Chapter 2 - She extended a hand.
“Costa sent me.”
Dominic’s thick eyebrows shot up.
He didn’t take her hand immediately.
He stared at her, then looked at his clipboard, flipping to the second page.
“Francesca.
You’re the new head wrench.”
“I guess I am.”
Dominic let out a low whistle, finally shaking her hand.
His grip was like a vice, but Frankie squeezed back just as hard.
“Mr. Costa called me himself last night.
Said I was getting a specialist.
Didn’t say the specialist was a girl.”
“Does the gender of the mechanic change how a diesel engine works?” Frankie asked, her tone flat and uncompromising.
Dominic chuckled, a rough, barking sound.
“Fair enough.
You got a mouth on you.
Costa likes that, I guess.”
He pointed his heavy pen toward Bay 4.
“Number 88.
Blown head gasket.
Cummins ISX.
Needs to be torn down, machined, and put back together by tomorrow night.
Think you can handle a big rig, or do you just change oil on Hondas?”
Frankie didn’t answer him.
She just picked up her toolbox and walked toward Bay 4.
The truck was a monster.
The hood was tilted forward, exposing the massive, greasy labyrinth of the diesel engine block.
It was daunting.
But it was exactly what she needed.
She needed a problem with a logical solution.
She needed bolts that loosened when you applied enough torque.
She needed something that made sense.
Unlike the insane bargain she had struck the day before.
By noon, she was covered in black oil.
Her knuckles were bleeding from a slipped wrench, and her back ached from leaning over the heavy fenders.
The noise in the warehouse was deafening — the whine of pneumatic drills, the clatter of dropped tools, the shouting of dock workers outside.
It was a chaotic, violent symphony, and Frankie fell into the rhythm of it perfectly.
She worked with a ruthless, singular focus.
She didn’t take a lunch break.
She barely stopped to drink water from the rusty fountain near the bathrooms.
The other mechanics gave her wide berth at first, shooting skeptical glances at the woman dismantling a heavy-duty engine block by herself.
But as the hours ticked by and parts were cleaned, categorized, and prepped for the machine shop with flawless efficiency, the skeptical glances turned into quiet nods of respect.
Around three in the afternoon, Frankie was lying on a creeper, sliding under the belly of the truck to inspect the oil pan.
The concrete was freezing against her back.
Suddenly, the ambient noise in the warehouse shifted.
It didn’t go quiet exactly, but the tone changed.
The shouting stopped.
The pneumatic drills ceased their whining.
A heavy, unnatural stillness fell over the immediate area around Bay 4.
Frankie wiped a streak of grease from her forehead and grabbed the edge of the truck’s bumper, pulling herself out from under the chassis.
She sat up, pushing her safety glasses onto the top of her head.
Gabriel Costa was standing ten feet away.
He looked entirely out of place in the grimy warehouse.
He wore a perfectly tailored navy blue suit, a crisp white shirt, and a pair of polished leather shoes that probably cost more than the engine she was rebuilding.
He was flanked by two men, but he stood slightly ahead of them, dominating the space effortlessly.
Dominic was standing next to him, looking nervous — a jarring sight for a man built like a brick wall.
Gabriel’s dark eyes locked onto Frankie.
He took in her appearance — the smeared oil on her cheek, the bloody knuckles, the sweat dampening the collar of her shirt.
His gaze lingered for a second too long, heavy and unreadable.
“Dominic tells me you’ve made significant progress on Number 88,” Gabriel said, his voice easily cutting through the remaining background noise.
Frankie grabbed a rag from her back pocket and slowly stood up, wiping the thickest layer of grime from her hands.
She didn’t smile.
She didn’t act deferential.
She just looked at him, exhausted and entirely unimpressed by his display of wealth.
“It’s a machine,” she said, tossing the dirty rag onto her toolbox.
“It was broken.
Now it’s getting fixed.
That’s the job.”
Gabriel stepped closer, closing the distance until he was standing just at the edge of the grease-stained floor.
He looked down at the disassembled engine components laid out on clean cardboard.
“You didn’t run,” he noted softly, almost as if speaking to himself.
“I have a three-hundred-thousand-dollar debt, Costa.”
Frankie crossed her arms over her chest.
“Where exactly am I going to run?”
Gabriel slowly raised his eyes from the engine parts back to her face.
