Chapter 4 - A Different Kind of Currency
The next morning, the rain had stopped, leaving Chicago under a heavy blanket of gray fog. In his high-rise office overlooking the river, Marcus sat behind a massive mahogany desk. Across from him stood Frank, his most trusted lieutenant and a friend since their days in the trenches of the West Side.
"You want me to wipe out a fifty-grand debt for a guy we don't even know?" Frank asked, scratching his bearded jaw. "Marcus, that's not like you. If Vance thinks we're getting soft or meddling in his personal books, it could spark a turf war we don't need right now."
"Vance is a parasite," Marcus said smoothly, pouring himself a cup of black coffee. "He’s operating on Grover Street, which is my territory. He’s extorting tenants who live under my leaseholds. It’s not about the money, Frank. It’s about boundaries."
Frank sighed, knowing there was no changing Marcus’s mind when his voice hit that specific, quiet register. "Alright. Where do we find David Carter?"
"He’s hiding out near the old rail yards in Cicero. I had our boys track his phone signature last night before it went dead," Marcus replied, sliding a folder across the desk. "Bring him to me. Don't break anything unless he runs."
"And the woman? Emily?"
Marcus paused, looking at the faded sticker on the back of the cracked iPhone resting on his desk: Best Mom Ever. He had brought it with him to get the data transferred to a new device for her. "Keep two of our men outside her building. If anyone so much as looks at her apartment door wrong, I want them handled."
By mid-afternoon, Frank returned, but he wasn't alone. Disheveled, terrified, and smelling of stale sweat and cheap diner coffee, David Carter was pushed into Marcus’s office. He looked younger than Emily, but his eyes were hollowed out by fear.
"Please," David begged immediately, falling into a chair. "I don't have the money yet. I'm working on it, I swear. Just don't hurt my family."
Marcus stood up, walking around the desk until he was towering over the sitting man. "Your family is currently starving in a condemned apartment while your son suffocates because you ran away."
David flinched as if struck. "I had to! Vance said if I stayed, he’d burn the place down with them inside! I thought if I drew them away..."
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"You thought like a boy," Marcus interrupted, his voice cutting like glass. "A man stays and bleeds before he lets his family take the blow. You left your wife to sell her last possession just to buy an inhaler."
David buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with silent, agonizing sobs. Marcus watched him, the anger in his chest slowly giving way to something else. He saw the genuine brokenness in David. The man wasn't malicious; he was just weak, broken by a system and a predator too big for him to fight.
