“You knew, didn’t you, old friend?” I murmured, kneeling beside him and resting my hand on his thick, warm neck. His fur was bristling with residual adrenaline, but under my palm, his heart hammered with a steady, grounding rhythm.
Bruno gave a single, soft huff of breath and pressed his head harder against the child’s casket, standing guard over a secret that was finally coming into the light.
The Escalade glided like a black shark through dark water through the damp, twilight streets of Queens. Inside, there was absolute silence, apart from the quiet hum of the air conditioning and the panting, pitiful breathing of Marco Ricci, who was strapped in the third row.
I sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window at the flickering neon signs of the small shops, auto repair shops, and brick buildings that flashed by. These were the streets on which I had built my life. Every corner held a story, a guilt, a bloodstain, or a victory. For thirty years, I believed I had absolute control over this territory because I knew the unwritten laws. Loyalty was the currency. Respect was law. Betrayal was punishable by death.
Marco had broken every single rule. Not only by committing a murder, but by carrying it out amateurishly and then lying to my face while we were standing in a room dedicated to mourning his victim.
“Tony,” I said, without turning around.
“Yes, Chef?”
“Did you check his phone before we left?”
“Got it,” Tony said, tossing a sleek black smartphone onto the center console between us. “Unlocked it with his face before we put him in the back. Do you want the highlights or the whole sad story?”
“Tell me the most important points.”
“Well, first of all, he wasn’t solely responsible for the Russian shipment. He’s been taking a cut of the port’s profits for the past six months. He’s probably using it to finance a gambling addiction or a second home in Manhattan. But more importantly… look at the text messages from three nights ago, right around the time of the accident.”
I picked up my phone and tapped the screen to access my message list. An encrypted messaging app, the kind we used to use to keep federal agents out.
The chat took place with a contact who was saved under a generic throwaway name: Driver-42.
Marco: “Clear the area around the dock. Someone saw the license plates.” Driver 42: “Secured. Nobody’s here.” Marco: “Not the dock. A child. Down by the fence with a notebook.” Driver 42: “Did she see it?” Marco: “Too close. I’ll handle it myself. Radio off.”
My jaw clenched until the bone ached. Marco wasn’t acting alone in blind panic. He had an accomplice. Someone who helped him track her down, someone who helped him cover his tracks, someone who was still walking free within my organization.
“Who owns Driver-42?” I asked in a dangerously quiet voice.
“We’re running the burner number through the tech guys right now,” Tony replied, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Should have a location by the time we hit the Pulaski Bridge. But Boss… if Marco had someone else helping him cover up a hit-and-run on a kid, that means there’s rot deeper in the upper management than just him.”
“Find out who it is,” I said, dropping the phone back onto the console. “And dig up everything on Elena Vasquez’s father. The restaurant. The forty-two grand he owed us. I want to know why his debt was flagged for special collection in the first place.”
“You think the debt was tied to the docks?” Tony asked, glancing over at me.
“Nothing in this city happens by accident, Tony. Not anymore.”
We turned off the main thoroughfare and headed down toward the industrial sprawl of Long Island City, where corrugated steel warehouses sat shoulder-to-shoulder against the murky, oil-slicked waters of the East River. It was our territory—a place where problems could be solved permanently without the police ever finding a single trace.
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As the Escalade rolled to a halt in front of Warehouse 42—the same building where Marco had spent a decade enforcing my will—I felt a strange sense of finality settling over my bones. The world I had built was changing. The loyalty I thought was absolute was proving to be fragile glass.
And out there, somewhere in the dark, a dead little girl in purple sneakers was waiting for justice that only a mafia boss and a seventy-five-dollar bag of dog food could deliver.
