Chapter 1 - The Man at Table Nine
The fluorescent lights above Stellan Voss’s desk buzzed at a frequency that made the back of my teeth ache.
I sat across from him with my hands folded in my lap like a schoolgirl waiting to be punished, thinking about how, only 3 weeks earlier, the biggest problems in my life had been a broken radiator and a pile of medical bills I kept moving from one drawer to another because not looking at them was easier than admitting I had no idea how I was going to pay them.
“You’re not leaving this office until you explain yourself.”
Stellan’s voice was quiet.
That was the thing no one warned you about.
The quieter Stellan Voss became, the more dangerous he was.
“So I suggest you start talking, Josephine.”
He had never called me Josephine.
Not once in 3 weeks.
That was how I knew exactly how bad the situation had become.
3 weeks earlier, I was Jo Mercer.
28 years old.
Single mother to a 5-year-old named Hazel.
I worked the dinner shift at Crestwood Grill, an expensive steakhouse on Chicago’s North Side that attracted the kind of people I had previously seen only on the covers of business magazines.
I took the job because the tips were extraordinary.
I also took it because the health insurance became active after 90 days, and Hazel’s pediatric pulmonologist was not cheap.
Every night, I wore black slacks and a white button-down shirt. I smiled at men wearing $1,000 suits and told myself the exhaustion was temporary.
I was building toward something.
I simply could not see what yet.
The night Stellan Voss walked into Crestwood, I almost failed to notice him.
Almost.
The restaurant became quiet in a way that had nothing to do with conversation naturally fading.
It felt more like a held breath.
As though everyone in the room had looked up at the same time, recognized something, and then deliberately looked back down.
My manager, Gerald, appeared beside me.
Gerald was not easily rattled.
That night, sweat showed along his hairline.
“Table 9.”
He lowered his voice.
“Stellan Voss.”
I looked toward the dining room.
“He’s a regular.”
Gerald’s expression tightened.
“Do not mess this up, Jo.”
I knew the name.
Everyone in Chicago knew it.
Voss Industries was the largest privately held construction and development company in the Midwest.
That was the public version.
The version printed in Forbes and the Chicago Tribune.
The private version, exchanged quietly over drinks by people who believed they understood things, was considerably more complicated.
The Voss family had built large parts of Chicago’s infrastructure over 3 generations.
And not all of that construction had apparently been accomplished with entirely clean hands.
None of those stories prepared me for the actual experience of approaching table 9.
Stellan sat alone.
2 men in dark suits stood near the bar with the unmistakable stillness of people being paid to watch everything.
Stellan himself was the most striking man I had ever seen in person.
Not handsome in some polished movie-star sense.
Striking.
Sharp jaw.
Dark-blond hair pushed away from his face.
Gray eyes that seemed to register everything with an intensity I could feel from 6 ft away.
He wore a charcoal suit that probably cost more than my car.
When he looked up at me, his expression revealed nothing.
“Good evening.”
My voice did not shake.
I was proud of that.
“Welcome to Crestwood. Can I start you with something to drink?”
Stellan studied me for a moment.
Not rudely.
More like a man taking inventory.
“Water.”
His voice was low.
“And whatever Chef Brennan is calling his signature tonight.”
“The dry-aged ribeye.”
I nodded.
“He’s serving it with black-truffle compound butter.”
I added, “It’s excellent.”
Something shifted in Stellan’s face.
Not quite a smile.
“You’ve tried it?”
“Gerald lets us taste dishes on Sundays so we can describe them accurately.”
I shrugged slightly.
“Practical.”
He studied me for another beat.
“What’s your name?”
I gestured toward the tag on my shirt.
His eyes dropped briefly.
“Jo.”
The way he said it was short and certain, as though he had made a decision.
The hair along my arms rose.
“I’ll have the ribeye, Jo.”
I returned to the service station and told myself the moment meant absolutely nothing.
A wealthy man had ordered dinner.
That was all.
Stellan remained until closing.
Every time I approached his table, he paused whatever else he was doing.
People in expensive shoes came and went throughout the evening. They spoke to him in low, urgent voices.
Stellan always stopped those conversations when I returned.
And he watched me with those gray eyes in a way that felt less like admiration than examination.
His tip was absurd.
$400 on a $300 check.
I actually ran into the parking lot after his driver because I assumed there had been a mistake.
The man looked at me as though I were the confused one.
“Mr. Voss doesn’t make mistakes.”
He opened the car door.
“Good night.”
I stood in the cold holding $400 in cash.
Something had changed.
I could not have said exactly what.
The flowers arrived the next morning.
White peonies.
Not roses.
Peonies.
Hazel’s favorite.
I had never mentioned that to anyone at Crestwood.
They covered nearly the entire kitchen counter of my apartment in Ukrainian Village.
There was no card.
I did not need one.
The next day, a piano arrived.
I need to be clear about how ridiculous this was.
Our apartment was approximately 900 square feet on the 2nd floor of a walk-up.
