Chapter 4 - The Dispatcher’s Ghost
The room seemed to lose all air.
“What did you say?” I whispered, my voice barely audible over the hum of the rain against the tall library windows.
Salvatore smiled, a sickening display of porcelain veneers and rehearsed charm. He held the folded police document out toward me, but before my fingers could touch the paper, Nico’s hand shot across the space between us, snatching the sheet out of the air.
“Get out of my house, Salvatore,” Nico commanded, his voice deadly quiet.
“You can tear the paper up, nephew,” Salvatore sneered, smoothing the lapels of his pinstripe suit. “The precinct in Queens still has the digital record. Daniel Ward wasn't just an unlucky gambler who borrowed two million from your loan sharks. He was running off-book logistics for Matteo’s private fleet.”
Salvatore turned his gaze fully upon me, his eyes gleaming with malicious delight.
“Did your sweet fiancé not tell you that, Mrs. Romano? He didn't just borrow money to cover bad roulette bets. He diverted a shipping container from Matteo’s terminal forty-eight hours before Matteo’s car hit the bridge abutment. And when Matteo went looking for him to find out why, Daniel disappeared—until today, when he handed you over like a bag of silver.”
My head spun. Five years. I had shared an apartment with Daniel for five years. I had packed his lunches, ironed his work shirts, listened to him complain about late freight shipments and bad fuel margins. He was an ordinary, ambitious, slightly cowardly man—or so I had spent half a decade believing.
“He’s lying to provoke you, Lucia,” Nico said, never taking his eyes off Salvatore. “Uncle Salvatore specializes in planting weeds where he wants to build a graveyard.”
“Check the municipal log yourself, my dear,” Salvatore chuckled, turning toward the foyer. “Ask your new husband why he forgave a two-million-dollar debt so quickly. A mob boss doesn't write off two million for a pretty smile and a teaching degree. He forgave it because he needed Daniel alive—and out of the country—before the feds started tracing the manifest.”
Salvatore gave a mock bow. “I look forward to meeting with Family Services next Friday. Let’s see if the social worker believes this little domestic fairy tale.”
He turned on his heel and walked out, his two bodyguards falling in behind him. The heavy front doors slammed shut with a concussive thud that rattled the glass in the bookshelves.
Silence descended on the room, suffocating and toxic.
I turned on Nico, my fists clenched so tightly my fingernails dug into my palms. “Is it true?”
“Salvatore is playing an angle,” Nico said, tossing the police document onto his desk.
“Don't use that tone with me!” I shouted, stepping up to the desk. “Did Daniel work for Matteo? Did he dispatch that truck?”
Nico’s eyes hardened, the aristocratic businessman facade slipping to reveal the ruthless boss underneath. “Daniel worked for a subsidiary brokerage. He cleared permits. That’s all he was supposed to do.”
“And the two million?”
“Daniel stole merchandise from a bonded warehouse in Elizabeth,” Nico said, his voice level and cold. “He thought he could sell the cargo to Salvatore’s front companies to pay off his gambling debts. Matteo caught him doing it. Two nights later, Matteo was forced off the road.”
“And Daniel?”
“Daniel panicked,” Nico said. “He knew that if I proved he had a hand in Matteo’s death, I wouldn't just bankrupt him. I’d put him in the Hudson River. So he hid behind Rebecca—whose father happens to be a senior precinct captain in Brooklyn—and tried to orchestrate a fast marriage to secure your modest trust fund to run to Costa Rica.”
The depth of the betrayal hit me like a physical blow. Daniel hadn't just cheated on me. He hadn't just sold me. He had used my name, my credit, and my existence as a human meat shield to keep two warring mob factions from tearing him apart.
“And you,” I whispered, tears of rage burning behind my eyelids. “You knew all of this when you walked into that church.”
“I knew Daniel had to be neutralized without triggering an immediate war with Rebecca’s father,” Nico admitted. “Taking you cleared his debt, stripped him of his collateral, and gave me the legal requirement I needed for Mia. It solved three problems with one signature.”
“I am not a transaction!” I yelled.
“In this city, Lucia, everyone is a transaction,” Nico countered, stepping around the desk. “The difference between me and Daniel is that I honor my contracts. You keep Mia safe, you convince the court worker on Friday that this home is stable, and the day Mia’s custody is permanently assigned to me, I will give you five million dollars, an annulment, and a one-way ticket to anywhere on Earth.”
“Keep your blood money,” I spat. “I’m going to my apartment. I’m packing my things.”
I turned toward the library doors, but Nico didn't move to stop me. He simply reached into his pocket, pulled out a brass key, and laid it on the desk.
“Go ahead,” he said quietly. “Walk out the gate. Walk straight to your apartment in Astoria. Do you think Salvatore’s men will let you reach the subway? Salvatore knows you are the only pillar holding Mia’s custody in my hands. The moment you leave these gates without my security detail, you become leverage.”
I froze, my hand hovering an inch from the polished brass doorknob.
He was right. I knew he was right, and that made me hate him even more.
A soft, muffled thump sounded from the ceiling above us, followed by a sharp, high-pitched metallic clatter.
Mia’s room.
I didn't wait. Fear for myself instantly evaporated, replaced by the instinctual urgency of a teacher who recognizes a child in danger. I bolted out of the library, took the sweeping stairs two at a time, and sprinted down the third-floor corridor.
The door to Mia’s bedroom was wide open.
The room was in shambles. A bedside lamp was shattered across the floorboards. But Mia wasn't on the bed.
She was crouched in the dark corner behind an antique armoire, hyperventilating, her small chest heaving under the oversized navy sweater. Her hands were pressed over her ears, her eyes squeezed tightly shut as she rocked violently against the baseboard.
Scattered near her feet were dozens of torn photographs.
I carefully stepped over the shards of porcelain from the lamp, dropping to my knees beside the armoire. “Mia,” I whispered softly. “Mia, it’s okay. The loud man is gone. He left.”
She didn't unclamp her ears, but her breathing hitched.
I looked down at the torn photographs littering the floor. They were candid family snapshots: Matteo with a laughing little girl on his shoulders at the beach; Matteo reading a book in this very room.
Then my eyes landed on the photograph lying right between my knees.
May you like
It was an older picture, taken perhaps three years ago at an outdoor garden party. In the center stood Matteo, smiling broadly with his arm around Nico.
Standing right beside Nico, holding his hand with an intimate, possessive smile, was Rebecca.
