Chapter 11: Three Million

"What three million dollars?" I said.

I was sitting up in Damiano's bed with the sheet held to my chest and a green silk tie still looped around my wrist.

Bruna looked at her brother.

Her brother looked at the ceiling.

"Oh, for God's sake," Bruna said. "You didn't tell her."

"Tell me what?"

Damiano pulled on his pants and sat on the edge of the bed.

"In April Rhett sat down at a card game in a room we run on Taylor Street," he said.

"He lost three million dollars in one night. He's owed it to my family since."

"Rhett gambles?"

"Rhett loses," Bruna said. "Gambling implies a chance."

I sat very still.

In three years of marriage in my first life, I'd never known.

I'd known about the late nights and the money that went missing and the way he'd snap if I asked.

I had thought it was another woman.

It had been another woman too.

"His father cut him off after the luncheon," I said slowly. "He doesn't have three dollars of his own."

"He had three million this morning," Bruna said. "In a gym bag."

I looked at Damiano.

"Yesterday I told every camera in Chicago I'd be asking about vendor accounts," I said. "Today he has cash."

Damiano's eyes went flat and cold.

"Danielle," he said.

"Danielle," I said.

I got out of bed.

"Where are you going?" Bruna asked.

"To work," I said. "I'm a director now."

The Kinnear Shipping offices took up the fourteenth floor of an old stone building on Wacker Drive, overlooking the river.

My great-grandfather's first freighter hung in a painting in the lobby.

The receptionist stood up when I stepped off the elevator, and then sat down again when she saw who was behind me.

Bruna had come in a black suit with a legal pad.

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