Chapter 2 - THE NAME MARIA WAS AFRAID TO SAY
Maria stood in the doorway like someone had pointed a gun at her.
Sofia still had one hand resting on the blanket she had pulled over me.
I wiped the tears from my face before either of them could pretend not to see them.
Old habits.
Useless habits, apparently.
“Mommy,” Sofia whispered. “Mr. Daniel woke up.”
Maria’s eyes remained on me.
“I can see that.”
Her voice was steady.
Her hands were not.
I looked from her to the little girl.
“Come here, Sofia.”
Maria moved instantly.
“Sofia, upstairs.”
The child frowned.
“But Mr. Daniel—”
“Now, sweetheart.”
Something in Maria’s voice ended the argument.
Sofia gave me a worried look.
“Are you still cold?”
My throat tightened again.
“No.”
She smiled.
“Good.”
Then she ran past her mother.
Tiny footsteps disappeared up the staircase.
The second Sofia was out of sight, Maria’s expression changed.
Not dramatically.
That would have been easier.
She simply stopped pretending she wasn’t afraid.
I stood.
The blanket slid from my chest.
“You called me Daniel.”
She swallowed.
“I’m sorry.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“You didn’t ask anything.”
“I’m about to.”
Rain struck the tall windows behind us.
My wallet remained untouched.
So did the cash.
So did my phone.
The trap I had set suddenly felt embarrassing.
“You looked terrified when Sofia mentioned her father.”
Maria’s face hardened.
“My daughter misses him.”
“That’s not what frightened you.”
She didn’t answer.
I walked toward her.
She held her ground, but barely.
“Who was he?”
“Nobody you knew.”
A lie.
I recognized lies.
I had built an empire around recognizing the second before people told them.
“Try again.”
Maria’s jaw tightened.
“His name was Gabriel.”
“Gabriel what?”
She looked toward the staircase.
That was when I knew.
Whatever truth she was protecting had something to do with Sofia.
“Maria.”
“Please.”
One word.
Not defiant.
Not manipulative.
Terrified.
“Please what?”
“Don’t ask me tonight.”
I stared at her.
Nobody in my house told me what I could ask.
Nobody except a four-year-old girl who had just covered a mafia boss with a blanket because she thought he looked cold.
“Why?”
Maria looked at me.
“Because if I tell you, you won’t look at her the same way.”
My chest became still.
“What does Sofia have to do with me?”
“Nothing.”
Too fast.
I stepped closer.
“Maria.”
She turned.
I caught her wrist.
Not hard.
Enough to stop her.
She flinched anyway.
I released her immediately.
That bothered me.
“Did he hurt you?”
Her expression changed.
“No.”
“Did someone?”
Silence.
I looked at the faint mark beneath the sleeve of her blouse.
A bruise.
Old.
Yellow around the edges.
“Who?”
“Nobody.”
“That answer is becoming irritating.”
“And yours is becoming dangerous.”
That surprised me.
Most people did not challenge me twice.
Maria did.
She looked exhausted suddenly.
Not afraid of me.
Afraid for me.
That was worse.
“Gabriel Torres,” she said quietly.
The name meant nothing for two seconds.
Then it did.
Not because I had known him personally.
Because I had seen it.
A personnel report.
A photograph.
A name attached to a warehouse shooting nearly three years earlier.
Gabriel Torres.
Security driver.
Twenty-nine.
Killed during an ambush intended for one of my captains.
I went cold.
“He worked for me.”
Maria closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Four years.”
“Why didn’t I know?”
“You have hundreds of people.”
“I know the families of men who die for me.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“You know the checks you send their families.”
The words hit with more force than they should have.
“I paid you after Gabriel died?”
She laughed quietly.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because the official report said he wasn’t yours anymore.”
I frowned.
“He was dismissed?”
“Three weeks before his death.”
“For what?”
Maria looked toward the windows.
“For stealing.”
Something tightened in my chest.
I remembered vaguely.
A driver accused of taking cash from a transport run.
Vincent had handled it.
Vincent.
I stared at Maria.
“Who investigated him?”
She didn’t answer.
She didn’t need to.
“Vincent Russo.”
Maria nodded.
My blood turned cold.
“Gabriel didn’t steal anything, did he?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he came home that night with blood on his shirt and told me he’d found something.”
“What?”
“He said Vincent was selling your routes.”
I stopped breathing.
Maria continued.
“Gabriel found copies of manifests. Meeting locations. License numbers. He tried to report it.”
“To whom?”
“To you.”
“I never heard from him.”
“I know.”
She looked at me.
“He gave the evidence to Vincent because Vincent said he would bring it directly to you.”
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because betrayal has a sick sense of humor.
Gabriel had discovered Vincent years before I had.
And instead of warning me, Vincent had destroyed him.
“What happened next?”
“Two days later, Gabriel was accused of stealing money.”
Maria’s voice trembled.
“He begged me to believe him. I did.”
“Then he died.”
“Twenty-two days later.”
I remembered the warehouse attack.
A rival crew had hit one of our vehicles near Hunts Point.
Three men died.
Gabriel had supposedly been driving privately.
Wrong place.
Wrong time.
At least that was the report.
I walked to the fireplace.
