unknown
“Breaking news tonight. Two people are believed dead after a fatal crash on North Bridge Road, including Isadora Sterling, daughter of Mayor Victor Sterling.”
The anchor’s voice fills the room, and for one long second, every man in my office stands perfectly still while the city glows beyond the windows in towers of glass and wet roads and red brake lights smeared thin by rain.
On the television, a black Mercedes-Maybach burns at the bottom of a wooded slope, its front end crushed, its windows broken, its body twisted around the trees where it landed.
Then her school photo appears. Long blonde hair. Soft blue eyes. Perfect posture. That quiet, careful smile she wore whenever cameras found her.
Isadora Sterling.
Believed dead.
The glass in my hand cracks, and whiskey spills warm over my fingers as the broken edge bites into my palm.
I throw the crystal tumbler, smashing it against the far wall, amber liquor splattering across a painting worth more than the reporter’s salary.
“Boss?”
I turn toward the man who spoke, and his face goes still beneath the pale wash of the television.
I lift my hand and point at him, whiskey and blood running together over my knuckles. “What the fuck is this?”
His mouth opens, but nothing useful comes out.
I move toward him slowly, because if I move too quickly, I might kill him before he tells me what I need to know. “I gave one order. A minor crash and grab. A clipped bumper, a stalled engine, enough panic to take the driver and the girl without turning the whole city into a fucking funeral procession.”
His throat bobs.
“I know.”
“Then tell me why I am watching her car burn on my television,” I seethe.
The news cuts to a different angle of the wreckage, shaky phone footage taken from the road above, where police tape snaps in the wind and firefighters move through the smoke while the reporter speaks about two victims, a fleeing truck, and the mayor’s daughter believed to be among the dead.
“Who changed the order?”
“No one changed it.”
“Careful.” I pin him to the spot with a glare that makes his shoulders lock.
His eyes flicker toward the others before coming back to mine. “Our driver was waiting for them on the route they usually took, but Sterling’s driver went a different way. They weren’t going home.”
I stare at him until he understands that I want every word.
“Our driver said he couldn’t get close enough in time, so he called it in. There was another man already moving through that area. He said he could handle it.”
I turn my head slowly.
“He said he could handle it.”
“Yes.”
“With a fucking truck?”
The colour drains from his face. “We didn’t know he was using a truck.”
For a moment, the only sound in the office is the rain against the windows and the anchor’s steady voice sliding over the footage of the burning Mercedes.
“You handed my order to another man without clearing it,” I say.
“He was close.”
I hit him before the last word has finished leaving his mouth.
He drops hard, one knee cracking against the marble, blood spilling from his lip as he catches himself with one hand. The other men hold their positions because they know better than to reach for him, and because they understand what happens when stupidity costs me something I wanted alive.
I crouch in front of him and catch his chin, forcing his eyes back up to mine.
“She was never supposed to be hurt.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” he says through blood.
I tighten my grip. “If you knew, she would still be breathing, her driver would still be useful to me, and Victor Sterling would be answering my call instead of standing in front of the cameras while the city hands him sympathy.”
His eyes drag toward the television, and I release him and stand.
The anchor continues speaking as the footage changes to City Hall, where reporters crowd the steps beneath white lights and black umbrellas, waiting for the great grieving father to appear.
“Authorities have not yet released the identity of the second victim,” she says, “though sources close to the mayor’s office indicate the family driver was also inside the vehicle at the time of the crash.”
I look down at the man still bleeding on my floor.
“Get out.”
He pushes himself up slowly and leaves with one hand pressed to his mouth.
I walk to my desk and look down at the paperwork there.
Sterling’s campaign donors. His judges. His police contacts. His shell companies. His foundations. His favours. His women. His bodies. Every clean handshake and every rotten thing hidden beneath it, mapped in ink and photographs and names that will one day be read back to him while he has nowhere left to stand.
Beneath those files is the one I keep separate.
The one I pull out now in the quiet of the room.
Isadora’s life is spread across the black wood in a way no one else is allowed to see. I have her school schedules, charity appearances, security rotations, driver assignments, and medical records. I have every newspaper clipping that mentions her, and photographs taken across the years. Some from public events. Some from farther away. Some from angles she never knew existed.
She is thirteen in the oldest one, standing in the hallway of the Sterling house while our fathers drink scotch behind closed doors.
That day, the house smelled of waxed floors and expensive flowers. Victor Sterling had already started talking about cleaning up the city, even then, though his hands were deep in every dirty pocket that mattered. My father had taken me there because he believed I was old enough to learn the family business.
Isadora had appeared at the end of the hall in a pale dress with her hair brushed smooth over one shoulder, and when Victor called her closer, she came without hesitation, though her hands clasped so tightly in front of her that her knuckles whitened.
He put his hand on her shoulder, much too firmly for my liking.
“My good girl,” he said.
She looked at me across the hall while he said it, blue eyes steady, chin lifted, mouth shaped into the smile she had already learned to wear.
I wanted to break his fucking fingers for that, well before he used my father’s money, his reach, and his muscle. He let my family clear the road beneath his polished shoes, then stepped onto a stage and called us filth. Criminals. Rot beneath the city. He made speeches about saving people from the very darkness that had lifted him high enough for the cameras to find him.
The city loved him for it.
They watched him shove us into the dirt and my father into a cell.
Now his daughter sits on the screen with death curled around her name.
His good girl.
Gone.
