CHAPTER 6

THE WAREHOUSE

A knock lands on the study door, sharp and quick.

"Enter."

The man who steps in doesn't waste time on pleasantries. "They're here, sir. Brought in twenty minutes ago. We're holding them at the warehouse, not the house, like you said."

Salvatore sets his glass down, untouched since the second pour. "All three of them?"

"All three."

"Good." He's already reaching for his jacket off the back of the chair. "Get the car."

The drive is short and silent. Salvatore doesn't ask questions on the way, doesn't need to. He already knows what he's going to find when he gets there, three men who thought a bag of stolen cash was worth the risk of crossing him, and he already knows exactly what's going to happen to them once he's finished asking his questions.

The warehouse sits at the edge of the district, unremarkable from the outside, the kind of building nobody looks at twice. Inside, the lights are already on, harsh and industrial, throwing everything into a flat, ugly white. Three men kneel on the concrete floor, hands bound behind them, and none of them look up when the door opens.

They look up when Salvatore's footsteps start crossing the floor toward them.

"Please, we didn't know, we didn't know it was you, we swear it…" The nearest one starts talking before Salvatore's even finished closing the distance, words tumbling out fast and desperate.

"Shut up." Salvatore doesn't raise his voice. He never needs to. The man's mouth snaps shut like the words physically hurt to swallow back.

Salvatore circles them slowly, hands in his pockets, unhurried, the way a man walks when he already knows how the next ten minutes are going to go and is simply deciding which order to enjoy them in.

"You know who I am." It isn't a question.

Nobody answers right away. One of the guards standing behind them solves that for him, a boot to the back of the nearest man's shoulder, sharp enough to knock him forward onto his hands.

"Answer him."

"Yes." The word comes out choked. "Yes, we know who you are. We didn't mean to hit your people, I swear, we didn't even know it was your money until they were already chasing us."

"Interesting." Salvatore crouches down, level with him now, close enough that the man flinches back as far as his bound hands will let him. "Then tell me who sent you. Because a job like that, hitting a shipment of mine, in my territory, that isn't something three men decide to do on their own over a slow week. Somebody pointed you at it. I want a name."

"We don't know a name." The second man speaks up now, faster, hoping speed might buy him something. "We were hired through a middleman. We never met whoever's actually behind it, that's how these things work, you know that, nobody shows their face."

"I know how these things work." Salvatore's voice stays level, almost bored. "I also know when someone's lying to me to buy themselves another five minutes of breathing. So I'll ask again, and I'd think very carefully before you waste my patience a second time. Who sent you."

Silence stretches, thin and brittle.

Salvatore straightens, nods once toward the guard standing over the third man, and the sound that follows, a fist connecting hard enough to snap the man's head sideways, fills the warehouse before the scream does.

"Wait, wait, please!" The first man is talking again, faster now, panic winning out over whatever loyalty he thought he had left. "It wasn't about you, I swear to you, it wasn't ever about you. The job wasn't the Moretti shipment, it was supposed to be a payment moving through the docks that night, some deal that had nothing to do with your family at all. We hit the wrong truck. We didn't even know until we were already running that it was your money in that bag, we thought we were robbing somebody else entirely."

Salvatore goes still.

"Say that again."

"It was a mistake." The man's voice cracks, desperate now, sensing something has shifted even if he doesn't understand what. "Wrong truck, wrong night, we grabbed the wrong bag off the wrong man. We never meant to touch anything of yours. We didn't even know your name was attached to it until your men were already on us."

For a long moment nobody in the warehouse says anything at all. Salvatore stands with his hands still in his pockets, and something moves behind his eyes that none of the men kneeling in front of him are in any position to read.

It wasn't him they meant to rob.

Which means the boy standing in the middle of that street, the one who caught a bag shoved into his arms by a stranger and ran for his life through a market because of it, was never anything but exactly what he's been screaming since the first night. An accident. A wrong place, wrong time, wrong hands. Not a thief. Not one of them. Never one of them.

Salvatore doesn't say any of that out loud. He simply lets the silence sit a moment longer, turning it over, and then looks back down at the three men in front of him like the conversation has already moved past something he isn't going to bother explaining.

"That's unfortunate." His voice comes out flat, almost gentle, which is somehow worse than if it had been cold. "For you."

"Wait, please, we told you the truth, we told you everything we know…"

"You did." Salvatore straightens his jacket, already turning toward the door. "And I believe you. It changes nothing."

"Please, you said if we told you…"

"I never said anything." Salvatore doesn't look back at him. "You assumed I would. That was your mistake, same as the truck."

He nods once to the men standing guard, a small, unhurried gesture, and doesn't wait around to watch what happens next. He's already crossing back toward the door by the time the first sound starts behind him, and he doesn't slow his pace, doesn't let it touch his face at all.

Outside, the night air is cold enough to bite. Salvatore stands beside the car a moment before getting in, hands still in his pockets, staring at nothing in particular.

He was wrong. Elian was never one of them. He's known it, somewhere underneath everything else, since the moment he saw him standing in that driveway looking more terrified than guilty, but knowing a thing and having it confirmed out loud by three men who have nothing left to gain from lying are two very different weights to carry.

He thinks of the sound coming through that door an hour ago. Please, someone, please.

He gets in the car without another word, and doesn't tell the driver to take him home.