Chapter 2 - Where Her Mother Was Waiting
“Sophie,” Vincent said carefully, “where is your mama right now?”
The little girl turned and pointed toward the restaurant’s front windows.
“Three streets away,” she gasped. “Behind the place with the broken green sign. Mama told me to run where the red lights were.”
Romano’s neon sign cast a crimson glow across the sidewalk.
Vincent understood immediately.
Elena had known where the date was supposed to take place. Even while being attacked, she had sent her daughter toward him.
That meant she believed he could help.
It also meant her attackers had probably known where she was going.
Vincent rose and removed his jacket, wrapping it around Sophie’s trembling shoulders. The garment nearly swallowed her.
“Marco.”
A broad-shouldered man at the bar was already moving.
Marco Bellini had been Vincent’s head of security for eight years. He did not ask questions when Vincent used that tone.
“Lock down the block,” Vincent ordered. “Two men stay here. Nobody approaches the girl without my permission. Call Dr. Park and have her meet us.”
Marco glanced toward Sophie’s bleeding feet.
“Where are we going?”
Vincent looked down at the child.
“Show me.”
Sophie refused to remain behind.
She clutched Vincent’s hand and led him out of Romano’s, limping across the cold sidewalk while Marco and four security men spread around them.
The city continued moving as though nothing had happened.
Cabs passed.
Music drifted from an apartment window.
Somewhere nearby, a dog barked.
Vincent hated the normality of it.
A woman could be dying behind a building, and the world still had the nerve to continue.
Sophie guided them across two intersections and into a narrower street lined with closed shops. Halfway down the block stood an abandoned pharmacy with a broken green cross hanging above its entrance.
“There,” she whispered.
The alley beside the pharmacy was dark.
Vincent smelled blood before he saw it.
A blue high-heeled shoe lay near the entrance.
Several feet beyond it, a purse had been emptied across the pavement. Lipstick, keys, and a cracked compact mirror glittered beneath a security light.
Sophie made a small sound.
“Mama’s.”
Vincent tightened his grip on her hand.
“Marco, take her back.”
“No!” Sophie screamed.
Her fingers locked around Vincent’s.
“I’m not leaving Mama!”
Vincent crouched.
Her face was streaked with tears, but her eyes were fierce.
“You’re not leaving her,” he said. “You’re staying where I can protect you while I bring her out. That is how we help her.”
Sophie hesitated.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Marco carried her toward the street while Vincent drew the pistol beneath his shirt.
Two of his men entered the alley first.
The rear door of the abandoned pharmacy had been forced open. A trail of blood led through a narrow storage room scattered with broken shelves and moldy boxes.
At the far end, they found Elena.
She was lying beside an old furnace, one arm curled protectively over her stomach. Her blue dress was torn at the shoulder. Blood darkened her hair near her temple, and bruises were already forming along her jaw.
Vincent’s chest became painfully tight.
He had never met her.
Not truly.
He knew only Maria’s descriptions, a few photographs, and the fact that she had once refused a donation from one of his companies because the paperwork had not been transparent enough.
Yet seeing her there produced a rage that felt violently personal.
He knelt and pressed two fingers to her neck.
A pulse.
Weak, but present.
“Elena.”
Her eyelids moved.
“Your daughter is safe,” he told her. “Sophie found me.”
Her eyes opened.
They were dark brown and unfocused.
“Vincent?”
“Yes.”
“She made it?”
“She made it.”
Elena’s breath shook.
A tear moved from the corner of her eye into her hair.
“Thank God.”
“Who did this?”
Her lips parted, but only a faint whisper emerged.
“They wanted the ledger.”
“What ledger?”
“Foundation accounts.”
Vincent looked at Marco, who had returned to the doorway.
The Torino Foundation funded hospitals, shelters, and youth programs across the city. Maria supervised much of its work.
Elena Marlowe was one of the foundation’s senior accountants.
Vincent had known that.
He had not known her job might get her killed.
“What did you find?” he asked.
Elena tried to lift herself, then winced.
“Money moving through Mercy House. Millions. Not charity. Shipping companies. Docks.”
“Whose names?”
“I don’t know all of them.”
“Who attacked you?”
“One called the other Cole.”
Vincent knew three men named Cole in the city. Two worked for rival families.
The third worked for his uncle.
Elena’s fingers closed around his wrist.
“There was a ring.”
“What kind?”
“A silver lion.”
Vincent went completely still.
