Chapter 2 - A Door She Could Open Herself
The second shot struck the window frame.
Vincent reached for his phone.
Audrey caught his hand.
“Don't call your usual driver.”
The warning cost him half a second. It might have saved all three lives.
Leo pointed toward the connecting door.
“The room next door is empty. My lawyer booked both.”
Vincent pushed a chair beneath the suite handle while Audrey called emergency services. She gave the address, floor, and location of the shots without raising her voice.
Then she took off her heels.
Even frightened, she refused to become helpless for anyone's convenience.
They crossed into the adjoining room and reached the service corridor before footsteps sounded outside the suite.
A housekeeper stood beside a laundry cart.
Audrey showed her the emergency call still connected on her phone.
“Someone is shooting into that room. Please go downstairs and tell security to keep people away from these windows.”
The woman nodded once and hurried toward the stairs.
Vincent supported Leo down fourteen flights before they stopped on a landing. His brother's breath scraped through clenched teeth.
“Leave me,” Leo said.
“Try saying that again.”
Audrey glanced through the door window.
“No one is leaving anyone. But both of you can save the dramatic speeches for somewhere with chairs.”
They emerged through a kitchen entrance into an alley filling with distant sirens.
Audrey flagged a yellow cab.
Vincent almost objected.
Then he remembered whose vehicles he could no longer trust.
She gave the driver an address in Queens.
Only after the hotel disappeared behind them did Vincent notice blood on her wrist.
“Your hand.”
“Glass.”
He offered his handkerchief.
She accepted it, but when he reached to wrap the cut, she took the cloth from him.
“I can do it.”
“I know.”
The two words changed something between them.
Her destination was a brick house with blue porch steps. An older woman opened the door, took one look at Audrey, and pulled her inside.
“Kitchen,” she said. “All three of you. Shoes off if they're bleeding.”
“This is my aunt June,” Audrey explained.
June looked Vincent over.
“So that's the boss.”
He had negotiated with men carrying guns without feeling this thoroughly assessed.
June cleaned Audrey's wrist while Leo called his lawyer from her landline.
Vincent stood beside the refrigerator, useless and furious about it.
At last Audrey joined him near the back door.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
“For which part?”
He deserved that.
“For questioning you. Following you. Treating your private life like something I could audit.”
She leaned against the counter.
“I have worked for you for four years, Vincent. You trust me with payroll for six hundred people, but apparently not with a conversation.”
“I thought Dante had—”
“You thought another man had something you wanted.”
He looked at her.
She did not soften the sentence.
“That doesn't make me yours.”
“No.”
“And being frightened doesn't make you right.”
“No.”
Outside, a delivery truck rattled over a pothole.
Vincent watched her inspect the bandage around her wrist.
“I was jealous,” he admitted. “And I used security as an excuse.”
“That's a beginning.”
“Tell me what you need.”
“My own lawyer. Access to the audit records. A plan that includes asking me what I think.”
“You have it.”
“And stop giving orders when you're actually asking someone to stay.”
For a moment, he could not answer.
Then he said, “Will you stay until we know you're safe?”
Audrey studied him.
“Yes. For now.”
Leo entered with the phone in his hand.
“My attorney has contacted a federal prosecutor. Someone outside the local team Dante bought.”
June set sandwiches on the table.
“Good. Federal prosecutors can wait until you've eaten.”
Then Vincent's phone lit up.
Dante.
He let it ring.
A message followed.
Your assistant has been stealing company records. Come home alone, and I can still keep this quiet.
Audrey read it over Vincent's shoulder.
“He thinks you'll choose him.”
Vincent opened the message, took a screenshot, and placed the phone on the table.
“Then let's allow him to keep thinking.”
Across the kitchen, Leo looked down at the sandwich June had cut for him.
His hand began to shake.
May you like
Vincent sat beside his brother.
For once, he stayed.
