Chapter Two

Rain drummed against the fire escape, a restless rhythm outside Aria’s window.

She shut the door with her heel, tossed her damp coat across a chair, and went straight for the laptop. The heater rattled awake, but the one-room walk-up stayed cool, carrying the city’s metallic scent.

The memory card slid into its slot.

Images flickered across the screen: rain-soft frames sharpening until a single figure emerged like a secret finally confessed. Dominic Valente, caught mid-stride under a streetlight, the hard plane of his jaw lit in silver, eyes hidden but unmistakable.

After months of leads that died in smoke, she’d found him.

Her phone buzzed across the counter.

Jordan Hale: “You alive?”

She tapped the speaker. “Barely. But I got him.”

“You’re kidding.” Jordan’s voice had the dry calm of someone who’d seen too many bad ideas. “Send a shot.”

She forwarded the best frame. Silence, then a low whistle.

“That’s him. You realize Valente doesn’t just own half the docks, he owns half the cops guarding them.”

“Exactly why the story matters.”

“Exactly why you should quit while you’re still breathing.”

Aria paced , the old floorboards creaking under her sneakers. “Trace this photo. I want to know if anyone else can see it.”

“I'm trying,” Jordan said. “But listen, if he finds out you were there...”

Before she could answer, another alert pulsed across her screen: “STOP DIGGING”. No address. No signature. Just two words, stark and cold. Her stomach tightened. “Jordan, someone….”

“I see it,” he cut in. “Trace is masked. Not a prank. Someone knows you were there.”

The line clicked again.

“Aria, tell me you didn’t go near that club.”

Mara Quinn’s gravelled voice, her old editor. Never needed a greeting.

“You’re tracking my location again,” Aria said.

“I’d call it keeping you alive. Whatever you’re chasing, leave it. Valente is untouchable.”

Aria stared at the final photo, the one where a passing headlight carved Dominic’s face out of the dark. Untouchable? Maybe. But tonight she had proof he was real.

“I’m not stopping,” she said quietly.

A pause. Mara’s sigh crackled through the speaker. “Then be smarter than the last reporter who tried. He vanished, Aria. No body. No goodbye.” The call ended. Outside, a siren wailed down Sixth Avenue.

She tried to write, but her thoughts looped like static.

Freelance deadlines waited, but this story pulled harder than any assignment. Dominic Valente wasn’t just a headline; he was a shadow running beneath the city, and tonight she’d stepped inside it.

A sudden ping from her laptop cut through the silence. New email. No sender.

“Vesper. Private room. Midnight.”

Just that. Same encryption as the warning. Her pulse jumped. A lead or a trap. Probably both.

She hesitated only long enough to grab her leather jacket and tuck a small recorder into the pocket.

Club Vesper pulsed like a heartbeat under the city.

A velvet line of umbrellas snaked around the block, but a quiet word to the doorman and a folded bill slid her past the rope. Inside, bass thundered through the floorboards, lights slicing the haze of smoke and perfume.

She moved with the crowd, scanning faces, hunting the private room promised in the message. Every sense sharpened. She tallied exits, counted security cameras, marked the quickest way out if things turned ugly.

A pair of sharply dressed men emerged from a side corridor. Their eyes flicked over her like scanners. Bodyguards. Valente’s, she guessed.

One murmured into an earpiece

Aria’s pulse spiked.

She ducked toward the bar, pretending to study the cocktail list.

“Looking for someone?”

The voice came from her left, smooth, amused. A tall man in a charcoal suit leaned against the counter, a faint scar tracing his jaw. Not Dominic, but the quiet authority in his posture said he mattered.

“Just a drink,” she said.

He smiled without warmth. “Then you’re in the wrong corner. That hallway’s private.”

Exactly the hallway she’d been eyeing.

“Good to know.” She forced a polite laugh and turned away.

From the corner of her eye she caught a flash of movement: another man stepping out of the restricted corridor, a shadow behind him larger, darker. Even blurred by strobe lights she knew.

Dominic Valente.

He didn’t look her way.

But the room seemed to tilt as he passed, his presence bending space itself.

Aria kept perfectly still, the music a distant throb. This close, and he has no idea who I am.

Yet.

The scarred man beside her lifted his glass, studying her reflection in the bar mirror. “Curious thing about this city,” he murmured, voice barely audible over the bass. “People vanish when they ask the wrong questions.”

Aria turned, but he was already gone.

Back on the street, cold rain stung her face. She hurried three blocks before pulling out her phone. Another message waited.

“Nice picture.”

Attached was the very photo she’d taken of Dominic hours earlier.

Aria’s breath caught. She hadn’t shared it with anyone except Jordan.

A second line appeared as she stared.

“Your move.”