Chapter 2 - The Woman Behind the Locked Door
“Dante wants you to come home.”
Marcus Vane spoke through the cheap motel door as though he were announcing a dinner reservation instead of the end of my freedom.
I stood barefoot beside the bed, holding a laptop that had just dismantled a substantial part of Dante Rossi’s financial empire. My heart was beating so hard that I could hear it above the air conditioner.
“Tell him I’m busy,” I said.
Silence. Then Marcus replied, “You always did have terrible timing.”
I glanced at the bathroom window. Too narrow. The parking lot was full of his men. The room had one exit and no useful hiding place. I could make a dramatic stand with the lamp, but Marcus had once disarmed three men in the time it took me to open a spreadsheet.
“Did he send you to kill me?”
“No.”
“That wasn’t my question. I asked what he sent you to do.”
“To bring you back alive.”
“And if I refuse?”
His pause was long enough to be an answer.
I placed the laptop on the bed, opened a new document, and typed one sentence: IF I DISAPPEAR, OPEN THE ENVELOPE. I saved it to a scheduled message addressed to a journalist named Elena Brooks. The message would be released unless I canceled it before sunrise. I had prepared the evidence package weeks earlier, when I finally admitted that Dante’s version of love was a locked door with expensive hinges.
“Dana,” Marcus said, quieter now. “I know you’re scared.”
“You helped build the thing I’m scared of.”
“I know.”
That answer startled me. Marcus was famous for his loyalty, not for admitting guilt.
I put the laptop in its bag, tucked the bag over my shoulder, and slid the chain from the door. I opened it only as far as the security latch allowed.
Marcus stood alone. The other men waited near the SUVs, their silhouettes cut against the neon. He wore his usual charcoal coat. There was a thin scar across his knuckles that I remembered from the night he had punched a man for speaking disrespectfully about me.
“You’ve got four men out there,” I said. “I count two more inside the stairwell.”
“Six,” he admitted. “You always were good with numbers.”
“I’m better with people than Dante thinks.”
“Then you know I’m the only reason those men haven’t kicked this door down.”
I believed him. That was the worst part.
“Tell me what happened to Rocco,” I said.
Marcus looked away.
My stomach turned. “Marcus.”
“He’s alive. Hurt, but alive. Dante made sure everyone saw what happens when someone helps you leave.”
The room seemed to shrink around me. Rocco had bought me a disposable phone and asked no questions. His punishment was mine to carry, though Dante had chosen to inflict it.
“I want a doctor sent to him. Tonight.”
“I can arrange that.”
“And I want proof.”
Marcus nodded.
“Then you can tell Dante I’ll speak to him. Not go home. Speak.”
“Those are different things?”
“They’re the difference between a negotiation and a kidnapping.”
For the first time, Marcus almost smiled.
I removed the chain. Two men approached, but Marcus lifted one hand and stopped them. I walked out on my own feet, carrying my own bag. I refused the offered hand at the SUV door.
The ride west lasted less than an hour. We passed warehouses, empty streets, and finally a small private airfield where a jet waited with its cabin lights glowing. Dante had never been subtle about the reach of his money.
I stopped at the foot of the stairs. “No.”
Marcus turned. “What?”
“I’m not getting on an airplane. Not until you tell me where we’re going.”
“New York.”
“Then we have a problem.”
A phone rang in his coat. He checked the screen and handed it to me without a word.
“Dana.”
Dante’s voice. Low, rough, terribly familiar.
Three years of mornings came back at once: espresso in the kitchen, his tie hanging loose, the way he used to kiss my temple while asking whether the quarterly figures were ready. I hated that the sound still reached parts of me I had tried to bury.
“You burned Brooklyn,” I said.
“I was looking for you.”
“You hurt innocent people.”
“I thought someone had taken you.”
“I left.”
He said nothing.
“I left because I wanted to,” I repeated. “Because you watched me, controlled me, and treated my work as though it belonged to you.”
“Come home and we’ll talk.”
“There is no home to come back to.”
His breathing changed. “What do you want?”
There it was. The first honest question he had asked me in years.
“Rocco gets medical care. Your bounty disappears. Your men stop looking for civilians to blame. And if I agree to meet you, it happens somewhere I can walk away.”
“You stole from me.”
“I froze accounts that should have been frozen years ago. And I have records proving what was done with them.”
“Dana—”
“Listen carefully. If anything happens to me, the records go public. If anything happens to Rocco, they go public. If your men touch Elena Brooks, they go public. You taught me to plan for betrayal, Dante. I listened.”
For several seconds I heard only the faint hum of the connection.
Then he said, “You were never supposed to be afraid of me.”
“But I am.”
The admission hurt us both. I could hear it.
“I’ll call off the bounty,” he said. “Marcus will take you wherever you choose. I give you my word.”
“Your word stopped meaning something a long time ago.”
I returned the phone to Marcus and walked away from the airplane.
He followed me as far as the edge of the runway. “Where will you go?”
“Somewhere I can decide what tomorrow looks like.”
He watched me for a moment, then took a set of car keys from his pocket.
“Blue sedan. Far end of the lot. No tracker.”
I stared at him. “Why?”
“Because he asked me to bring you home,” Marcus said. “And I finally realized he never asked whether home was where you wanted to be.”
I took the keys. As I reached the car, my phone vibrated with a new message from an unknown number.
YOU DIDN’T FIND ALL THE ACCOUNTS, DANA.
Beneath it was a photograph of Rocco in a hospital bed.
May you like
And a second line:
ASK DANTE WHO REALLY OWNS ROSSI ENTERPRISES.
