Carl shifted his weight, his dead, flat eyes locking onto Zo as he raised the iron crowbar an inch higher off his hip. “Look, pretty boy. Step aside before you get that expensive coat ruined. The boss wants the keys or the cash.”
Zo didn’t even turn his head toward the enforcer. His gaze remained welded to Finch’s shifting, watery eyes.
“Carl, isn’t it?” Zo asked softly. “Carl Jenkins. Paroled fourteen months ago from Stateville Correctional Center. Three years remaining on supervised release for aggravated battery and extortion. Possession of a burglary tool or an offensive weapon in the commission of a trespass constitutes an immediate Class X felony violation. The parole board in Cook County doesn’t process bail for habitual offenders, Carl. You’d be back in a maximum-security cell in Joliet before breakfast.”
Carl froze. The color drained from behind his tattoos with terrifying speed. His grip on the crowbar went slack, his knuckles loosening until the heavy iron dropped two inches, pointing limply toward the floorboards.
“How do you…” Carl swallowed hard, his voice suddenly stripped of its street-corner gravel. “Who is this guy, Artie?”
Finch’s face was turning a blotchy, mottled purple. “Shut up, Carl! I don’t care who he is! He’s trespassing in my building! I’ll call the cops myself—”
“Call them,” Zo interrupted smoothly, taking a single step over the threshold into the hallway.
The movement was so sudden, yet so completely fluid, that both Finch and Carl involuntarily backed up two paces, their shoulders bumping into the opposite wall. Zo didn’t raise his hands. He didn’t square his stance. He simply occupied the hallway, and the two men became instantly, painfully aware of their own insignificance.
“Call Commander O’Malley over at the Eleventh District,” Zo continued, his voice dropping into a register of razor-sharp amusement. “Ask him to send a squad car to Pulaski Road to assist Arthur Finch in an illegal lock-out. While you have him on the line, tell him Zo Rossi is waiting here to discuss the six building code violations you paid off his junior inspectors to overlook last September.”
The name hit Arthur Finch like a high-voltage current.
The purple flush vanished instantly from the landlord’s cheeks, replaced by a pasty, sickly gray. His jaw dropped open, exposing tobacco-stained teeth. His small eyes widened until the whites were ringed with raw panic.
“R-Rossi?” Finch stammered, his fingers twitching wildly at his sides. “Zo… Zo Rossi? The… the Rossi Financial Trust?”
“You’re familiar with the firm,” Zo said, stepping forward again, closing the distance until he was towering directly over Finch. Zo leaned down slightly, his voice dropping to a harsh, lethal whisper that only Finch could hear. “Which means you know about the three-million-dollar development loan on your Logan Square retail strip. The one currently sitting in a thirty-day refinance window.”
Finch’s chest hitched. He looked as though he was having a coronary right there on the worn runner. “Mr. Rossi… please. That’s… that’s my main asset. We have a meeting with your loan officers next Tuesday—”
“There will be no meeting on Tuesday,” Zo stated with absolute, merciless finality. “My legal team filed the demand notice twenty minutes ago. Under Clause Fourteen of your covenant, an uncurred health and safety default across your residential holdings triggers immediate full acceleration of the commercial paper. The entire three million dollars is due at my desk by eight-thirty tomorrow morning.”
Finch grabbed his own chest, his knees wobbling beneath his bulk. “Three million? By tomorrow? That’s impossible! Nobody has that kind of liquidity on twelve hours’ notice! That will liquidate my entire company! It will take every property I own!”
“Then you had better find a buyer tonight,” Zo said coldly. “Because if that balance is not settled by eight-thirty-one, my asset-recovery team will seize the deed to the Logan Square strip, the deed to this building, and every bank account bearing your corporate tax ID. You will be stripped down to the clothes on your back, Finch. You will be sleeping in the alley behind this very tenement, picking cigarette butts out of the slush.”
“No… no, please, Mr. Rossi! Why are you doing this?!” Finch’s voice cracked into a desperate, humiliating whine. The swagger, the cruelty, the arrogant authority he had wielded over helpless tenants vanished into thin air. He was a terrified insect caught beneath a descending boot. “What did I do to you?! Is it the girl? The Cole girl? I didn’t know she was yours! I swear to God I didn’t know she was connected to you!”
“She is not mine,” Zo growled, his eyes flashing with a sudden, terrifying fury that made Finch drop his chin to his chest in pure terror. “She is an honest, hardworking woman whom you have terrorized, exploited, and starved while you lined your pockets with slum profits. And that makes you an offense to this city.”
