Chapter 15
The call came at seven in the morning.
Diane was in the compound garage, finishing Stockyard's clutch adjustment, when her phone buzzed with Luis's number. She almost didn't answer—had been trying to keep her distance from the shop, let the Wolf security handle things—but something made her pick up.
"Diane." Luis's voice was shaking. "You need to come here. Now."
"What happened?"
"Just come. Please."
The line went dead.
Union was at her side before she'd even lowered the phone, reading her expression with those sharp eyes that missed nothing.
"What?"
"The shop. Something happened." Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. Hollow. "Luis wouldn't say what."
Union didn't ask questions. Just grabbed his keys and led her to his bike, his hand on the small of her back like he could shield her from whatever was coming.
The ride to Bridgeport took fifteen minutes.
It felt like hours.
She smelled it before she saw it.
Burnt rubber. Motor oil. Something chemical and wrong.
Union pulled up in front of the garage, and Diane's heart stopped.
The bay doors had been ripped from their tracks, hanging at broken angles like shattered bones. Inside, she could see wreckage—lifts toppled, tool chests overturned, equipment scattered across the concrete floor.
And on the sign. Her father's sign.
CLOSED.
Spray-painted across Frank Kowalski's name in dripping red letters.
Diane was off the bike before Union killed the engine. She walked toward the garage in a daze, her boots crunching over broken glass, her mind refusing to process what her eyes were seeing.
Luis stood near the office, his face ashen. "I got here at six. Found it like this. I called the cops, but—"
She wasn't listening.
She was walking through the ruins of her father's legacy.
The lifts had been smashed with something heavy—sledgehammers, probably. The hydraulic lines were slashed, fluid pooling on the concrete in spreading dark stains. Air hoses dangled from the ceiling like severed arteries, cut every few inches to make repair impossible.
The tool chests her father had bought in 1985 lay on their sides, drawers scattered, wrenches and sockets ground into the floor like someone had stomped on them deliberately.
Sand.
There was sand everywhere. In the engines of the customer cars still on the lot. In the few tools that had survived. In the drains, mixed with oil and coolant to form a paste that would take days to clean.
Diane stopped in front of her father's workbench.
Someone had taken a crowbar to it. The surface was gouged and splintered, the vise bent at an angle that meant it would never close properly again. Forty years of honest work, destroyed in what looked like minutes.
Her hand reached out to touch the wood.
It shook.
Once.
Then it stopped.
"Diane." Union's voice, behind her.
She didn't turn around. Just stood there, her palm pressed against the ruined workbench, staring at the destruction that surrounded her.
Her father's shop. The only thing she had left of him.
Gone.
"There's a card," Luis said quietly. "On the bench. I didn't touch it."
Diane looked down.
A business card, pristine and white against the destroyed wood. BARTOSZ AUTO SERVICES, it read. And on the back, written in neat handwriting: a phone number and two words.
CALL ME.
She picked up the card.
Stared at it.
Then walked to the oil drain pan in the corner—miraculously intact, still half-full of yesterday's fluid—and dropped the card into the black sludge without reading the number.
"Diane." Union was beside her now, his hand on her shoulder. "We'll rebuild. Whatever they destroyed, we'll—"
"Kev Duda."
He stopped.
"What?"
"The young one. Eddie's enforcer." Diane's voice was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that came before storms. "He came to the shop months ago with Eddie's offer. I kicked him out. Told him to never come back."
"You think he did this?"
"I know he did this." She finally turned to face Union, and whatever he saw in her eyes made his expression harden.
"This is personal for him. The sledgehammers on the lifts.
The sand in the engines. The crowbar on my father's workbench.
" Her hand curled into a fist. "He didn't just destroy the shop.
He destroyed it slowly. Deliberately. Made sure every single thing was ruined beyond repair. "
"We'll find him."
"I know you will." She stepped closer, close enough that she had to tilt her head to meet his eyes. "And when you do, I want to be there."
"Diane—"
"I want him to understand," she said softly. "What it feels like when someone tears apart everything you've built. I want to watch him realize that all his anger and his grudges and his petty revenge led him straight to his own destruction."
Union studied her face for a long moment.
"You're not the killing type."
"I wasn't a lot of things before Eddie Bartosz walked into my shop." She held his gaze without flinching. "People change."
Behind them, sirens wailed. The cops Luis had called, finally arriving. Too late to help. Too late for anything except paperwork and empty promises.
Union pulled her against his chest, wrapping his arms around her. She let him, pressing her face into his cut, breathing in the familiar scent of leather and motor oil.
"We'll get him," Union said against her hair. "Tonight. Scout's already tracking his movements."
"Good."
"And then we'll rebuild the shop. Whatever it takes. However long it takes."
Diane pulled back to look at him.
"My father spent forty years building this place. One brick at a time. One customer at a time. He never cut corners. Never cheated anyone. Never did anything except honest work for honest pay."
Her voice cracked.
"And some punk with a crowbar and a grudge destroyed it in one night."
"I know." Union's hands cupped her face. "I know."
"I want Kev Duda to feel what I'm feeling right now.
" The tears were coming now, hot and angry, streaking down her cheeks.
"I want him to know what it's like to watch everything you've built turn to nothing.
I want him to understand that he did this to himself—that he brought whatever's coming straight to his own door. "
"He will."
"Promise me."
Union kissed her forehead, her temple, the corner of her eye where the tears were falling.
"I promise," he said. "Tonight, Kev Duda learns exactly what it costs to touch what's mine."
The cops were pulling up now, doors slamming, voices calling out questions. Union's hand found hers and squeezed.
"Stay with Luis," he said quietly. "Handle the police. I need to make some calls."
"What kind of calls?"
"The kind that end with Kev Duda regretting every decision he's ever made."
He kissed her once, hard and fast, then stepped away to make his phone call. Diane watched him go, then turned back to face the ruins of her father's shop.
The spray-painted sign stared back at her.
CLOSED.
Not forever, she promised silently. Not if I have anything to say about it.
But first—Kev Duda was going to pay for every broken lift, every slashed hose, every grain of sand he'd poured into her father's legacy.
She was going to make sure of it.