Chapter 6
Julian glanced in the rearview mirror, his scarred brow furrowing deeply. “Moretti’s organization was supposed to have dissolved after the indictments, Dante. We took over their distribution hubs four years ago with their underbosses’ blessing. There shouldn’t be anyone left to cash those checks.”
“Unless someone never stopped running the books behind our backs,” Dante said, his voice dropping an octave into dangerous certainty. “Daniel Harper wasn’t killed by an accident on a scaffold. He was murdered because he realized the dead syndicate was still breathing inside our own walls.”
Lily leaned against her mother’s shoulder, her eyelids heavy with exhaustion as the rhythmic swish of the wipers lulled her toward sleep. Even in her drowsy state, her tiny fingers never loosened their grip on the faded yellow ear of her battered toy rabbit.
Twenty minutes later, the vehicle slowed to an idle outside a rust-streaked chain-link fence surrounded by rotting wooden piers and dark warehouses. A flickering neon sign buzzed weakly in the downpour, casting sickly green reflections across oil slicks on the broken asphalt: East River Storage.
Julian stepped out first into the rain, his handgun drawn close against his chest as he swept the row of corrugated metal sheds. The wind howled off the black river, smelling of salt, wet rust, and rotting timber, drowning out the distant hum of bridge traffic.
“Clear,” Julian called through his throat microphone, waving Dante and Emma forward under the dripping corrugated awning of Locker Forty-Two. “Padlock is older brass. Hasn't been touched in months; the cobwebs around the latch are undisturbed.”
Emma stepped forward, her hand shaking so badly she could barely fit the key into the cylinder. Dante placed his large, warm hand over hers, steadying her trembling fingers until the tumblers clicked with a heavy, satisfying snap.
Inside, the air was stale and smelled of dry cardboard, mildew, and ancient dust. A single metal desk sat against the back wall, holding a dusty green metal lockbox bolted directly into the concrete floor with heavy industrial anchor pins.
Emma choked back a sob, pressing the photograph against her chest before handing the black hard drive directly to Dante. “This is what he died for. He told me that if anything ever happened to him, this would burn down the men who stole his life.”
Dante handed the drive to Julian, who plugged it into a ruggedized military laptop from his pack. The screen illuminated the dim locker with harsh blue light as lines of encrypted code and scanned financial ledgers began scrolling rapidly down the screen.