Chapter 4 - The Shadow in the Hallway
The bus ride to North River took forty-five excruciating minutes.
Isabella watched the city decay through the rain-streaked window.
Gleaming marble towers gave way to rusted warehouses and boarded-up pawn shops.
This was the only world she had ever known.
A world where survival was counted in hours and rent was always seven days overdue.
The black sedan had followed the bus across the bridge, maintaining its predatory distance.
When the bus finally hissed to a halt at 4th and Elm, Isabella slipped out the rear door.
The rain had turned into a torrential downpour that drowned the hum of the city.
She ducked into an alleyway between an auto repair garage and an abandoned bakery.
She knew these narrow passages better than anyone who didn't live in the gutter.
She jumped a low wooden fence, scrambled through a broken chain-link gate, and emerged on her street.
Her apartment building was a four-story brick structure with cracked masonry and flickering streetlamps.
She took the concrete front steps two at a time.
She pushed open the heavy front door, which never locked properly because the latch was rusted through.
The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage, damp insulation, and stale cigarette smoke.
She climbed the narrow wooden stairs toward the third floor.
Every step creaked under her weight.
She reached Apartment 3B and stopped dead in her tracks.
The brass deadbolt was not secured.
A hairline fracture in the wooden frame revealed where a pry bar had forced the lock.
Isabella’s pulse hammered violently against the base of her throat.
She took a slow step backward onto the landing.
She reached into her handbag and closed her fingers around a heavy metal screwdriver she used for repairs.
A faint sound came from inside her living room.
Paper tearing.
Drawers sliding across wood.
Someone was methodically dissecting her home.
Isabella should have turned and sprinted back into the rain.
She should have called the police from the payphone down the block.
Then she heard the distinct sound of a hollow metal container hitting the floor.
Her tin box.
It was an old tea tin she kept hidden beneath the loose floorboard under her mattress.
Inside was her forged birth certificate, her high school diploma, and a small scrap of blue flannel.
The blue flannel was the only physical remnant she possessed from the mother she couldn't remember.
Rage burned away the ice of her terror.
She stepped through the shattered doorway into the darkened apartment.
The small living room was illuminated only by the sodium glare of the streetlamp outside.
Her clothes were dumped across the linoleum.
Her books were ripped from their shelves, their spines broken.
A man was kneeling beside her unmade mattress, his back turned toward her.
He was wearing a dark waterproof tactical jacket and black leather driving gloves.
He held the blue flannel scrap in one hand and her birth certificate in the other.
A disposable lighter clicked open in his thumb, producing a steady yellow flame.
"Stop!"
Isabella shouted the word with every ounce of air left in her lungs.
The man reacted with the speed of an apex predator.
He snapped the lighter shut and spun on his heels.
He did not look like an opportunistic burglar looking for drug money.
His face was covered by a tight balaclava, revealing only cold, dead grey eyes.
He stepped toward her without making a sound.
Isabella lunged forward, swinging the heavy screwdriver directly at his throat.
The intruder caught her wrist mid-air with shocking, effortless force.
The metal tool clattered uselessly onto the floor.
He twisted her arm behind her back and shoved her hard against the drywall.
The impact drove the air from Isabella’s lungs in a sickening gasp.
His gloved hand clamped tightly over her mouth and nose.
"You should have stayed in the grave nineteen years ago, little girl."
The voice was muffled through the mask, dry and completely devoid of human emotion.
Isabella thrashed wildly, driving the heel of her shoe against his shin.
He didn't even flinch.
He reached into his tactical vest with his free hand and pulled out a pre-loaded glass syringe.
The clear liquid inside caught the yellow light from the window.
A chemical execution staged as an overdose in a decrepit tenement apartment.
It was clean, efficient, and left no traces for an overworked coroner to question.
Isabella fought like an animal, clawing at his tactical sleeves with her fingernails.
Her vision began to darken around the edges as his glove cut off her oxygen.
The tip of the needle hovered one inch above her neck.
Then the wooden door frame exploded into splinters.
A deafening double-crack shattered the silence of the hallway.
The man holding Isabella jerked backward violently as two high-caliber rounds tore through his shoulder.
The glass syringe dropped to the floor and shattered against the baseboard.
Isabella collapsed onto her hands and knees, gasping for air that tasted like gunpowder.
Marcus stood in the doorway, a customized tactical sidearm raised in both hands.
Wisps of grey smoke drifted from the barrel.
Behind Marcus, a taller, broader silhouette stepped through the ruined threshold.
Damian Moretti walked into the squalor of her apartment as if he owned the foundation beneath it.
He was still wearing his charcoal wedding suit, though the tie had been ripped away from his collar.
His dark eyes took in the shattered glass, the ripped books, and the bleeding hitman on the floor.
He stepped over the groaning intruder without looking down.
He knelt in front of Isabella, his broad hands catching her trembling shoulders.
"Did he inject you?"
Damian’s voice was stripped of all calm, vibrating with a feral, terrifying fury.
Isabella shook her head, unable to speak through her bruised throat.
"No."
She choked out the single syllable.
Damian let out a slow, lethal breath that felt like scorching steam against her face.
He pulled her up into his arms, lifting her off the filthy linoleum as if she weighed nothing.
"Marcus, secure that man and bring him to the cellar at the warehouse."
"Keep him breathing until I arrive."
Marcus stepped forward, driving his boot down onto the hitman’s wounded shoulder.
"Understood, boss."
Damian turned and carried Isabella out into the decaying hallway.
"Put me down, Mr. Moretti," she whispered, her hands clutching his damp lapels for balance.
Damian tightened his grip, pulling her closer against the solid heat of his chest.
"You ran away from my guards, Isabella."
"Look where it almost put you."
He carried her down the stairs and out into the torrential rain.
A reinforced black SUV was parked on the sidewalk with its engine idling in a low growl.
He placed her gently into the leather passenger seat and slid into the driver's side.
He locked all four doors with a single punch of a button.
He reached into his inner pocket and pulled out an unsealed manila folder.
"Dr. Vance didn't take four hours."
Damian placed the folder into her lap.
"He used the national forensic database and the private Moretti archive."
Isabella stared down at the crisp white paper protruding from the folder.
At the top of the page were two high-resolution genetic charts.
Beneath the charts was a single line of stamped text in bold red ink:
May you like
99.98% DIRECT MATERNAL MATCH: MARIA ROSSI.
DIRECT FAMILIAL MARKER MATCH: VINCENT MORETTI.
