Chapter 15 Riley
RILEY
Iwake up disoriented, body stiff from sleeping in an unfamiliar bed.
For a moment, I forget where I am. Then the events of last night come flooding back—the car chase, the crash, the stolen vehicle, the long drive through the snow to this place Rafe calls a safehouse.
I remember stumbling through the door exhausted and Rafe pointing me toward a bedroom where I collapsed onto the mattress without even taking off my shoes.
The room is sparse and cold, a twin bed with plain sheets, a nightstand with nothing on it, a single window covered by blinds that let in thin strips of gray morning light. My duffel bag sits on the floor where I dropped it last night, still packed.
I push the blankets aside and swing my legs out of bed.
My muscles ache from the tension of yesterday, and I feel the bruises forming where the seatbelt caught me during the crash.
I'm not fond of how achy I am, especially in the bendy parts of my body where my rumpled clothing pinched me all night.
I must smell like a hog to anyone around me.
With my legs over the side of the bed, I toe off my shoes and listen.
The house is pretty quiet, and so is the surround.
I have no clue where this place is. I didn't pay much attention after it got dark out.
We're somewhere in the Catskills, probably, and with the snowfall last night deadening every sound, I'm not sure there's even a road nearby. I don't even know if Rafe is here.
But I stand, forcing my body upright to stretch and yawn, and then stumble out the door thinking I'll see Rafe seated in the kitchen or living room. The place is small. There aren't many places he could be. And when I have a quick peek around, I don't see him anywhere. I'm alone for now.
I walk to the couch and sit down, pulling my knees to my chest, then reach for the remote on the coffee table and turn on the TV.
The screen flickers to life, and I flip through channels until I find a local news station.
The anchor is mid-sentence, though the volume is down, and I see the banner at the bottom of the screen.
FBI Joins Search for Missing Buffalo Woman
My stomach drops as the anchor continues what she's saying, and I click the volume button up to hear the report.
"The Federal Bureau of Investigation has officially joined the search for Riley Maddox, the twenty-six-year-old bank teller who disappeared over three weeks ago.
Authorities say Maddox's cell phone last pinged at a warehouse on the east side of Buffalo, a property with known ties to organized crime.
FBI agents are now working alongside local law enforcement to investigate potential connections between Maddox's disappearance and ongoing criminal investigations in the area. "
The screen cuts to footage of the warehouse Rafe sent me to when Marco Lombardi's body was in my trunk. But it looks different now. I see police tape stretched across the entrance, officers moving in and out, and I feel a rush of nausea.
God only knows how long it will take to connect all the dots behind the scenes.
I've seen the mess of financials Rafe uses to mask his involvement—Salvatore too.
The FBI will have to do some digging to clear it up, but I know exactly why Rafe brought me here.
He's afraid the Feds will go search his house, and if that happens, his precious "asset" would be taken away.
A surge of anger spools to life in my chest but I have to bite it back.
Rafe told me I'm not just his asset, though I know how Salvatore Ferretti feels about me.
If the FBI does follow those leads and links me to them, Sal will order my execution.
And if not, and the FBI figures out I'm helping them, it means a shitstorm of trouble for me. I just don't want to think about it.
I don't want them to track me down here any more than Rafe does.
I'd love it more than anything if I could reverse time to the night I was driving home to Buffalo to be with my family for Thanksgiving and pretend this never happened.
As it stands, if I get picked up somehow and they don't connect me, I'm gonna have to lie and say I have amnesia.
There's no way to explain being away this long…
I hear footsteps behind me, and I turn to see Rafe standing in the doorway.
He's holding two mugs of coffee, with steam rising from them, and he walks over to the couch and hands one to me.
I take it from him cautiously but say nothing, and as he sits next to me he remains silent too.
This time, he doesn't bother reaching for the remote to turn the TV off, either. His secret is out of the bag.
We both stare at the television. The news has moved on to another story, but neither of us says anything for a long moment.
"Don't get any ideas, Riley," Rafe says finally, but there's a defeated hint to his tone. He's not threatening me, he's warning me.
I look at him. "What do you mean?"
"The FBI. Don't think they're going to save you."
"I didn't…" I feel a little offended at that assumption. He's not a mind reader. He doesn't know what I was thinking.
"You're thinking that if they get close enough, if they figure out where you are, this will all be over.
But it won't. The second my uncle thinks the Feds are going to find you, he'll give the order to kill you.
And if you try to run, your sister will be dead before they get through the front door. "
He looks at me sadly and the pain in his eyes is crystal clear.
Salvatore is a merciless man and Rafe hasn't yet shown him that I'm not a threat to them.
It makes me wonder what exactly a man in his situation has to do to have a woman in his life.
Must she be born to it? Or is there any chance at all for us?
Will I just end up dead no matter what?
"I'm sorry… It's out of my hands now."
"Even with the cops breathing down your neck?" I squeak, and he scrubs a hand over his two-day stubble. "He'd still take that risk?"
"Sal doesn't leave loose ends, and he doesn't hesitate. If you become a liability, you're gone. And so is anyone connected to you who might go snooping."
A hollow feeling invades my chest again.
No matter what I do, I'm doomed. They won’t stop looking until they've found me, and finding me means an avalanche of horrible consequences.
I almost want to call them to tell them not to keep looking, that I'm fine.
But even that would just be fanning the fire.
"Would you give that order?" I ask him solemnly.
He doesn't answer right away. I see him hesitate, and for a moment, I think he's not going to respond at all. Then he exhales slowly and sets his mug down to turn to me.
"No," he says quietly. "I wouldn't. But it wouldn't matter. Sal is the boss."
Rafe is softening toward me. I've seen it happening for days now. I just don't know that it's enough to really protect me if things go sideways. Softening doesn’t mean I'm truly safe with him, and it doesn't mean that when orders come down the pipe, I'll get a chance in hell at being saved.
