I see her sitting across from me in the back of the town car. She looks calm enough, watching the buildings stream by out the window. But she doesn’t fool me. I know how unruly she is. I might have slipped a bridle over her head for the moment, but she’s going to try to buck me off again the moment she gets the chance.

The crucial thing is to keep her in line during this party. After that, she can mutiny as much as she likes. Several Italian business owners, CEOs, investors, and union reps will be here tonight. They need to see my wife at my side: obedient. Supportive.

We drive to the Fulton Market District, which used to be full of meat-packing plants and warehouses and has now gentrified into hotels, bars, restaurants, and trendy tech companies. The fundraiser is at Morgan’s on Fulton, in the penthouse at the very top of the building.

We make our way toward the elevator through the art gallery on the main floor. It’s stuffed floor-to-ceiling with paintings of various styles, in varying levels of skill. Aida pauses by one particularly hideous modern piece in shades of peach, taupe, and tan.

“Oh, look,” she says. “Now I know what to get your mother for Christmas.”

“I suppose you prefer that,” I say, nodding toward a dark and moody oil painting of Cronus devouring his children.

“Oh yes,” Aida says, nodding somberly. “Family portrait. That’s Papa when we leave the cupboards open or forget to turn off the lights.”

I give a little snort, and Aida looks startled, like she’s never heard me laugh before. She probably hasn’t.

As we reach the elevator at last, somebody calls, “Hold the door!”

I put my arm out to stop it from closing.

Then I immediately regret it when I see Oliver Castle push his way inside.

“Oh,” he says, spotting us and giving an arrogant toss of his head. His hair is longish, thick and sun-streaked. He’s got a tan and a hint of a burn, like he’s been out on a boat all day. When he grins, his teeth look too white by comparison.

He looks Aida up and down, letting his eyes crawl over her body, which looks lusciously hourglass-shaped in the tight, beaded dress. It pisses me off how blatant he’s being. My arrangement with Aida might not be romantic, but she’s still my wife. She belongs to me and me alone. Not this overgrown rich kid.

“You really went all out, Aida,” he says. “I don’t remember you dressing up like that for me.”

“Guess it wasn’t worth the effort,” I say, glowering at him.

Oliver snorts.

“I dunno. Guess Aida was just using her effort for other things . . .”

I get a vivid image of Aida sliding her tongue up and down Oliver’s cock like she did to mine. I’m hit with jealousy like a sack of wet mud. It knocks the air out of me.

It takes everything I have not to grab Castle by the lapels of his velvet dinner jacket and throw him up against the elevator wall.

I might have done it if the elevator didn’t give a lurch at exactly that moment, stopping at the top floor. The doors part, and Oliver saunters out without a look back at us.

Aida’s watching me with her cool gray eyes.

I don’t like this new quiet Aida. It makes me nervous, wondering what she’s up to. I like it better when she blurts out whatever she’s thinking as soon as it comes into her head. Even if it really pisses me off in the moment.

The penthouse is a large, open room, currently stuffed full of potential donors getting sloshed on free liquor. Of course, it’s not really free—I’m going to try to milk every one of these fuckers for every last bit of support I can get out of them. But in the meantime, they’re welcome to gorge themselves on high-end cocktails and fancy finger foods.

One whole side of the room is composed of sliding glass doors, currently thrown open to the rooftop deck. The guests can mingle back and forth, enjoying the warm night air and the breeze off the lake. The open-air deck is strung with glowing lanterns, and it offers a striking view of the city lights below.

Right now, neither the flawless set-up nor the excellent turnout of guests is giving me any pleasure. I march over to the bar and ask for a double shot of whiskey, neat. Aida watches me down it in one gulp.

“What?” I snap, slamming the empty glass back down on the bar.

“Nothing,” she says, shrugging her bare shoulders and turning away from me to order her own drink.

Trying to get the thought of Oliver and Aida out of my mind, I scan the crowd, looking for my first target. I’ve got to talk to Calibrese and Montez. I spot my mother over by the food, talking to the state treasurer. She’s been here for hours, overseeing the set-up and greeting the first guests as they arrived.

Then I see somebody who definitely wasn’t invited: Tymon Zajac, better known as the Butcher. Head of the Polish mafia, and a major fucking pain in my ass.

The Braterstwo control most of the Lower West Side, right up to Chinatown, Little Italy, and the wealthier neighborhoods to the northeast that are controlled by the Irish—aka me.

If there’s a hierarchy to gangsters, it goes something like this: at the top you’ve got your white-collar, gentrified gangsters who use the levers of business and politics to maintain their control. That’s the Irish in Chicago. We run this city. We’ve got more gold than a fucking leprechaun. And we make as much money legally as illegally—or at least, in that nice gray area of loopholes and backdoor deals.

Which doesn’t mean I’m afraid to get my hands dirty. I’ve made more than one person in this city disappear forever. But I do it quietly and only when necessary.

On the next rung down the ladder, you’ve got gangsters with a foot in both worlds—like the Italians. They still run plenty of strip clubs, nightclubs, illegal gambling, and protection rackets. But they’re also involved in construction projects that form the bulk of their income. They have heavy sway in the unions for the carpenters, the electrical workers, the glaziers, heavy equipment operators, ironworkers, masons, plumbers, sheet metal workers, and more. If you want to get anything built in Chicago, and you don’t want it to burn down halfway through, or get “delayed,” or your materials stolen, then you have to hire the Italians as your foremen, or else pay them off.

Then, lower down still, you’ve got the Polish mafia. They’re still participating in violent crime, in loud and obvious and attention-grabbing shit that causes problems for those of us who want to keep up the perception of a safe city.

The Braterstwo are still actively running drugs and guns, boosting cars, robbing banks and armored cars, extorting, even kidnapping. They get their dirty deeds published in the news, and they’re constantly pushing the boundaries of their territory. They don’t want to stay in Garfield, Lawndale, and the Ukrainian Village. They want to push into the areas where the money is. The areas I own.

In fact, Tymon Zajac showing up here at my fundraiser is a problem in and of itself. I don’t want him here as an enemy or a friend. I don’t want to be associated with him.

He’s not exactly the kind of guy who blends in. He’s nearly as broad as he is tall, with wheat-colored hair just starting to gray, and a craggy face that might be scarred from acne or something worse. He has hatchet-like cheekbones with a Roman nose. He’s carefully dressed in a pinstripe suit, with a white bloom in the lapel. Somehow those natty details only serve to emphasize the roughness of his face and hands.