Prologue #2
She was staring at a stranger, she realized. She didn’t even know who he was anymore.
Had she ever really known?
Probably not.
“Ellie?”
“Yes.” Her voice cracked as she forced herself to speak. “I understand.”
He released her wrist and stepped back, his smile returning to full warmth as though a switch had been thrown.
She wanted to rub her wrist. To release her breath.
She did neither. Not yet.
He moved to the desk and straightened a stack of papers. “Check your coat pockets for the passport. You probably tucked it in there last time we traveled.”
“Of course. I’ll do that now.” She slipped past him and out of the office.
But tension still coursed through her body.
Who exactly had she married? Was her husband . . . a contract killer?
Six weeks had passed since Ellie had snooped in Roderick’s office.
On the surface, things between the two of them had seemed normal. Roderick hadn’t mentioned their conversation in the office again. Neither had she. He had, however, mysteriously found her passport that evening same evening. It had been in his office, he’d said.
They’d had dinner together most evenings, attended a gallery opening with friends, and spent a Sunday afternoon walking along the lakefront the way they used to when they were first married.
Roderick had been attentive. Thoughtful. He’d brought her flowers twice, remembered to ask about her patients, and he’d laughed at her stories.
His kindness frightened her the most. It was an unspoken reminder of everything she stood to lose if she made the wrong move.
She couldn’t forget what she’d seen in his file. Ignoring possible injustice went against her very nature. So she’d looked up names. Done her research.
And it was just as bad as she feared.
Her husband had a list of people who’d died or been killed.
Which indicated he may have been involved in their deaths.
One evening while Roderick was in the shower, she’d ventured to look at his phone. She hadn’t been able to get past his passcode. She’d tried every combination she could think of, but she’d gotten nowhere and had to stop before the phone locked up.
She’d put his cell back exactly where she’d found it, and she hadn’t tried again. The fear of being caught had outweighed the need to know.
However, she couldn’t stop thinking about those names and figures. Those surveillance photographs. The circled name beside a date.
Her husband was involved in something that destroyed people’s lives, wasn’t he?
And yet she kept making excuses, trying to find a plausible reason.
She’d built an elaborate scaffolding out of maybes, and she’d propped her daily life against it.
Maybe she’d misread the figures. Maybe there was a legitimate explanation for the photographs that she simply didn’t understand.
Maybe Roderick’s business operated in ways that looked suspicious on paper but were entirely aboveboard in practice.
But she found all that hard to believe.
She hadn’t told anyone about her discovery. Not her colleagues or friends.
She hadn’t uttered a word.
Because the alternative—accepting what her gut told her to be true—meant making decisions she wasn’t ready to make.
Meant doing something she wasn’t ready to do.
As she walked into the medical building where she worked as a physical therapist, Ellie tugged her lanyard over her head and gripped the coffee she’d picked up from a stand outside.
She checked the time on her watch.
Ten minutes until her first patient. She was usually earlier than this.
She couldn’t seem to get herself together lately. That file had turned her entire world upside down.
She stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor. Before the doors closed, a man in his mid-forties rushed inside. She stepped toward a wall to give him space.
He flashed her a smile and muttered, “Thanks.”
They both took the normal elevator stance and faced the front.
The elevator began to rise.
“Mrs. Barone.”
Ellie’s breath caught. He knew her name. How? She’d never seen this man before. She would remember if he’d been a patient.
She pressed closer to the elevator wall. The space suddenly felt too small, too confined, too . . . dangerous.
“Who are you?” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “How do you know my name?”
He reached past her and pressed the Stop button.
The elevator shuddered to a halt between floors.
Panic raced through her.
She was stuck. Trapped.
With a stranger who knew her name.
What if her name had been added to Roderick’s hit list? What if this man was one of Roderick’s men?
“Why did you—?”
The man reached into his coat and produced a badge.
Cliff Connelly. FBI.
Her breath left her in a rush. The FBI. He wouldn’t hurt her.
But why was he here? Why did he seek her out?
Dread pooled in her stomach, mixed with a good dose of apprehension.
“I need to talk to you,” he stated.
“About what?” The question automatically left her lips. She already knew, on some level, that she didn’t want the answer.
“The Barone family has been under federal investigation for the past eight years.” He said it the way someone might discuss the weather—level and unhurried, which somehow made it worse.
“Vito built this operation using an import business as the front. Their real business is extortion. Money laundering.” He paused, letting each word land separately. “Contract killing.”
Contract killing.
Her coffee cup slipped from her hand. She caught it, but the lid popped free. Liquid splashed across her hand and the floor between them.
She didn’t look down. She couldn’t look away from the agent’s face.
The last time she’d seen Vito—Roderick’s father—had been at Thanksgiving.
The whole family had sat at a long table, Vito at the head of it.
He was silver-haired and the kind of man who commanded a room without raising his voice.
He’d been friendly, but Ellie had always kept a certain distance from him.
Her gut had quietly been telling her he wasn’t safe, though she’d never wanted to acknowledge that.
Now she knew why.
“Roderick’s father is—” she started.
“The head of a crime syndicate. Has been from the beginning. Roderick handles operations.”
Operations? She pressed her back against the elevator wall. Her mind was running in too many directions at once.
She’d spent three weeks building maybes. Excuses. Explanations.
She’d tried to keep hope alive.
Now, hope was a distant memory.
“We’ve been trying to bring down this family for a long time. We haven’t been able to do it. Not yet.” The agent’s eyes held hers. “You could change that.”
She stared at him, suddenly realizing the implications of what he was saying. “I could change that? I don’t know what you think I—”
“You’re on the inside. You have access to things we don’t. Documents. Conversations. Associates. You could be the person who finally brings the Barones to their knees. Who stops these senseless killings and all the other crimes they’re intertwined with.”
“You want me to spy on my husband?” Her lips parted in shock.
Was he really asking this? This whole conversation felt surreal, like a nightmare she’d wake up from.
“I want you to help us build a case against your husband and his associates.”
The memory of Roderick gripping her wrist hit her like a slap. Dangerous undercurrents had lined the action, a subtle threat of what he could do to her if he wanted.
If Roderick found out she was spying on him . . . he might actually hurt her.
Or kill her.
Could she really turn on her husband? Could she gather information that might send him to prison?
Terror shot through her.
She glanced back at the agent. “And if I say no?”