Gods of Chicago: Omnibus Edition by AJ Sikes

holes in everything we owned. Everything we ate and drank, all the nice clothes, the furniture. The house I grew up in. All of it has his stink on it. He’s going to pay for that, and I’m the debt collector. Then we can go somewhere, just me and you, Eddie.”
    “Where we gonna go?” he’d asked and smiled like she’d told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard. “A negro and a white woman in a car together? You gonna ride in back for the rest of your life?”
    “We’ll go to New Orleans. You’ve still got family there, and friends. Miscegenation laws aren’t on the books there. People live separately, but you said they know well enough who loves who, and nobody makes a stink about it. Not at all if you stay out of the wrong clubs. Clara Lewis would still be alive today if she had just taken a riverboat out of town instead of stepping out a window in the Monadnock.”
    Eddie’s face had gone cold. “Don’t talk like that, Lovebird. You talk about dying when you want to get me thinking you’re coming back, and I just know you ain’t if I let you drive off with that gun in your bag.”
    Emma had kissed him, full and warm. She held him and let his arms encircle her, his hands sweep up and down her back, pressing her to him. The warmth of his body against hers was almost enough to distract her from her plan.
    “Eddie, I have to do this. I have to payback Frank Nitti. In full.”
    “Emma. . .I know The Outfit did your family a hundred ways of wrong, but you ain’t gotta do nothing but stay right here.”
    She’d reached up to silence him with her fingers, but he caught them and brought his lips to hers. He held her hand tight, pulling her closer with his other hand in the small of her back as he stepped away from the window and to the bed. She fell with him, fell into the caressing and the squeezing, the fevered kissing and then the rhythmic movement of her body against his and his against hers, over and over in tandem with their heartbeats.
    Eddie had dropped back onto the pillow when they’d finished, letting his hands fall to her thighs. She’d rolled to the side to lie next to him. She stayed there until he’d fallen asleep and then carefully stole back to the dressing cabinet where she stored a few changes of clothes.
    Whispering through a blown kiss, Emma said, “I’ll be back, Eddie. And then we’ll leave this town. I promise.”
    Outside now, with the snow collecting in her hair, Emma turned away from the house. She slid into the driver’s seat and started the car, casting one last glance back at the upstairs window. Eddie’s frightened face looked back at her and she ripped her gaze away. If she looked at him for just one more second, she’d lose her nerve and Nitti would get away clean as can be. And Emma Farnsworth had had enough of rotten men spoiling her life and getting away with it.

Chapter 10
    Brand felt like folding when he climbed into the cabin later that morning. His whole life felt like preparation for yesterday’s story. Getting the crime scene photo, putting out the news about Chicago City’s worst killing. Grabbing threads that brought one of the city’s oldest families into the picture. Nearly getting one of those threads connected for certain. And then watching the whole thing unravel in his hands.
    The print copy of the Daily Record was on its way to the people with news about old man Farnsworth. Digs Gordon and the Conroy kid didn’t end up going to the Commissioner’s after all. Chief just called them in and let them know about Jenkins. They agreed to keep quiet, nodding their heads so fast Brand thought they’d spin their eyeballs backwards.
    Brand spent time in the printing room, listening to the Brackston auto-press churn out the story on Josiah Farnsworth’s suicide and the dead tramps. He’d kept both stories clean, just like Chief said. It was easy enough for the story about Old Man Farnsworth, but the word he’d got back from the riverside turned Brand’s