All Chapters of Hunted Heart:The Mafia's Plaything.: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

The rose arrived at noon.Alex found it on his doorstep, wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. No note. No card. Just the flower, deep red, the petals already starting to curl at the edges. He stood in the doorway for a long moment, the package in his hands, his mind going back to another gift, another time when his life had shifted without warning.His mother came up behind him. "What is it?"He didn't answer. His fingers found the string, pulled it loose. The paper fell away. The rose was beautiful, the kind you'd see in a shop that charged more than he made in a week. But it wasn't the flower that made his stomach drop.Tucked into the stem, barely visible, was a tiny piece of plastic. A tracker. The same kind they'd found in his apartment months ago.He held it up to the light. The plastic was smooth, unmarked, but he knew what it was. He'd seen enough of them in his years on the force.His mother's face was pale. "Is that what I think it is?"Alex crushed it under his heel. T

Alex was in the study, the files from Sal's box still spread across the desk, when his phone buzzed. A text. No name. Just coordinates and a time. He pulled up the map, watched the cursor settle on a warehouse on the south side. The same stretch of buildings where this had all started. The same stretch where Marco's body had been found.His mother had been gone for thirteen hours. He'd called her phone seven times. No answer. He'd called Cole, who'd put out feelers, who'd come back with nothing. She'd left the estate sometime after midnight, slipped out while Alex was reading, walked into whatever trap had been waiting.He should have been watching.Cole stood beside him, looking at the map on Alex's phone. "You're not going alone.""She said alone.""She said a lot of things." Cole's voice was flat. "You walk in there without backup, you're not walking out."Alex looked at the coordinates. The warehouse on 5th Street. The place where they'd found the body months ago. The place where

The federal detention center sat on the edge of the city, a block of concrete and steel that the morning light couldn't soften. Alex had driven past it a dozen times during the investigation, always on the outside, always looking in. Now he sat in the parking lot across the street, his hands on the wheel, his eyes on the windows that didn't open.Three days since Enzo. Three days since his mother's face in the dark, since the knife in his hand, since the blood that wouldn't wash off. Three days since Cole called to say Vincenzo had been moved. New facility. Higher security. No visitors. No calls. No word at all.The cuts on his arm were healing. The ones on his hands were fading. The ones inside his chest were still raw.His mother was at the estate, sleeping finally, after days of waking up screaming. She wouldn't tell him what happened in the warehouse before he got there. He didn't ask. Some things were better left in the dark.His phone buzzed. Cole."Anything?" Alex asked."He's

The FBI field office felt different at night.The daytime hustle was gone, the agents who usually filled the halls had retreated to their homes or their cars or wherever they went when the clock hit six. Now the building was mostly empty, the lights dimmed to save power, the only sound the hum of the ventilation system pushing air through corridors that had seen too much.Alex sat in a conference room on the fourth floor, his hands flat on the table, his eyes on the door. He'd been here for an hour, waiting. Cole was beside him, his chair pushed back, his legs stretched out, pretending to be relaxed. Alex could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers tapped against his thigh.The door opened.Special Agent Diane Reyes walked in, a file under her arm, her face the careful blank of someone who had learned to hide her feelings a long time ago. She was Liam's sister. Alex had seen her at the funeral, standing apart from the crowd, her face hard, her hands steady. She hadn't

The sirens were still wailing when Alex pulled back into the station lot.He'd been gone maybe twenty minutes. Long enough to drive around the block, to clear his head, to pretend he wasn't still feeling the wind of that bullet past his ear. Long enough to think about what Cole said. Panicking men do stupid things. He should have kept driving. Should have gone home, locked the doors, waited for the dust to settle.But his mother was supposed to meet him here. She'd called right after the shooting, her voice thin and shaking, saying she was already in the car, already halfway across town, that she needed to see him with her own eyes. He'd told her to wait. Told her to stay in the car. Told her he'd come to her.He was walking toward the entrance when the second round of shots started.The sound was different this time. Closer. More controlled. Not the wild panic of a man who knew he was cornered, but something colder. Something planned.Alex dropped behind a patrol car, his body slammi