Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO OWED MY FATHER
“You’re Dominic Rinaldi.”
His expression barely changed.
Rain slid from his hair onto the collar of his coat.
“And you’re David Ward’s daughter.”
I tightened my fingers around the envelope.
“You sent the message.”
“Yes.”
“You left the money.”
His eyes dropped toward it.
“That was not for you.”
“It had my father’s name on it.”
“Exactly.”
There was something about the way he said it that made my skin tighten.
Dominic stepped closer.
I stepped back.
“Stay where you are.”
He stopped immediately.
That surprised me more than if he had ignored me.
I had spent enough time writing crime stories and digging through federal cases to know what Dominic Rinaldi was supposed to be. Racketeering investigations. Illegal gambling. Union corruption. Three federal indictments that had collapsed after witnesses suddenly developed bad memories.
He was the kind of man mothers warned sons about.
The kind of man my father had spent his career investigating.
Yet here he was, standing beside David Ward’s grave with grief in his eyes.
“Why were you visiting my father?”
“Because tonight is October twenty-seventh.”
“I know what night it is.”
“For thirteen years,” Dominic said, “I have come here on this date.”
That stopped me.
“You’ve done this before?”
“Every year.”
“Why?”
He looked toward the headstone.
“Because your father saved someone I loved.”
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“My father investigated people like you.”
“He investigated worse men than me.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
He turned his face toward the cemetery road.
Something changed in him.
Not fear.
Awareness.
His shoulders tightened almost invisibly.
Then he said, “We need to leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Elena.”
Hearing my name from him sent a chill through me.
“I never told you my first name.”
“Your father talked about you.”
My throat went dry.
Before I could ask what that meant, Dominic crossed the space between us and grabbed my arm.
I jerked away.
“What the hell—”
“Down.”
The headstone exploded.
Stone fragments struck my cheek.
A gunshot cracked across the cemetery half a second later.
Dominic slammed me behind the monument.
Another round tore through the wet grass where I had been standing.
My brain refused to understand what was happening.
Someone was shooting at us.
At my father’s grave.
Dominic pulled a handgun from beneath his coat.
Everything about him changed.
The grieving man disappeared.
In his place stood someone frighteningly calm.
He fired twice toward the tree line.
Then yelled something in Italian.
Headlights erupted along the cemetery road.
Two black SUVs that I thought had already left came racing back.
“Stay behind the stone.”
“Who’s shooting?”
“If I knew that, they’d already be dead.”
“That’s comforting.”
A third shot struck the monument.
Dominic grabbed the back of my jacket and pulled me lower.
“You still have the card?”
“What?”
“The card from the envelope.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t lose it.”
A black SUV skidded sideways beside us.
A rear door opened.
Dominic pushed me inside.
I fought him.
“My car—”
“Can be replaced.”
“My father’s notebooks are in my apartment.”
That got his attention.
“What notebooks?”
The urgency in his voice made me freeze.
“My father’s case notes.”
“All of them?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long have you had them?”
“Thirteen years.”
For the first time, Dominic Rinaldi looked genuinely afraid.
He climbed into the SUV.
“Marco,” he snapped. “Her apartment. Now.”
A broad-shouldered man behind the wheel accelerated.
The cemetery disappeared behind us.
I stared at Dominic.
“Tell me what’s happening.”
He checked the magazine in his weapon before answering.
“The men who killed your father believed they destroyed everything he had.”
My chest tightened.
“You keep saying that like you know he was murdered.”
“I do know.”
“How?”
“Because I saw him twelve hours before he died.”
The inside of the SUV seemed to shrink.
“You knew my father?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Dominic looked out the rain-streaked window.
“I owed him my sister’s life.”
I waited.
He continued.
“Her name is Bianca. She was seventeen when she disappeared. The police classified her as a runaway. She wasn’t.”
I thought of the words in my father’s notebook.
Human trafficking.
“Your father found financial transfers connected to an organization moving girls through hotels, private clubs, ports, and diplomatic properties. He discovered Bianca’s name buried in a ledger.”
My stomach twisted.
“He told you?”
“He wasn’t supposed to.”
“Why would an FBI agent help a Mafia family?”
“Because David Ward cared more about getting a seventeen-year-old girl home than protecting his career.”
Dominic’s voice became quieter.
“He gave me an address. An abandoned textile warehouse outside Newark. I found Bianca there with six other girls.”
“Did my father know what you would do to the people holding her?”
“Yes.”
“And he still told you?”
“He told me to rescue every girl first.”
I stared at him.
“That doesn’t sound like my father.”
“No?”
“He believed in the law.”
Dominic smiled sadly.
“He believed in justice. He learned those were not always the same thing.”
We passed through an intersection.
My phone vibrated.
Sofia.
I answered instantly.
“Elena, where are you?”
Something in her voice sounded wrong.
“I’m driving.”
“With who?”
I glanced at Dominic.
“A friend.”
Dominic’s eyebrow lifted.
“Elena, listen to me. Your apartment building is surrounded by police.”
My blood turned cold.
“What?”
“I came over because you weren’t answering. There are federal agents upstairs.”
Dominic leaned closer.
I put the phone on speaker.
Sofia continued.
“They carried boxes out of your apartment. Elena, what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
A voice shouted somewhere behind her.
Sofia gasped.
Then the call ended.
“Sofia?”
Nothing.
I dialed again.
Straight to voicemail.
Dominic swore under his breath.
“Your friend needs to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because those aren’t ordinary federal agents.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know exactly who they are.”
Marco looked at us through the mirror.
“We’re seven minutes out.”
Dominic grabbed a burner phone.
“No. Change route.”
“No!”
I leaned forward.
“My father’s notebooks are there.”
“Those notebooks are the reason your apartment is being searched.”
“Then we have to get them.”
“If they already found them, going back gets you arrested.”
“For what?”
Dominic stared at me.
A strange sadness crossed his face.
“For the same thing they accused your father of thirteen years ago.”
I frowned.
“Nobody accused him of anything.”
“That’s what they told you.”
He reached into his inside pocket and removed an old photograph.
It showed my father standing beside Dominic in what looked like a warehouse.
Between them stood a terrified teenage girl wrapped in a blanket.
Bianca.
On the back, my father had written something.
I recognized his handwriting instantly.
If anything happens to me, protect Elena.
My hands began shaking.
Then Marco suddenly slammed the brakes.
A vehicle had blocked the road ahead.
Another boxed us in from behind.
Four doors opened.
Men wearing FBI jackets stepped into the rain with weapons raised.
A loudspeaker crackled.
“Dominic Rinaldi! Exit the vehicle!”
I looked at Dominic.
He did not look at the agents.
He looked at me.
Then he said something that terrified me far more than the guns outside.
“They didn’t come for me.”
I swallowed.
May you like
“How do you know?”
“Because the man walking toward us is the same man who signed your father’s death report.”