That same dark, dangerous heat she had seen in the penthouse flared to life in his obsidian eyes.
“Nowhere,” he murmured.
“You aren’t going anywhere at all.”
The week blurred into a haze of aching muscles, burnt diesel, and cheap diner coffee.
Frankie practically lived at Pier 44.
By Friday evening, she had resurrected three heavy transport trucks and managed to earn a grudging nod from Dominic, which felt like pulling teeth from a live bear.
She was packing up her red toolbox, wiping down a socket wrench, when the heavy bay doors rattled.
A sleek, midnight black sedan pulled into the warehouse.
It wasn’t one of the fleet vehicles.
It was low, quiet, and aggressively expensive.
The driver’s side door opened, and a man in a gray suit stepped out.
“Francesca.
Mr. Costa requires your services at his residence.”
She stared at the man.
Her back was killing her.
Her boots felt like they were filled with lead.
And the last thing she wanted was to play lap dog for Gabriel Costa.
But the memory of the frozen interest rate and Leo’s kneecaps kept her mouth shut.
She grabbed a smaller canvas tool bag, shoved a few essentials inside, and walked toward the sedan.
The drive took forty minutes.
Winding away from the industrial grit of the harbor and up into the hills where the streetlights grew sparse and the properties grew massive.
They pulled up to a set of heavy wrought-iron gates that swung open silently, revealing a sprawling stone estate hidden behind a wall of ancient oak trees.
The driver didn’t take her to the front door.
He steered the car around the back, down a paved incline, and stopped in front of a detached, climate-controlled garage.
The doors were already open.
Frankie stepped out of the sedan, the cool night air biting at her cheeks.
She walked into the garage and stopped dead.
It wasn’t a garage.
It was a museum.
The floor was polished gray epoxy, spotless enough to eat off.
Under the harsh, bright LED lights sat a collection of machinery that made her breath hitch.
A pristine silver Aston Martin DB5.
A matte black Ducati.
But her eyes bypassed the European imports and locked onto the back corner.
Sitting with its hood propped open was a 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429.
It was painted a deep, bruised cherry red.
And leaning over the fender, holding a shop light, was Gabriel Costa.
He had shed the corporate armor.
He wore a faded gray t-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and a pair of dark jeans.
His hands were smeared with black grease.
He looked up as her boots clicked against the epoxy floor.
“You’re late,” Gabriel said.
His tone was neutral.
But that dangerous, electric undercurrent was still there.
“I don’t recall getting a schedule for your personal joy rides,” Frankie replied, dropping her tool bag on a rolling cart.
She walked over to the Mustang, unable to hide her genuine admiration.
She ran a clean finger along the edge of the driver’s side door.
“Original paint.”
“Restored.
Five years ago.
But the engine block is matching numbers.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Timing’s off.
Runs rich.
It’s hesitating when I shift into third.”
He stepped back, offering her the space.
Frankie didn’t hesitate.
She grabbed the shop light from him and leaned over the massive V8 engine.
The smell of high-octane fuel and old, hot metal washed over her.
It was a scent she had grown up with.
It felt like home.
She started checking the distributor cap, her fingers moving with practiced, efficient grace.
Gabriel didn’t leave.
He stood right beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed when she shifted her weight.
He didn’t hover like a typical client worried about a scratch.
He watched her hands.
“You know your way around a classic,” Gabriel murmured, leaning his hip against the workbench.
“My old man rebuilt a ’70 Chevelle in our living room when I was twelve.”
She didn’t look up.
She grabbed a flathead screwdriver from her bag.
“My mother threatened to leave him.
He told her not to trip over the transmission on her way out.”
A low chuckle vibrated in his chest.
“Did she leave?”
“No.
She learned how to bleed the brakes.”
Frankie adjusted the carburetor screw, her brow furrowed in concentration.
“Start her up.”
Gabriel slid into the driver’s seat.
He turned the key.
The engine didn’t just start.
It exploded into life — a deep, guttural roar that shook the tools on the cart.
It settled into a heavy, rhythmic idle.
Frankie listened.
Tilting her head.
Tuning out the world until there was nothing but the mechanical heartbeat of the car.
She held up a hand.
Gabriel cut the engine.
The sudden silence was heavy.
“Needs a new vacuum advance,” Frankie diagnosed, wiping her hands on a rag.
