Chapter Four

"Down!"

Alexander's hand landed between her shoulder blades and pushed. Elena's face hit the leather seat just as the rear window cracked.

It wasn't loud. That was the part she'd remember. No movie bang, just a flat, hard slap, like someone dropping a phone book on concrete. A white web spread across the glass. Nothing came through it.

"It's armored," Alexander said, close to her ear. "Stay down. It's armored."

"Then why are you holding my head?"

"Habit."

"Enzo!"

"I see him!" Enzo's voice cracked, and the car lurched left so hard her shoulder slammed into the door. "Sorry! Sorry, Mrs. Moretti!"

"Don't call me that while someone is shooting at us!"

"Which time would you prefer?"

"Drive!"

Another slap against the glass. Then a third. Elena counted them the way she counted everything. Three. A man firing three rounds into an armored car wasn't trying to kill her. He was trying to scare her. Or slow them down.

She wedged her phone against the seat with shaking fingers. The call was still open. A thin line of breathing came through the speaker.

"Sofia?" She forced her voice low. "Sofia, if you can hear me, I'm coming."

The line clicked and went dead.

Her stomach turned over. She swallowed hard, and her mouth tasted like pennies. She'd bitten her tongue and hadn't noticed.

"They have her," she said. "They have Sofia."

"I know."

"She doesn't even like guns. She cried at a Western."

"Elena—"

"Don't tell me to calm down."

"I wasn't going to." His grip eased off her back. He sat up, one hand on the seat in front of him, and looked out the cracked window. "Enzo. Left on Wisconsin. Then the garage on Prospect."

"The one with the bad ramp?"

"The one with the bad ramp."

"I hate that ramp."

"You'll hate dying more."

The car went into a turn that pinned Elena against Alexander's shoulder. She shoved off him and he let her. Behind them, the grey van skidded around the corner, too wide, clipped a parked sedan, and fell back. Then a second car appeared behind the van. A black one.

"They have friends," Enzo said.

"I noticed."

The garage swallowed them. Concrete walls, orange lights, a ramp that dropped like a slide. The tires screamed. Enzo muttered something in Italian that sounded like a prayer and something else that sounded like an insult. They flew down two levels and stopped hard, nose to a steel door. Alexander was out before the engine settled. A man in a grey jacket was already holding the door open.

"Inside. Now."

"I'm not going anywhere until—"

"Elena." He turned and looked at her. It was the first time his voice had dropped the polite edge. "Walk through the door, or I'll carry you through it. I'd prefer not to. I'm told you bite."

"Who told you that?"

"A man who made a file."

She went through the door in four steps. Not because of him. Because of the van.

---

The room behind the steel door was bare. Concrete floor, a metal table, three folding chairs, a wall of monitors showing the garage from six angles. Two men in dark jackets stood by the screens and didn't look at her. Elena set her bag on the table, because her hands needed something to do, and gripped the edge.

On the nearest monitor, the black car had pulled up at the bottom of the ramp. Two men got out. One looked at the garage camera, smiled, and drew a finger across his throat.

"Charming," Alexander said. He was reading his phone, thumb moving fast.

"They have my friend."

"I'm aware."

"Then why are we sitting in a basement?"

"Because the men upstairs will kill us in the next ten minutes if we walk out. And because the call you took came from a phone I can trace." He didn't look up. "Give me four minutes."

"Sofia doesn't have four minutes."

"She has more than you think. They want what your father left. If they hurt her, they lose their only leverage."

"That's a very calm way to say it."

"I'm a calm person."

"You're a man who lets people die and calls it strategy."

His thumb stopped. The room went quiet. One of the men by the monitors found something very interesting about the carpet that wasn't there.

Alexander slid the phone into his pocket and walked to her. He stopped about a foot away, close enough that she smelled cedar and something sharper underneath. His voice came out low.

"I have never let someone I care about die. Don't say that again."

"You don't care about Sofia. You've never met her."

"I care about what happens to anyone under my name."

"I'm not under your name."

"Legally, Elena, you are."

Her hand came off the table before she'd decided to do anything. It stopped an inch from his face. He didn't flinch. He just looked at her palm, then at her eyes, and waited.

She dropped her hand and turned her back on him. Her pulse pounded in her ears. ‘I almost slapped a man who has armed guards. Brilliant. Get it together. You've talked down governors. Talk.’

"Okay," she said to the wall. "Okay. Here's what I know. The voice called me Elena first, then Mrs. Moretti. He knows the marriage is real. He knows about the letter. He knows Kessler gave me something, and he knows I'm not stupid enough to come alone."

"He asked you to hurry."

"My father warned me about that, which means my father knew exactly who would call. So whoever this is, my father knew him." She swung around. "Who was at dinner with you, those Thursdays?"

"Your father. Me. Sometimes Enzo."

"Nobody else?"

"Occasionally my cousin."

"Does your cousin like veal?"

Alexander's face did something she couldn't read. "Why?"

"Because I'm trying to find out who in your family sat at my father's table. And you haven't said that name once."

The door opened.

A woman in a grey suit leaned in and handed Alexander a tablet. "The call. We have the audio, and we've run the voice." She stopped, and her eyes went to Elena. "I'm sorry. I think you'll want to hear it alone."

"Play it here," Elena said.

"Elena—"

"It's my friend. Play it."

The woman glanced at Alexander. He gave a short nod. She tapped the screen.

"Hello, Elena."

The voice came out of the tablet, quiet and kind, the same one that had told her to look out the rear window. She watched Alexander instead of the screen. She wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the way her father had taught her. Don't watch the person talking. Watch the person listening.

"You read his letter. I'd like to know where he hid the rest."

Alexander's face went white. Not pale. White, like someone had drained it. His hand gripped the edge of the table until the knuckles stood out.

"Alexander," Elena said.

He didn't answer.

"You know him."

His eyes slid up to hers, and for the first time since the funeral, he looked like a man who didn't have a plan.

"That's Marco," he said.

"Who's Marco?"

"My cousin." His voice cracked on the word. "He was at your father's funeral this morning. He shook your hand."

She remembered. Warm palm, dark eyes, a charming half-smile, a soft voice saying ‘condolences, cugina,’ and a small squeeze that had lasted a second too long.

Alexander straightened and took out his phone. His fingers weren't steady.

"And he's the one who just told Enzo where to park the car."