For the first time in years, I wished Vincent were alive.
He wasn’t.
I had put a bullet in his chest myself after his betrayal was confirmed.
Suddenly it didn’t feel like enough.
“Why come work for me?”
Maria’s silence returned.
I turned.
“That’s what you were hiding.”
She nodded.
“You didn’t come here for a job.”
“No.”
“What did you come for?”
“My husband’s name.”
I stared at her.
“I wanted proof.”
“Of what?”
“That Gabriel wasn’t a thief.”
Maria wiped quickly beneath one eye.
“Sofia will grow up someday. She’ll ask what kind of man her father was. I couldn’t let the only record of him say he betrayed the people he worked for.”
“You risked entering my house for that?”
“Yes.”
“While bringing your daughter?”
“That wasn’t the plan.”
Her voice broke.
“My babysitter got sick. Then my mother was hospitalized. I had nobody.”
I thought of Sofia walking past the envelope of cash.
“Have you searched my office?”
Maria hesitated.
“Yes.”
I should have been angry.
Instead I asked, “Find anything?”
“No.”
“Locked rooms?”
“No.”
“Computer?”
“I tried once.”
That almost made me smile.
“You wouldn’t have made it past the first password.”
“I noticed.”
I studied her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Gabriel told me something before he died.”
“What?”
Maria’s eyes filled.
“He said if anything happened to him, I should never trust Daniel Hale.”
For the first time that night, I had no answer.
She continued.
“He believed you had approved his dismissal.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Because of the way you reacted to Vincent’s name.”
I looked away.
Gabriel had died believing I had betrayed him.
A man working under my protection had been framed, abandoned, and murdered because one of my closest men knew exactly how little attention I paid to the people beneath me.
That truth was ugly.
Maria reached into her pocket.
“I was going to leave tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Because someone knows I’m here.”
I turned sharply.
“What?”
She pulled out a folded note.
No envelope.
No signature.
She handed it to me.
Four words.
STOP DIGGING, MARIA TORRES.
I read it twice.
“When did you get this?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where?”
“Inside Sofia’s school bag.”
My vision narrowed.
“Someone put this near your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“You should have told me immediately.”
“I didn’t know if it came from you.”
I looked at her.
She flinched at what she saw in my face.
“Maria.”
“Yes?”
“If I wanted you gone, I would tell you.”
She almost smiled.
“I’m starting to understand that.”
I called my head of security.
“Elias.”
He answered instantly.
“Boss?”
“Lock the gates.”
Silence.
Then, “Problem?”
“Possibly.”
“How many men?”
“All of them.”
Maria stared at me.
I continued.
“No staff leaves until we identify every person who entered this house in the last seventy-two hours. Get school security footage from Sofia Torres’s preschool. Quietly.”
Maria stepped forward.
“Daniel—”
I held up a hand.
Into the phone, I said, “And Elias?”
“Yes?”
“Pull every file connected to Gabriel Torres.”
There was a pause.
“That name from the Hunts Point incident?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
I ended the call.
Maria looked pale.
“You shouldn’t do this.”
“They threatened a child under my roof.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain.”
She hugged herself.
“Gabriel didn’t only discover Vincent.”
My body went still.
“What else?”
“He said Vincent was working for someone inside your family.”
The room seemed to lose sound.
“Which family?”
Maria stared at me.
“Your actual one.”
For years I had believed Vincent’s betrayal was the reason three men died.
Maybe it had only been the surface.
“Did Gabriel give you a name?”
“No.”
“Anything?”
“One sentence.”
I waited.
“He said, ‘If Daniel learns who owns Vincent, New York burns.’”
I looked toward the rain-black windows surrounding my house.
My father was dead.
My uncle was dead.
My older brother Michael lived in Florida and had supposedly left the family business ten years earlier.
Only one person still shared my blood and remained close enough to know everything about my operations.
My younger sister.
Elena.
I immediately rejected the thought.
Maria saw it happen.
“You thought of someone.”
“No.”
“Daniel.”
“No.”
She stepped closer.
“You need to consider everyone.”
I looked at her.
“That is my sister.”
“And Gabriel was my husband.”
Silence.
Maria’s voice dropped.
“I made the mistake of believing one person was incapable of betrayal.”
I knew exactly what she meant.
So had I.
Vincent.
Upstairs, Sofia laughed at something.
The sound floated down the hallway.
Soft.
Innocent.
Completely unaware that someone had put a threat inside her school bag.
I looked at Maria.
“You’re not leaving tomorrow.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You don’t decide that.”
“Tonight I do.”
“Excuse me?”
“Until I know who threatened your daughter, this house is the safest place you can be.”
“You just said someone inside your family may be involved.”
“Which means outside this house is worse.”
Maria opened her mouth.
I stepped closer.
“You wanted Gabriel’s name cleared?”
“Yes.”
“Then help me.”
“With what?”
I looked down at the note.
“With finding out who killed him.”
And for the first time since Vincent Russo betrayed me, I realized I might not have finished killing the betrayal at all.
I had only cut off one branch.
May you like
The roots were still alive.
And somewhere inside my empire, someone had just made the mistake of threatening the only little girl who had ever looked at Daniel Hale and seen someone worth keeping warm.
