Chapter 3 - Footsteps in Astoria
By 3:30 AM, I had packed everything I owned into a single canvas duffel bag.
The laptop with the encrypted De Rossi files was wrapped inside two wool sweaters at the bottom of the bag. My passport—the counterfeit Swiss one that had gotten me through immigration—was in my jacket pocket alongside my cash. I had made up my mind: I couldn't stay in New York, and I couldn't let my grandmother die alone. I would catch a morning bus to Montreal, cross into Canada, and fly to Europe from there. It would take longer, but it would avoid the immediate red flags at JFK.
I zipped the bag, hoisted it onto my shoulder, and reached for the doorknob.
Then, through the thin wood of the apartment door, I heard it.
The faint, rhythmic creak of the floorboards on the second-floor landing.
It wasn't Mrs. Gable, the elderly widow below me who walked with a cane. These steps were light, measured, and moving with deliberate stealth. Two people, possibly three.
My breath caught in my throat. Had Luca’s men found me already? Had the call to the clinic in Arezzo been traced?
I stepped backward silently, lowering my duffel bag to the floor without making a sound. My small kitchen window opened onto a rickety iron fire escape that looked out over a narrow alleyway filled with garbage bins. I tiptoed across the room, unlocked the window sash, and began to ease the glass upward. The metal groaned slightly in the winter cold.
Suddenly, a heavy thud struck the hallway door.
Not a knock. A shoulder slamming into the wood. The lock rattled, and the frame groaned.
""Open the door, Alessia,"" a deep, gravelly voice muttered in Italian from the hallway. It wasn't Dante's voice. It was harsher, thicker, with the distinct northern dialect of Lombardy.
Luca's men.
Panic flared like gasoline in my chest. They hadn't just traced the call—they had been close enough to intercept me before dawn.
I threw the window all the way open, grabbed my duffel, and scrambled out onto the iron grating of the fire escape. The icy metal bit through my gloves. Below me, the alley was black and empty.
Behind me, the apartment door splintered with a deafening crash. Two men in heavy leather jackets burst through the threshold, their flashlights cutting wide white beams across my empty room.
""She’s at the window!"" one of them barked in Italian.
I didn't wait to hear the rest. I took the metal stairs down two at a time, the iron shuddering beneath my boots. Above me, heavy footsteps began hammering down the metal rungs.
""Stop running, bitch!"" one of the men yelled, leaning over the railing above. ""Luca wants you alive, but he didn't say anything about your legs!""
I hit the drop-ladder, hung for half a second, and dropped the final eight feet onto the frozen pavement of the alley. My ankles absorbed the shock, a sharp pain shooting up my shins, but adrenaline carried me forward. I scrambled to my feet, hoisted the duffel, and sprinted toward the mouth of the alley that led to 31st Street.
If I could reach the avenue, there would be late-night traffic, a bodega, people—
I burst out of the shadows of the alley onto the sidewalk.
A sleek black Mercedes-Maybach pulled up directly against the curb, blocking my path, its headlights flooding me in blinding white radiance.
I froze, trapped between the luxury sedan in front of me and the two armed thugs charging out of the alley behind me.
The rear door of the Mercedes swung open smoothly.
""Get in,"" a familiar, deep voice called from the shadows of the interior.
Dante Moretti sat in the leather seat, calm and unbothered by the freezing night air, extending his hand toward me.
Behind me, the sound of a gun racking chambered a round.
""Drop the bag, Alessia!"" Luca's thug yelled from twenty paces away.
May you like
I didn't think. I didn't hesitate. I dove through the open door of the Mercedes, landing hard across the plush leather floorboards. Dante reached down, seized my jacket, and pulled me onto the seat beside him with effortless strength.
Before the door had even fully latched, Marco stomped on the accelerator. The heavy sedan leaped forward with a roar of turbocharged power, tires screaming against the asphalt, leaving Luca's gunmen cursing in a cloud of exhaust and freezing city dust.