Only members of the Torino inner council wore silver lion rings. The tradition went back to his grandfather.
There were seven rings in existence.
Vincent wore one.
Maria kept another in a locked box.
The remaining five belonged to men who had sworn blood loyalty to the Torino family.
One of them had ordered the attack.
Elena’s eyes began closing.
“Stay with me,” Vincent said.
“They asked about Maria.”
“What about her?”
“They said she should have kept quiet.”
Vincent’s blood chilled.
“Where is Maria?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena lost consciousness.
Dr. Leah Park arrived six minutes later with an emergency team. She stabilized Elena before they moved her through the alley on a stretcher.
Sophie broke away from Marco when she saw her mother.
“Mama!”
Vincent caught her before she reached the stretcher.
“She’s alive,” he said. “The doctor is helping her.”
“Why won’t she wake up?”
“She’s hurt and tired.”
“Is she going to die?”
Vincent had spent his life answering difficult questions with certainty, whether or not he possessed it.
This time, he could not lie.
“I’m going to do everything possible to make sure she doesn’t.”
Sophie buried her face against his chest.
Vincent held her awkwardly at first.
Then more firmly.
Across the alley, Marco watched him with an expression Vincent could not read.
They transported Elena to a private medical clinic under Torino protection. Dr. Park ordered scans and surgery to stop internal bleeding.
Sophie remained in the waiting room wearing Vincent’s jacket and a pair of hospital socks.
She refused food.
She refused sleep.
She refused to release the small stuffed rabbit a nurse had brought from Elena’s apartment.
Vincent sat across from her while Marco reviewed security footage from the neighborhood.
“The pharmacy cameras were disabled,” Marco said. “Traffic camera caught a dark SUV leaving at eight twelve. Plates were stolen.”
“Faces?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Find Cole.”
“All three?”
“All three.”
Marco lowered his voice.
“If one of our councilmen was involved, searching too openly could make him run.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
Vincent’s eyes remained on Sophie.
“I want him afraid.”
At eleven thirty, Dr. Park entered the waiting room.
Sophie jumped to her feet.
The doctor crouched before her.
“Your mother is alive,” she said gently. “The surgery went well.”
Sophie’s knees seemed to give way.
Vincent caught her.
“She needs rest,” Dr. Park continued. “She has a concussion, two cracked ribs, and a deep cut along her side. But she is strong.”
“When can I see her?”
“In a little while.”
Sophie nodded repeatedly, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Vincent closed his eyes for half a second.
Relief was not an emotion he trusted.
It made people careless.
His phone vibrated.
A message had arrived from Maria.
There were no words.
Only a photograph.
Maria sat in a wooden chair with her wrists tied behind her. A bruise darkened one side of her face. Behind her stood a concrete wall marked with the faded red symbol of Mercy House.
A second message followed.
Bring Elena Marlowe and the ledger to Pier 19 before midnight tomorrow. Come alone, or your sister dies.
Vincent looked at the time.
They had less than twenty-four hours.
Marco read the message over his shoulder.
“Mercy House closed eight years ago.”
“Then reopen it.”
“What about the demand?”
Vincent glanced toward Sophie.
The little girl was staring through the glass doors leading to her mother’s recovery room.
“They are not getting Elena.”
“And Maria?”
“They are not keeping her.”
Vincent’s phone rang.
Maria’s name appeared on the screen.
He answered immediately.
“Maria?”
Static crackled.
Then his sister’s frightened voice came through.
“Vinnie, listen to me. Don’t trust—”
A man shouted in the background.
Maria cried out.
“Don’t trust Uncle Salvatore!”
A loud impact ended the call.
The line went dead.
Vincent slowly lowered the phone.
Salvatore Torino was his father’s younger brother.
His adviser.
His godfather.
The man who had taught him how to shoot, how to negotiate, and how to survive after his parents were buried.
Vincent had trusted him longer than he had trusted anyone alive.
Marco’s face was grim.
“What do you want me to do?”
Vincent looked through the recovery-room window at Elena, then at Sophie.
“Call every captain,” he said. “Tell them nothing.”
Marco waited.
Vincent’s voice dropped.
“And bring Uncle Salvatore to me.”
Before Marco could move, the clinic lights went out.
Emergency alarms began flashing red.
Somewhere in the darkened hallway, a door opened.
A nurse screamed.
May you like
Vincent turned toward Sophie.
Her chair was empty.
