Chapter 2 - The Boy in the Rain
The air inside the luxury town car was heavy with the smell of wet wool, cedarwood, and rain.
Harper sat huddled against the passenger door in the backseat, her fingers knotted tightly in her lap as the black sedan sped through the rain-slicked streets toward Brooklyn. Beside her, Lorenzo sat in unyielding silence, his phone glowing against his knee.
“He didn’t know,” Harper pleaded, her voice trembling in the dim light of the cabin. “Mr. Moretti, please. Leo is an idiot, but he isn’t a thief. He must have been forced into it.”
Lorenzo didn’t turn his head. He watched the red taillights of the city blur through the rain-streaked glass.
“Sub-Vault Four is secured by four electronic deadbolts and a rotating biometric cipher,” Lorenzo said, his tone devoid of anger, which made it ten times more terrifying. “A nineteen-year-old amateur does not wander into that facility unless someone handed him a master key.”
Harper pressed her hand against her mouth, a sickening knot tightening in her gut.
Frankie Lombardi.
Frankie had claimed Leo owed eighty thousand dollars for sports betting, but Frankie was the nephew of Sal Lombardi—a man who had spent ten years trying to crack the Moretti family’s maritime transit routes.
The sedan turned off the expressway, descending into the industrial shadows of the Red Hook docks.
Massive shipping cranes loomed against the stormy sky like rusted iron giants. The car rolled past a guarded chain-link gate and pulled up to the loading bay of an abandoned brick warehouse.
Two armed guards in dark slickers pulled the iron bay doors open.
Inside, beneath the glare of an overhead work halogen, a nineteen-year-old boy was kneeling on the concrete floor, his hands zip-tied behind his back.
His lip was split, his eye swollen shut, his wet hair plastered to his forehead as he shivered uncontrollably in a damp hooded sweatshirt.
“Leo!” Harper screamed, reaching for the door handle before the car had even completely halted.
Lorenzo’s hand shot out, catching her forearm with a grip that was firm but remarkably gentle.
“Stay behind me,” Lorenzo commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. “Do not speak until I tell you to.”
Harper swallowed hard, her chest heaving, but she nodded.
Lorenzo stepped out into the damp chill of the warehouse, his long charcoal coat sweeping behind him. The four armed enforcers standing around the boy immediately straightened, lowering their heads in deep, deferential respect.
Dante stepped forward, holding out a black nylon duffel bag.
“We caught him climbing through the ventilation shaft above the sorting floor, Boss,” Dante reported. “He had three prototype GPS transponders and a schematic map of the outer security grid.”
Lorenzo stopped two paces from the boy on the floor.
Leo Hayes looked up through his swollen eye, terror turning his youthful features completely gray.
“I’m sorry!” Leo choked out, his voice cracking into a ragged sob. “They told me… they said if I didn’t get the transponders, they’d put Harper in a van! They said she’d pay the eighty grand on her back!”
A low, lethal growl vibrated in Dante’s chest, but Lorenzo didn’t move.
The temperature in the vast warehouse seemed to plummet ten degrees in a single heartbeat.
Lorenzo slowly turned his head toward the car, where Harper stood trembling in the shadows, her eyes wide with agonizing heartbreak.
“Is that what Lombardi told you, son?” Lorenzo asked quietly, his eyes drifting back to the battered boy on the floor.
“Yes, sir!” Leo wept, pressing his forehead against the cold concrete. “Frankie gave me the keycard yesterday afternoon! He swore nobody would get hurt if I just dropped the bag in a dumpster on 3rd Avenue!”
Lorenzo reached into his suit jacket, pulling out a crisp linen handkerchief, and tossed it down beside the boy’s bleeding face.
“Dante,” Lorenzo said softly, without breaking eye contact with the floor. “Cut his ties. Bring the boy to the estate.”
May you like
Dante blinked, clearly surprised. “The estate, Boss? Not the holding room?”
“I said the estate,” Lorenzo repeated, his voice smooth and absolute as iron. “And call Sal Lombardi. Tell him we need to discuss his nephew’s manners before sunrise.”
