Chapter 2 - THE SILVER LOCKET
The black sedan’s brake lights flared red, and in a heartbeat, it surged away from the curb, its tires hissing against the slush-covered pavement before turning hard down a side street.
I didn’t chase it. You don’t chase ghosts when you don’t know what kind of trap they’re laying.
Beside me, little Emma let out a ragged sob, her small fingers still clutching the heavy wool of my dark coat like it was the only safe place left in New York.
“Easy, Emma,” I murmured, my voice dropping into a register I usually reserved for boardroom adversaries who thought they could out-negotiate me. I crouched back down so I was eye-level with her. “They’re gone. You’re safe here.”
Marco stepped up, holding a warm ham and cheese croissant wrapped in greasy bakery paper along with a small carton of milk. He looked down at the little girl, his hard, scarred face softening just a fraction. The men who worked for me respected fear, but they understood family.
“Here, kid,” Marco said gently, kneeling and offering the food.
Emma stared at the croissant, her stomach giving a loud, pathetic rumble. She hesitated, looking up at me with those wide, terrified gray eyes, then tentatively reached out with both hands and took it. She didn’t eat it right away; she just held it like it was something precious.
“You said they have your mommy,” I said softly, keeping my tone steady so I wouldn’t scare her further. “Tell me her name, Emma.”
“Sarah,” she whispered, taking a tiny, desperate bite of the pastry. “Sarah Vance.”
The name hit me like a physical blow.
Vance.
My mind raced through the roster of my organization, my business competitors, and the old debts buried deep in the city's underbelly. Five years ago, a man named Thomas Vance had run logistics for my shipping docks in Brooklyn. He had stolen two shipments of high-grade copper, tried to sell them to a rival crew, and vanished into thin air before my enforcers could reach him. We never found him.
And now a little girl named Emma Vance was standing in a bakery on a freezing November afternoon, telling me men in a black car had her mother.
“Your father,” I said carefully. “Where is Thomas?”
Emma stopped chewing. Her lower lip quivered. She looked down at the floor, shaking her head. “Daddy went away a long time ago. He said bad men were looking for him. He left us a box before he disappeared.”
“What kind of box?” I asked.
She reached inside the pocket of her oversized, broken-zippered gray coat and pulled out a small, tarnished silver locket. It was dangling from a frayed black ribbon. She held it out to me on her tiny palm.
I took it. The metal was ice cold. I popped the clasp with my thumbnail.
Inside was a faded photograph of a young woman with dark hair smiling warmly, and tucked behind it was a tiny, folded piece of thick cardstock covered in a series of handwritten numbers and a dockyard address—Pier 42, warehouse B.
My blood ran cold.
Pier 42 wasn’t just any warehouse. It was an abandoned municipal pier that my organization had quietly purchased two months ago to store non-manifest cargo. Only three people in my inner circle knew the actual access codes to that specific bay.
Someone inside my own house was using my property.
“Marco,” I said, standing up slowly, the silver locket heavy in my palm.
“Yeah, Boss?”
“Get the Tahoe around front. We’re going to Pier 42.”
Marco’s eyes flicked to Emma, who was now clutching the croissant in one hand and my coat in the other. “What about her?”
May you like
I looked down at the little girl, whose big eyes looked up at me with absolute, unconditional trust—the kind of trust I hadn’t earned, but couldn’t turn away from.
“She comes with us,” I said.
