Chapter Three

The rain hadn’t stopped by morning. Aria stood at her kitchen sink, watching the gray skyline blur behind streaked glass, the last line of the night’s message replaying in her mind: “Your move”

Her laptop glowed on the counter. Every instinct told her to pull the plug, to run a mile from Dominic Valente and the nameless people who could slip through encryption like smoke.

Instead she brewed coffee, black and bitter, and began digging.

Bank records first. Dock shipments next. Within an hour her screen filled with a lattice of shell companies and flagged transfers, construction firms that never built, charities that never gave. Valente’s empire was a maze of clean fronts and filthy money.

A knock broke her focus.

“Delivery,” a voice called.

Aria’s pulse jumped. She hadn’t ordered anything.

She cracked the door. A courier stood in the hall, hood drawn low. “Package for you, Ms. Lane.”

“I didn’t…”

He pressed a slim black envelope into her hand and turned without waiting for a signature.

Inside: a single card, thick and unmarked except for an embossed silver V.

Her phone vibrated.

Unknown: Tonight. Pier 19. Midnight. Jordan answered on the first ring. “Tell me you’re not considering this.”

“They know where I live,” Aria said, sliding the card back into its envelope. “If I don’t show up, they’ll come here.”

“You can call the police.”

“And tell them what? That a ghost invited me to the docks?”

He exhaled sharply. “At least let me tail you.”

“No. If something goes wrong, one of us needs to stay alive to tell it.”

The docks at midnight were a different city. salt air sharp as metal, gulls crying in the dark. Pier 19 stretched out like a black tongue into the harbor, lit only by scattered floodlights.

Aria’s sneakers slipped on the wet boards as she walked toward a lone warehouse. Its side door stood ajar, a triangle of gold light spilling onto the rain-slicked wood. Inside smelled of oil and old tides. Crates stacked to the rafters formed shadowed alleys.

She heard it then: a low hum, like electricity, or breathing.

“You’re punctual.”

The voice rolled from the darkness, low and deliberate.

Aria turned.

Dominic Valente stepped from behind a column, tailored coat falling perfectly despite the damp. Up close, the photographs hadn’t done him justice. He was taller, the air around him charged like static. Eyes black as storm water locked onto hers.

“You’ve been following me,” he said.

Aria forced her chin up. “Investigating. There’s a difference.”

“Semantics.” He came closer, unhurried. “You have something that belongs to me.”

“The photo?”

A faint smile. “And more.”

Her heartbeat hammered but she held her ground. “If you wanted the picture, you could have taken my camera last night.”

“I wanted to see who was brave enough to take it.”

He stopped an arm’s length away. The scent of cedar and rain clung to him.

“You sent the warning texts?” she asked.

“Would you have come if I hadn’t?”

She hated that the answer was probably no.

Dominic studied her for a long beat. “You dig in dangerous soil, Aria Lane.”

“My job.”

“You left the job.” She blinked. “You know about that?”

“I know everything worth knowing.”

Something in his tone wasn’t a threat so much as certainty, and it chilled her more than a knife might have.

He reached into his coat.

Her muscles tensed, until he withdrew only a small flash drive and set it on a crate between them.

“Evidence,” he said.

“Of what?”

“Everything you think you’re chasing. And more.”

She stared at it. “Why give this to me?”

“Because someone else already wants you dead for it,” Dominic said quietly. “And I don’t like my enemies choosing my battles.”

A faint clang echoed through the warehouse, the metallic snap of a door shutting somewhere behind them.

Dominic’s head lifted. “We’re not alone.”

Before Aria could speak, a gunshot cracked the night.

Dominic moved fast, grabbing her wrist, pulling her behind a stack of crates as splinters rained down where she’d been standing.

“Stay low,” he ordered.

Another shot.

Footsteps, two, maybe three people, closing in.

Dominic drew his own weapon, a sleek black pistol that seemed to appear from nowhere. He glanced at her once, eyes steady, then turned toward the shadows.

“Who are they?” Aria whispered.

“The reason you shouldn’t have come alone.”

The gunfire stopped as suddenly as it began.

Silence thickened, broken only by the rush of tide against pylons.

Dominic tilted his head, listening. “They’ll wait for us to move.”

Aria clutched the flash drive.

Her own voice rose inside her skull, sharp and relentless: How did you let it come to this?

Another voice, calm, certain, answered back: You chased the truth. You stepped into the storm.

Then finish it, she told herself, pulse steadying. You started this. You follow through.

Dominic’s eyes met hers. “Ready?” She nodded once. “Let’s end it.”

He signaled with two fingers, then led her deeper into the maze of crates, toward an unlit exit she hadn’t noticed before.

Behind them, a single pair of footsteps began to follow.