"Rafe, I need to know what you've dragged me into—all of it.
" My mind flicks to the flash drive, stored in my shoe at one point, but now stashed in my box of tampons in my duffel bag.
I'm not testing him, but I do want to give him a chance to be transparent with me.
It could be exactly how I know that he's being honest and wants me in his life.
If he keeps hiding things I already know about, maybe he's not the sort of guy I'd actually take a risk for.
He leans back against the couch, his arms crossed, and I see the tension in his shoulders. "You already know what it's about. Money laundering. Arms smuggling. Drugs. You've been rebuilding the records for weeks."
"I know what the records say. But I want to hear it from your mouth." I relax, uncurling my legs and leaning back on the couch, and he picks up his mug and turns sideways, drawing a knee across his cushion to face me.
He's quiet for a long moment, and I think he's going to shut me down. But he starts talking in a calm tone and I know he's finally going to open up.
"The pharmaceutical company is a front," he says.
"We bought it three years ago to give us a legitimate way to move product.
Drugs, weapons, cash—all of it gets funneled through the company's supply chain and distribution network.
On paper, we're just another business shipping medicine to hospitals and pharmacies.
But underneath, we're moving millions of dollars in illegal goods every month. "
"And the Feds don't know?"
"They suspect. They've been investigating for over a year, but they don't have proof.
The banker kept the records clean so no one could trace the illegal operations back to us.
But when he died, everything fell apart.
The dead man's switch he built is set to release encrypted files to the authorities on Christmas Day…
. I called him on his shit, told him I knew he was working for our enemies too and that I was coming for him.
He got scared and ran, and now I'm in over my head. "
So it's not a full confession of everything, but he's talking to me, at least. "And my job is to rebuild the records before that happens so that if Lombardi's files go to the FBI, they look fake?"
"Yes. If you make it look like the company's always been legitimate, then when the Feds come knocking, they won't find anything. The dead man's switch will trigger, but the files won't match the records. They'll have evidence, but it won't be admissible."
"What about you?" I ask. "What happens to you if I fail?"
He doesn't look at me. "Prison. If I'm lucky…
Sal won't take the fall for anyone, and he won't save me if it means his looking bad.
It's his way, and he's not a bad man for being that way.
It's sort of understood within the family that we take the risks upon ourselves.
I respect it, but in situations like this, I am left hanging out to dry. "
He speaks the words without any emotion in his tone.
It's like knowing his future has carved out a hole in his chest he has no say over and he's resigned himself to the grim future that may be in store for him.
No wonder he sees me as more than an asset.
I might just be his salvation… or the stone they hang around his neck as he drowns.
"You're losing control," I say.
"Yes."
"And without my help, people will die."
He turns to me now, his eyes locking on mine.
"Not just people—families. The politicians we've paid off, the law enforcement officials who've looked the other way—if this falls apart, my uncle will make sure they go down with us.
Their wives. Their kids. Anyone who can be used as leverage or eliminated as a threat. "
The words are a knife in my chest. They silence any residual fear I had that Rafe isn't being honest with me or that he doesn't mean what he says. It's the smoking gun in my hand that can be aimed at his entire empire and he just handed it to me freely.
He trusts me.
What a sobering thought.
I stare at him, and for the first time, I see past the threats and the violence and the cold control.
I see a man who was trapped in this world the same way I'm trapped now.
A man who made decisions out of necessity, who built walls around himself to stay alive, who's spent years doing things he probably hates because the alternative was being entirely alone or suffering death or imprisonment.
He's a prisoner, just like me.
It all makes my chest ache and I touch his arm gently. We're not that different, though the reason I'm in this situation doesn't mirror how he got here. Rafe's just scrabbling for hope the way I am, and a strange sort of sympathy arises inside me. I feel bad for him. I want to help him.
"So I need you to stay quiet." His eyes bore into mine. "Don’t try to reach out to your family yet. Keep things on the down low because one wrong move could ignite a forest fire… Can you do that?" he asks, and I chew the inside of my cheek as I nod at him.
I don't want to see him go down for all of this when he's not the only player, and I'm not sure, even if given the opportunity, if I could turn in that flash drive at all now. Not knowing what it might mean for Rafe.
He stands and walks toward the kitchen, leaving his coffee mug on the table. I watch him go, and I feel something shift inside me. I am in love with this monster of a man and I can't even understand why. I actually fucking care what happens to him now.
I sit there on the couch, staring at the television, and chastise myself for feeling sorry for a mobster. He's the reason I'm here. He's the reason my family is suffering. The reason my life's been turned upside down.
But there's always more than meets the eye, isn't there?
They say don't judge a book by its cover, but we do it all the time.
We judge people because of their profession or the color of their skin.
In this case I judged Rafe as a complete monster the minute I met him.
What he did to me is shit. There's no disguising that. But he's not a total monster.
Rafe has a heart—a good heart. He helps those kids at Christmas every single year, and he cares that they're suffering. The things he does for Salvatore do not negate the good I see in him. They taint it, twist it into something not ethical or publicly acceptable, but they don't remove it.
And that's the part I'm falling for. Hard.
I pull my knees to my chest again and wrap my arms around them, staring at the television screen. The flash drive is still hidden in my bag, a reminder that I have options, that I have leverage. But using it means condemning those families to whatever fate Rafe's boss has planned for them.
And it means condemning Rafe too.
I don't know why I care. I don't know why the thought of his going to prison, or worse, makes my chest tighten. He's done terrible things. He's hurt people. He deserves whatever consequences come his way.
But despite all the reasons I should hate him, I find myself wanting to help him.
Somewhere along the way, I started to see him as more than just my captor.