“I can patch it for now.
But you shouldn’t push it past sixty until I get the part.”
Gabriel stepped out of the car.
He looked at her, his dark eyes stripping away the mechanic, the grease, the tough exterior.
He looked at her like she was the puzzle he couldn’t solve.
“You don’t belong at the docks, Frankie,” he said quietly.
It was the first time he had used her nickname.
It sounded rough and intimate on his tongue.
“I belong wherever my family’s debts drag me,” she shot back, tossing the rag onto the cart.
“Don’t pretend you care about my career trajectory, Costa.
You bought me.
You don’t have to analyze me.”
Gabriel stepped forward.
The casual stance vanished.
He closed the gap between them, trapping her between the heavy metal of the Mustang and his own solid frame.
He reached out, his grease-stained thumb brushing against her jawline.
“I didn’t buy a mechanic,” he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
“I bought a fire.
And I’m going to find out exactly what it takes to make it burn for me.”
Tuesday brought rain.
Heavy and relentless.
It turned the docks into a miserable gray swamp.
Frankie was soaked to the bone by ten in the morning, her canvas jacket clinging to her shoulders like wet lead.
She was under a trailer, checking a faulty air brake line, when the shouting started.
It wasn’t the usual dockyard swearing.
This was frantic.
Sharp.
Frankie slid out from under the trailer just in time to see a black SUV tear through the chain-link gates of Pier 44.
It didn’t slow down.
It fishtailed on the wet concrete, slamming into a stack of wooden pallets, sending splinters flying like shrapnel.
Three men piled out before the vehicle even came to a complete stop.
They wore heavy dark coats, their faces obscured by the driving rain and pulled-down baseball caps.
They weren’t Costa’s men.
Frankie knew Costa’s men.
They moved with a chilling, calculated discipline.
These guys were frantic.
Reckless.
And armed.
One of them pulled a short, thick crowbar from his coat and smashed the windshield of the nearest Peterbilt.
Another raised a handgun, firing two shots into the air.
The crack of gunfire echoed off the corrugated steel of the warehouse, momentarily drowning out the storm.
“Everybody on the ground!
Now!” the man with the gun screamed.
Frankie froze.
She was crouched behind the rear tires of the trailer, completely out of sight.
Survival instinct, hard and cold, kicked in.
She didn’t scream.
She didn’t run.
She slowly backed up into the shadows of the chassis, her hand instinctively wrapping around the heavy steel handle of a two-foot breaker bar from her toolbox.
Dominic was standing near the warehouse office.
He didn’t drop to the ground.
He squared his shoulders, reaching under his heavy work jacket.
He didn’t make it.
The third man, who had flanked around the side of the SUV, swung a baseball bat.
It connected with the side of Dominic’s knee with a sickening, wet crack.
The big man went down, letting out a roar of pain.
“Where are the manifests?” the gunman demanded, pressing the barrel of his weapon against Dominic’s forehead.
“The routing slips for tonight.
Hand them over, old man, or I blow your brains all over this concrete.”
A rival syndicate.
They were hitting Costa’s logistics chain.
Frankie’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She could stay hidden.
It wasn’t her fight.
She was just the mechanic.
Let Costa’s empire burn.
Let them take the manifests.
But Dominic was bleeding on the ground.
Dominic, who had covered for her when she was late on Monday.
Dominic, who had discreetly left a hot cup of coffee on her toolbox every morning this week.
Frankie gripped the breaker bar.
Her knuckles turned white.
The man with the crowbar moved toward her bay, shouting at the mechanics huddled on the floor to keep their heads down.
He stepped right past the trailer Frankie was hiding under.
He didn’t look down.
Frankie didn’t think.
She moved.
She swung herself out from under the trailer, the heavy breaker bar arcing through the air.
She aimed low, putting her entire body weight behind the swing.
The solid steel connected with the back of the man’s knee.
The joint snapped with a loud pop.
He screamed — a high, reedy sound — and crumpled to the wet ground.
Frankie didn’t stop.
She spun the bar in her hands, reversing her grip, and slammed the heavy metal end into his collarbone.
He went out cold, face-first on the concrete.
The gunshot was deafening.
A bullet sparked off the side of the trailer an inch from Frankie’s head, spraying her face with hot fragments of paint.
She dropped to the ground, rolling behind the massive rubber tires as the gunman turned his weapon on her.