The delivery men brought in a polished mahogany Yamaha upright.
It took 3 men almost 20 minutes to maneuver it through the doorway.
I tried to refuse delivery.
They showed me a signed receipt and gave the collective shrug of men who had been paid well enough not to become involved in whatever situation they were witnessing.
Hazel pressed every key from one end to the other 3 times before I could decide what I was supposed to do.
More gifts followed.
Books for Hazel.
The exact titles from her school reading list, information I had also never given anyone connected to Stellan.
A subscription to a grocery-delivery service.
Then a message from Gerald informing me that Mr. Voss had specifically requested my section for a standing Wednesday reservation.
I should have quit.
I knew that.
I stood in my kitchen after midnight twice, after Hazel was asleep, seriously considering it.
I listed every reason I should walk away.
Then I thought about my checking-account balance.
Hazel’s specialist copayments.
The radiator that still did not work.
And the following Thursday, I returned to Crestwood and smiled when I approached table 9.
After that, Stellan came twice each week.
He rarely spoke much beyond ordering.
But he watched me constantly.
The strange thing was that it did not feel threatening.
By reputation, everything about Stellan Voss should have frightened me.
Instead, the attention felt almost like the opposite.
Like being the only person in a crowded room someone was truly paying attention to.
I told myself I was mistaking a rich man’s temporary interest for something deeper.
I told myself many things.
The night the arrangement changed, I was operating on approximately 4 hours of sleep.
Hazel had spent half the night coughing.
It eventually turned out to be nothing serious, but that never stops a parent from imagining everything serious before the doctor tells you otherwise.
I was refilling Stellan’s water when the edges of my vision blurred.
My hand went to the table to steady myself.
His hand covered mine before I fully understood what was happening.
“When did you last sleep?”
The question was direct.
Not cruel.
Stellan had a way of asking things like someone opening a door he had already decided would be opened.
“I’m fine.”
His hand remained over mine.
“Long night with my daughter.”
Stellan stood.
Just stood in the middle of dinner service.
He placed cash on the table.
Then he looked toward Gerald.
“Gerald, she’s finished for the evening.”
Gerald answered before his own brain appeared to catch up.
“Of course.”
“I have a shift.”
I stared at Stellan.
“You had a shift.”
He walked to the service station and picked up my apron with the casual familiarity of someone who had been doing it for years.
I should have refused.
Every sensible instinct I possessed told me to refuse.
But I was exhausted.
And Stellan stood there with those gray eyes and absolute certainty.
I said nothing.
His car waited outside.
A black Escalade with heavily tinted windows.
It should have frightened me.
Somehow it did not.
We traveled through Chicago in a silence that did not feel uncomfortable.
I found that fact uncomfortable enough on its own.
When the SUV stopped outside my building in Ukrainian Village, some of the tension left my shoulders.
Then I saw the man leaning against the stoop.
Marcus.
Hazel’s father.
Marcus and I had been together for 2 years.
We separated when Hazel was 6 months old.
During the following 3 and a half years, his involvement fluctuated between absent and inconvenient.
He had a gambling problem he occasionally acknowledged and more commonly denied.
Recently, his idea of co-parenting had been to appear when he needed money and disappear whenever I mentioned child support.
Stellan became completely still beside me.
“You know him.”
“He’s Hazel’s father.”
Marcus noticed the Escalade.
He straightened.
His face shifted into the expression he used whenever he needed to rapidly recalculate a situation.
“He’s here for money.”
Stellan said something brief to his driver.
Then he stepped out.
I could not hear the conversation.
I watched it through the glass.
Marcus’s face changed color several times over approximately 4 minutes.
When it ended, he walked to his truck and drove away.
He never looked back at me.
Stellan opened my door.
“He won’t be a problem.”
That night, he stood inside my apartment entrance and looked at the life I lived.
The worn sofa.
Hazel’s artwork taped to the refrigerator.
The Yamaha piano, beautiful and absurdly out of place.
Hazel slept on the couch with her stuffed rabbit against her chest.
Mrs. Kowalski from 3B dozed beside her.
And for the first time since I had met him, Stellan Voss looked completely unguarded.
He stared at Hazel.
Then at me.
Something moved behind his eyes.
Something painful.
Something old.
“Thank you for bringing me home,” I whispered.
Stellan nodded, but he did not leave immediately.
His gaze returned to Hazel.
“She’s five?”
I froze.
I had never told him her age.
“Yes.”
He looked toward the piano.
“And she likes peonies.”
My stomach tightened.
“How do you know that?”
The softness disappeared from his expression.
For half a second, something colder replaced it.
Not guilt.
Calculation.
Then he stepped backward into the hallway.
“Get some sleep, Jo.”
The door closed.
I stood there for a long time.
Because suddenly the flowers did not seem romantic.
The books did not seem thoughtful.
And the piano did not seem generous.
They seemed like evidence.
May you like
Evidence that Stellan Voss knew things about my daughter I had never told him.
And I had no idea why.
