Chapter 2 - The Manila Envelope and the Dead Man’s Shadow
The cold rain struck my burning face like a handful of thrown gravel.
The damp Seattle wind whipped through the thin polyester fabric of my uniform, plastering it against my skin.
Yet the man holding me didn't flinch, didn't quicken his pace, and didn't bow his head against the deluge.
A long, midnight-black Mercedes Maybach was idling at the curb, its tinted windows reflecting the yellow glare of the diner's neon sign.
Dante appeared out of the storm, pulling the rear door wide open before Luca even reached the curb.
Luca leaned forward, setting me down onto the buttery, heated leather of the rear passenger seat.
The sudden warmth of the vehicle enveloped me, smelling of rich hide, subtle citrus, and dangerous power.
Before I could scuffle across to the opposite door, Luca slid into the seat beside me and pulled the heavy door shut with a solid, vault-like thud.
The locks engaged with a quiet, decisive click.
The sound felt like a guillotine dropping between my past life and whatever nightmare had just begun.
Dante slipped into the driver’s seat, while the third man took the front passenger side.
The massive car pulled away from the curb smoothly, the engine humming so quietly it sounded like distant thunder.
I pressed my back against the passenger door, my fingers clawing at the interior chrome handle.
It didn't budge.
“Let me out of this car,” I said, trying to force steady steel into my voice despite the shivering racking my limbs.
Luca reached across the wide console, but he didn't touch me.
Instead, he pressed a button on the armrest.
A warm stream of climate-controlled air washed over my soaked ankles and shivering shoulders.
“You are hyperventilating,” he said calmly.
“I am being kidnapped by a man who controls organized crime from here to Tacoma!”
A dry, faint breath that might have been a laugh slipped from his chest, though his eyes remained dead serious.
“If I intended to harm you, Ava, you would not be sitting on heated leather in my personal vehicle.”
“You don't get to decide what is harm to me.”
“Perhaps not.”
“I cannot pay for a private doctor, Mr. Castellano.”
“I never asked you to pay.”
“I don't accept charity from men who carry guns under their armpits.”
His amber eyes drifted toward me through the dim interior light.
“It is not charity.”
“Then what do you call it?”
“A necessary preservation of an asset.”
My stomach plummeted into an icy void.
“An asset?”
“A woman whose survival is currently vital to several interests.”
“I am a waitress who makes four dollars an hour plus tips.”
“You are Ava Carter.”
The quiet weight with which he pronounced my family name made the breath catch behind my breastbone.
I hadn't used the name Carter in two long, agonizing years.
Ever since my father died and his logistics empire dissolved into bankruptcy and scandal, I had used my mother’s maiden name on every tax document and diner application.
Marco knew me only as Ava Miller.
My hands began to shake even harder against the leather upholstery.
“Who told you that name?”
Luca reached into the interior breast pocket of his bespoke charcoal coat.
I flinched back, pressing my skull against the cold glass of the window.
He paused, his eyes narrowing slightly at my reaction, before his hand emerged holding a thick manila folder wrapped in string.
He did not throw it.
He placed it gently on the leather seat between us.
“Your daughter, Emma, is currently asleep in apartment 4B on Maynard Avenue,” Luca said in a flat, even tone.
The mention of my daughter struck me like a physical blow to the sternum.
The world shrank until there was nothing left but his face and the terror clawing up my throat.
“How do you know my daughter?” I choked out, lunging forward despite the agonizing fire in my leg.
“What have you done to Mrs. Chen?”
“Mrs. Chen is sitting in her rocking chair watching a Chinese drama, completely unharmed,” Luca replied without flinching.
“My men have been watching that apartment building for seventy-two hours.”
“Why?”
“Open the folder, Ava.”
My trembling fingers reached out toward the coarse paper.
I untied the red string and flipped open the cardboard flap.
A glossy eight-by-ten photograph lay right on top.
The image was crisp, taken with a high-powered telephoto lens under the glare of streetlamps.
It showed a man standing across the street from Marino’s Diner, smoking a cigarette beneath a blue awning.
He wore a black leather jacket and a dark wool cap pulled low over his brow.
Even with the shadow obscuring his forehead, I would have recognized the crooked bridge of that nose in hell.
Jake Martinez.
The man who had promised to love me when my father died.
The man who had convinced me to grant him power of attorney over my father’s final estate accounts.
The man who had emptied three bank accounts, stolen every cent of my family inheritance, and vanished the very night Emma spiked a hundred-and-four-degree fever eighteen months ago.
“That’s impossible,” I breathed, the paper shaking violently in my hands.
“Jake is dead.”
“Jake is very much alive,” Luca corrected coldly.
“He’s been living in Montreal under the name Marcus Vance for over a year.”
“Why is he here?”
“Turn the photograph over.”
I flipped the glossy paper with numb fingertips.
Stapled to the back was a photocopy of a shipping manifest stamped with the red seal of the Moretti syndicate.
Underneath the manifest was a second photograph.
It was taken from inside a parked car looking toward an alleyway behind an abandoned auto repair shop in South Seattle.
Jake stood next to a man with graying hair and a tailored trench coat—Victor Moretti, the patriarch of the family that had waged a covert war against the Castellanos for three decades.
Between them on the hood of a sedan lay a printed hospital file.
The white medical label was clearly visible under the zoom lens.
It bore a name and a date of birth.
Emma Carter. Born November 14th.
Directly beneath her name, someone had written a single word in red permanent marker:
LEVERAGE.
“He didn't come back for you, Ava,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a register that vibrated through my bones.
“He came back to collect the last thing your father left behind.”
“My father died with nothing,” I sobbed, tears finally breaking past my eyelids and tracking hot down my cold cheeks.
“He died in a municipal hospital with sixty dollars in his wallet! Jake took everything!”
“Jake took the cash,” Luca replied, his jaw hardening into granite.
“He was too stupid to understand what Thomas Carter really hid before the docks fell.”
The Maybach suddenly lurched, turning sharply down a cracked asphalt street lined with rusted brick tenements.
I looked out the window and gasped.
It was Maynard Avenue.
May you like
Outside the entrance of my dilapidated brick apartment building, two black sedans with out-of-state plates were idling with their lights extinguished.
And on the third-floor fire escape, a dark figure was climbing upward toward Mrs. Chen’s window.
