Chapter 2 - The Shadows Over Sunnyside
The silence in the basement apartment was suddenly deafening.
The ticking of the plastic wall clock sounded like a countdown to an execution.
Sophie stared down at the small piece of parchment, her vision blurring as terror gripped her throat.
They know about the boy.
The words echoed inside her skull like a siren.
All the sacrifices, all the sixteen-hour shifts, all the nights she went to sleep with an empty stomach just so Leo could have fresh milk—it had all been useless.
The monsters who hunted her family had found their scent.
"Sophie?"
Leo’s soft voice broke through her trance.
The little boy was standing beside her, holding a torn piece of the baguette in his small hand.
He looked down at the silver beads dangling from her fingers with wide, curious eyes.
"Is that Papa's necklace?" he asked, pointing a tiny finger at the roaring lion crest.
"Papa had that in the big house with the piano."
"Did Papa come home?"
Sophie swallowed the bitter lump in her throat and forced the warmest smile she could muster onto her face.
"No, sweetheart," she lied gently, tucking the rosary into her inner jacket pocket.
"A friend of Papa found it and returned it to us."
"It means Papa is watching over us tonight."
"Now, eat your bread quickly, Leo."
"We are going on a little adventure."
Leo’s eyes sparkled.
"An adventure? In the middle of the night?"
"Yes," Sophie said, her voice tightening as she moved toward the cramped closet.
"We’re going to play the secret agent game."
"Remember the rules?"
"We must be very quiet, we leave no footprints, and we pack only what we can carry."
Leo nodded solemnly, immediately shoving the last bite of bread into his mouth.
He scurried under his bed and pulled out his worn blue backpack with the faded superhero patch.
Sophie frantically grabbed their small stash of emergency cash from the hollow base of the floor lamp—barely eight hundred dollars in wrinkled twenty-dollar bills.
She grabbed their fake birth certificates, Leo’s asthma inhaler, two sweaters, and a pair of heavy boots.
She didn't know if Alessandro Moretti was a savior or an executioner.
In the criminal underworld of New York, the Moretti syndicate was whispered about like a plague.
Alessandro was known as the Black Wolf of Manhattan.
He had ruthlessly dismantled three rival families before his thirtieth birthday.
If he wanted her father’s secrets, he could easily torture her until she broke.
But if he wanted them dead, why give her the rosary?
Why warn her that the Russo family was hunting them?
Suddenly, the floorboards of the ceiling above them creaked loudly.
Sophie froze.
Their apartment was a subterranean unit below a four-story boarding house.
The landlord, a foul-tempered man named Geller, rarely walked the corridors past nine in the evening.
Heavy, deliberate footsteps paced back and forth directly outside their ground-level frosted window.
Then came a knock.
It was not the timid tap of a neighbor.
It was three heavy, metallic blows against the reinforced oak door.
"Open up, Miss Vance," a rough, grating voice called out from the hallway.
"We know you're in there."
"Mr. Geller told us you missed this month's trash utility fee."
Sophie’s blood turned to ice.
Geller never sent debt collectors at eleven o'clock at night.
And real utility collectors didn't carry heavy steel against their jackets.
"Leo," Sophie whispered, pulling the boy behind the kitchen counter.
"Not a single sound, do you hear me?"
The boy hugged his backpack to his chest and nodded, tears welling in his innocent eyes.
Sophie looked around the room in pure desperation.
The front door was the only official exit, but there was an old coal chute in the back corner of the laundry nook.
It was narrow, covered in decades of black soot, and opened into the dark alleyway between two brick buildings.
The doorknob rattled violently.
"Come on, sweetheart," the man outside growled, his voice dropping all pretense of civility.
"Don't make this messy for the kid."
"Don Franco Russo sends his warmest regards."
"He wants to know where Henri hid the Swiss keys before we put you both to sleep."
The name struck Sophie like a physical blow.
Franco Russo—Camilla’s father.
The head of the Russo crime family and the very man her father had been investigating before he was branded a traitor.
A splintering crack echoed through the apartment as a heavy boot slammed into the wooden doorframe.
The wood splintered around the deadbolt.
They had seconds.
Sophie grabbed Leo by the waist and rushed to the coal chute.
She shoved the rusted metal latch up with all her strength, skinning her knuckles until blood welled on her fingers.
The small iron door swung open with a screech.
"Go, Leo! Climb through to the alley!" she hissed.
The boy crawled into the dark, filthy shaft without hesitation, his small hands pulling him upward through the grimy chute.
"I’m out, Sophie!" a muffled whisper came from the other side.
A second kick pulverized the door lock.
The heavy wooden door flew open, crashing against the interior drywall.
Two men in black leather coats stepped into the room, silhouetted by the yellow hallway light.
The first man had a jagged scar across his eyebrow and held a snub-nosed revolver equipped with an oil-filter silencer.
"Well, look what we have here," the scarred man sneered, raising the gun directly at Sophie’s chest.
"The little French princess playing house in the garbage."
Sophie didn't think.
She grabbed the heavy cast-iron skillet sitting on the stove and hurled it with every ounce of fury in her body.
The iron pan struck the scarred man square in the temple with a sickening crack.
He staggered back, howling in pain, his weapon discharging into the floor tiles.
The second man lunged forward, his massive hands reaching for her throat.
Sophie grabbed the boiling kettle of water she had left simmering for Leo’s tea and threw it into his face.
The man shrieked as the scalding water seared his cheeks and eyes, dropping to his knees and clawing at his skin.
Sophie scrambled into the coal chute, her knees scraping against the jagged brick.
She kicked backward with her heavy work boots, catching the scarred man in the mouth as he reached for her ankles.
She pulled herself through the opening and collapsed onto the rain-soaked gravel of the alley.
Leo was standing there, shaking like a leaf, clutching his backpack.
"Run!" Sophie gasped, grabbing his small hand.
"Run and don't look back!"
They sprinted down the flooded alleyway just as the roar of a gunshot blew the metal chute door off its hinges behind them.
The rain poured down in blinding sheets, washing away the black coal dust on their faces.
Sophie pulled Leo through the winding backstreets of Queens, ducking behind dumpster bins and parked delivery trucks.
Her breath tore through her lungs like broken glass.
She checked the glowing hands of her cheap wristwatch under a streetlight.
11:38 PM.
They had twenty-two minutes to reach Pier 54.
If they stayed on the streets, Russo’s hunters would catch them within an hour.
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Their only chance of survival lay in the hands of the very predator who had left ten thousand dollars on her dining table.
The Black Wolf of Manhattan was waiting for them in the dark.
