CHAPTER 4 The House in Gravesend
Victor Hale fired before I turned.
The bullet struck the locker beside my head.
Metal screamed.
I pulled Sophia behind the concrete wall as another shot cracked through the corridor.
People began shouting near the station entrance.
Victor did not care.
Men like him relied on panic. Crowds became camouflage when everyone was running in different directions.
I fired once toward his shoulder.
He disappeared behind a row of lockers.
Sophia gripped the burner phone.
“He said Luca is where Elena died.”
“I heard him.”
“Where was the accident?”
“Near Gravesend Bay.”
I called Enzo.
No answer.
I called again.
Straight to voicemail.
My blood turned cold.
We ran through the service corridor and reached the street.
The gray sedan was gone.
So were the children.
A message appeared on my phone.
COME ALONE, OR BOTH CHILDREN DIE.
Attached was a photograph.
Luca and Emma sat in the back of a van. Their wrists were not tied, but a man with a gun sat beside them.
Luca’s face was calm.
Too calm.
He had learned that from me.
Emma leaned against him, clutching his sleeve.
Sophia made a sound that seemed to tear through her chest.
I caught her before she fell.
“This is my fault.”
“No.”
“I brought the key. I brought Emma.”
“They planned this before you entered my office.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Marco knew exactly how I would react.”
A black SUV stopped at the curb.
Two of my men stepped out.
I did not recognize the driver.
That meant the vehicle belonged to the organization, but not necessarily to me.
I raised my weapon.
The men froze.
“Mr. Moretti,” one said. “Marco sent us.”
“Of course he did.”
They exchanged a glance.
I shot the front tire and pulled Sophia toward a taxi.
Ten minutes later, the city was behind us.
The place where Elena died was a curved road overlooking Gravesend Bay. Her car broke through the guardrail during a storm and struck a concrete drainage wall.
The police said she died instantly.
I had never gone back.
Grief makes certain places feel cursed.
When we arrived, rain had begun to fall.
The road was empty.
I searched the shoulder, the abandoned repair buildings and the boat storage lots nearby.
No van.
No children.
Sophia stood near the broken section of guardrail that had never been replaced properly.
“They didn’t mean the crash site,” she said.
“What else could they mean?”
“Victor said where she died, not where the car stopped.”
I stared toward the row of old waterfront houses.
Elena had spent her final afternoon in one of them.
A safe house my father purchased thirty years earlier.
The Gravesend house.
Marco had been the only other person who knew she was there.
We drove through narrow streets until we reached a two-story brick home surrounded by dead rosebushes. The windows were dark.
The front door stood slightly open.
Inside, the house smelled of dust, damp wood and old smoke.
I remembered Elena standing in the kitchen, laughing because I had failed to make coffee.
I remembered Luca learning to walk across the living-room carpet.
I remembered Marco sitting at the table, raising a glass to my marriage.
Every memory now felt contaminated.
Sophia touched a framed photograph hanging crookedly in the hallway.
It showed Elena holding Luca as a baby.
“You kept this place.”
“I couldn’t sell it.”
“Because of her?”
“Because selling it felt like agreeing she was gone.”
We searched the first floor.
Empty.
On the second floor, I found a small bedroom with fresh footprints near the window.
A red crayon lay beneath the bed.
Luca’s.
Beside it, he had drawn an arrow on the wooden floor.
The arrow pointed toward the wall.
I pushed aside an old dresser.
Behind it was a narrow service panel.
Inside the panel, Luca had placed a silver button from his school uniform and a folded piece of paper.
His handwriting was uneven.
MAN WITH SNAKE RING TOOK US.
UNCLE MARCO SAID DAD SENT HIM.
EMMA IS BRAVE.
PAINT SMELL.
TRAIN EVERY TEN MINUTES.
Sophia covered her mouth.
“He left this for us.”
“He knew I would find the crayon.”
There were only a handful of industrial properties near train lines that Marco controlled.
One was an abandoned paint factory in Red Hook.
But something bothered me.
If Luca had been brought here, why move him again?
Why leave us a direct path to the factory?
Because Marco wanted me there.
Or because Luca had heard them discussing it.
A floorboard creaked downstairs.
I raised my weapon and motioned for Sophia to remain behind me.
A figure moved through the kitchen.
I rounded the doorway and pressed the barrel against a man’s head.
Enzo stood there bleeding from a wound above his eye.
“Boss.”
“Where are the children?”
He leaned against the counter.
“I’m sorry.”
I grabbed his coat.
“You had one job.”
“They hit the car near the church. Used a delivery truck. I woke up in the trunk.”
“Who?”
“Victor and two others.”
“Marco?”
“I didn’t see him.”
Sophia entered the room.
Enzo looked at her.
His face changed.
“You’re Daniel’s wife.”
“You knew my husband?”
“Daniel came to me before he died.”
I released him.
“What did he say?”
“He said Elena Moretti gave him evidence. He wanted me to deliver it to you if anything happened.”
“And did you?”
Enzo looked toward the floor.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Marco told me Daniel was working with federal agents. He said giving you the files would put Luca in danger.”
My hand tightened around the pistol.
“Where are those files now?”
“I never had them.”
Sophia stepped closer.
“Daniel did not leave only a key. He mentioned a black ledger in his final letter.”
Enzo’s eyes widened.
“You found the key?”
“Yes.”
“Then Marco knows you opened the locker.”
“How?”
Enzo reached into his coat and removed a small device.
A tracker.
“I found this beneath the sedan after I escaped.”
Marco had known every place we went.
The diner.
Sophia’s apartment.
The church.
Grand Central.
The Gravesend house.
Sophia looked toward the window.
Headlights appeared beyond the dead rosebushes.
One vehicle.
Then three more.
They stopped in a semicircle around the house.
Men stepped out carrying rifles.
Enzo checked the rear door.
“Blocked.”
Sophia gripped the burner phone.
“There has to be another way.”
“There is,” I said.
My father never owned a safe house with only one exit.
I pulled the pantry shelves away from the wall, revealing a narrow staircase leading underground.
As we descended, flames burst through the kitchen window.
They were not coming to search.
They were coming to erase us.
The tunnel opened into an old storm drain behind the neighboring property.
We crawled through darkness while the house burned above us.
Halfway through the passage, Sophia stopped.
“What is that?”
A faint electronic sound came from the burner phone.
The screen had activated on its own.
A live video appeared.
Luca and Emma were inside the paint factory.
Victor stood behind them.
Then Marco stepped into the frame.
He was holding the black ledger.
He looked directly into the camera.
“You were always going to choose the boy, Alessandro.”
May you like
Marco smiled.
“That is why you were never fit to lead.”
