Chapter 2 - THE WRISTWATCH IN THE ASHES
“So now what?” Vivian asked, her voice tight inside the whisper-quiet cabin of the armored vehicle.
Roman Valente didn’t blink. His charcoal overcoat was unbuttoned, revealing a tailor-made suit that fit his broad frame with razor-sharp precision. In his right hand, he turned a heavy silver signet ring around his pinky finger.
“Now,” Roman said softly, “you remain alive. Which is an extraordinary courtesy given that you dragged me into a hallway ambush with thirty seconds of warning.”
“It wasn’t an ambush. It was an evasion,” Vivian corrected, clinging to whatever professional dignity remained. “And I apologized.”
“You did.” A faint, dangerous shadow of a smile touched his lips. “And yet here you are, sitting inside my car, carrying information that belongs to a war you know nothing about.”
Marco, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned around. His phone was pressed to his ear, his face gray under the streetlight glare filtering through tinted windows.
“Boss,” Marco said, cutting the connection. “The warehouse at Pier Twelve. Dominic didn’t just talk. He torched the south office ten minutes ago. Our night supervisor isn’t answering.”
The silence that followed was suffocating. Roman’s dark eyes shifted from Marco to the rain streaking horizontally across the glass. The city lights blurred into long smears of gold and red.
“Turn around,” Roman commanded.
Vivian sat upright. “Wait. What do you mean, turn around? You told me you were taking me somewhere safe.”
“Pier Twelve is where this started,” Roman replied, his voice dropping an octave into pure ice. “If Lucchesi burned my docks tonight, he did it because he believed whatever he destroyed would never be traced back to him. You heard him speaking in Suite Four. Did he mention an item?”
Vivian squeezed her eyes shut, dragging her mind back through the blur of terror. She saw the heavy oak door of Suite Four, heard the clinking crystal glasses, and then that harsh, raspy voice. “Burn the manifests, wipe the drive, and find the silver case before Roman’s men arrive.”
Her eyes snapped open. “A silver case. He said to find the silver case before your men arrived.”
Roman’s jaw tightened until a muscle jumped beneath his skin. For the first time, Vivian saw something raw beneath his polished exterior: genuine fury. He reached inside his jacket, pulled out an old silver pocket watch with an engraved crest on its face, and checked the time. The gesture was compulsive, a relic of an old habit.
“He didn’t find it,” Roman murmured. “If he had found it, he wouldn’t have burned the building to cover his tracks.”
Twenty minutes later, the SUV rolled past the iron gates of Pier Twelve. Smoke hung thick and acrid over the water, mixing with the smell of wet pavement and diesel fuel. Three fire trucks had their sirens killed, their flashing red beacons illuminating the charred, dripping skeleton of a corrugated iron warehouse. Firefighters were winding up hoses; the blaze was out, but the air still sizzled with residual heat.
Two armed guards in dark jackets parted immediately as Roman stepped down onto the wet asphalt. He didn't wait for an umbrella. Vivian hesitated, but Roman reached back, caught her wrist in a firm, calloused grip, and pulled her alongside him.
“Stay close,” he instructed quietly. “Step where I step.”
“I’m wearing satin heels in a crime scene,” she muttered under her breath, trying to steady her shivering knees.
“Then don't fall.”
They walked into the ruined office. The floor was covered in sodden black ash and shattered safety glass. Standing near an overturned steel desk was a small figure wrapped in an oversized firefighter’s turnout coat, shivering violently.
Vivian froze.
It was a little girl, no older than seven, with enormous brown eyes and curls plastered to her forehead by soot and water. In her tiny hands, she clutched a battered leather sketchbook.
“Leo,” Roman called out.
A burly dockworker with a bandaged arm stepped out of the shadow. “Mr. Valente. Thank God. They came fast. Four of them. They locked me in the container yard. When I broke out, the office was ablaze. I pulled Mia through the ventilation hatch.”
Roman went down on one knee in the wet ash. The posture was so completely at odds with his towering, intimidating presence that Vivian could only stare.
“Mia,” Roman said, his voice entirely stripped of threat. It was the gentlest tone she had ever heard a man use. “Are you hurt?”
The girl shook her head silently. Her lips were pale. “They took Papa’s desk, Uncle Roman. They threw it over.”
Vivian stepped forward instinctively, forgetting her fear of Roman and his men. She knelt beside the girl, pulling a clean linen napkin from her jacket pocket—leftover from her event setup kit—and gently wiped a streak of black soot from the child’s cheek.
“Hey,” Vivian whispered softly. “You’re safe now. Nobody is going to hurt you here.”
Mia looked up at Vivian, blinking through tear-stained lashes. “Are you the lady from the party?”
Vivian paused, confused. “What?”
Mia didn't answer with words. She opened the soaked leather sketchbook and pointed a small, dirty finger at the page. Drawn in clumsy, vivid colored pencil was an exact rendering of Vivian’s signature event layout: the white orchid canopy, the ice sculpture, and in the corner, a detailed sketch of a woman in an emerald-green dress with a gold badge at her waist.
Vivian felt the air leave her lungs. She was wearing that exact emerald dress.
“Where did you get this?” Vivian asked, her voice shaking.
“A man gave it to Papa yesterday,” Mia whispered, leaning into the warmth of the oversized coat. “He said if this lady was in the ballroom, the doors would be unlocked.”
Vivian jerked her head up to meet Roman’s gaze.
May you like
Roman was already staring at her, his eyes unreadable, dark, and utterly merciless.
“It seems, Vivian,” Roman said, rising slowly to his feet while his guards closed ranks around the perimeter, “your little kiss in the hallway wasn’t a coincidence after all.”