“You stupid bitch!” he yelled, leaving Dominic to march toward the trailer.
Frankie scrambled backward, her hand slipping on the grease-slicked ground.
She had brought a wrench to a gunfight.
She was cornered.
She braced herself, gripping the bar, ready to swing at his ankles the second he came around the tire.
Tires screeched at the front gate.
An engine roared — a high-pitched, terrifying sound that didn’t belong to a diesel truck.
The midnight black sedan tore into the yard.
It didn’t brake.
It accelerated straight toward the gunman.
The man barely had time to turn his head.
He dove out of the way just as the sedan slammed into the parked SUV, crushing the front quarter panel in a shower of sparks and shattered glass.
Before the metal had even finished crunching, the doors of the sedan flew open.
Gabriel Costa stepped out.
The tailored suit was gone, replaced by a dark trench coat.
He didn’t look like a CEO.
He didn’t look like a classic car enthusiast.
He looked like the devil.
He held a suppressed pistol in his right hand.
He didn’t shout.
He didn’t hesitate.
He raised the weapon and fired twice.
The third man — the one who had hit Dominic — dropped his bat and collapsed, clutching a shattered kneecap.
The gunman scrambled to his feet, raising his weapon toward Gabriel.
Gabriel fired again.
A hollow thip.
The gunman’s shoulder jerked violently backward, his weapon clattering to the concrete.
He fell to his knees, screaming.
The yard went dead silent.
Save for the heavy rain and the groans of the wounded men.
Gabriel walked slowly across the wet concrete.
His face was a mask of absolute, freezing rage.
He kicked the gun away from the bleeding man.
He didn’t even look at him.
His dark, wild eyes scanned the yard, frantic and searching, until they locked onto the trailer.
Frankie slowly stood up from behind the tires.
She was covered in mud, grease, and rainwater.
She still had the breaker bar gripped in her white-knuckled hands.
She was shaking violently, the adrenaline finally crashing through her system.
Gabriel crossed the distance between them in three long strides.
He stopped inches from her.
He dropped his gun to his side, his hands coming up to grip her shoulders.
His grip was bruising.
Desperate.
He looked at the bullet hole in the metal of the trailer — exactly at the height her head had been moments before.
A muscle feathered in his jaw.
“Are you hit?”
His voice was a harsh, ragged bark.
Frankie shook her head, unable to find her voice.
She dropped the breaker bar.
It hit the ground with a dull clang.
Gabriel exhaled a shaky, raw sound.
Without warning, he pulled her against him.
He buried his face in her wet, grease-stained hair, his arms wrapping around her like iron bands.
He didn’t care about the mud.
He didn’t care about the blood.
“I told you,” he whispered fiercely against her ear, the words meant only for her amidst the wreckage.
“You belong to me.
Nobody touches what is mine.”
The drive away from the harbor was a suffocatingly silent affair.
The adrenaline that had kept Frankie on her feet during the shootout was rapidly evaporating, leaving behind a cold, hollow ache in her bones and a violent tremor in her hands.
Gabriel hadn’t asked if she wanted a hospital.
He hadn’t asked if she wanted to go home.
He had simply shoved her into the back of a heavily armored SUV, ordered a cleanup crew for the docks, and climbed in beside her.
Dominic was already in an ambulance, heading to a private surgeon on Gabriel’s payroll.
Gabriel sat beside her in the spacious back seat.
He hadn’t tried to touch her again since that bruising, desperate embrace in the rain.
He sat perfectly still, staring straight ahead, the suppressed pistol now resting casually on his thigh.
The air in the car smelled of wet wool, spent cordite, and the metallic tang of fear.
“I’m ruining your upholstery,” Frankie said.
Her voice sounded thin, completely stripped of its usual bravado.
It was a stupid thing to say, but the silence was deafening, and she needed to anchor herself to something mundane.
Gabriel finally turned his head.
His dark eyes swept over her.
She was a disaster.
Her canvas jacket was soaked black with rainwater and grease.
Her jeans were plastered to her legs with mud, and her boots were leaving thick, grimy puddles on the plush floor mats.
“I have other cars,” he said, his voice flat.
“Where are we going?”
“My house.”
“Take me to my garage.”
May you like
A spark of defensive anger finally cut through the shock.
“I’m not your hostage.
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