DARK MAFIA CAPTIVE (Property of the Mafia #1)

Chapter One

Isolde

By eight-thirty, the Crownport Maritime Museum had been closed to the public for almost two hours, which meant the building had finally settled into the version of itself Isolde preferred.

During visiting hours, the galleries belonged to school groups, tourists, donors, and elderly men who leaned over display railings to explain maritime history to their wives with the confidence of people who had skimmed half a plaque.

Isolde liked visitors well enough in theory.

Visitors justified budgets, kept the lights on, and occasionally produced children who stared at a navigation instrument or ship model with such complete fascination that she remembered why museums mattered in the first place.

Still, she preferred the place after the security staff completed the final public sweep and the corridors grew quiet enough for the old building to reveal its own sounds: ventilation moving steadily through hidden ducts, pipes shifting inside brick walls, rain whispering against the high windows, and the occasional deep vibration of a ship horn carrying inland from Crownport Harbor.

It wasn't.

Isolde steadied the blotter beneath the sheet with one gloved hand while easing a microspatula beneath a brittle edge of adhesive.

Conservation rewarded patience more than confidence.

Push too aggressively and the tape residue could take the paper surface with it; hesitate too much and she'd still be sitting there at midnight arguing with an object that had already survived more than a century without her assistance.

She had just lifted another translucent fragment when her phone vibrated against the stainless-steel worktable beside her, and her hand stopped automatically.

Hope came before thought, quick enough to annoy her.

She set the tool down before reaching for the phone, because damaging an 1879 shipping record due to Corwin's increasingly obnoxious communication habits would be professionally humiliating and exactly the sort of thing her brother would find funny.

The screen showed a pharmacy notification reminding her that seasonal flu vaccines were available.

Isolde stared at it for a moment. “Very helpful.”

Corwin's conversation sat immediately beneath the notification.

Four days ago she'd sent Dinner Thursday?

Two days later: You alive? Yesterday afternoon: Call me when you have a minute.

Nothing in response. Corwin disappearing into work wasn't unprecedented.

He could become so absorbed in whatever corporate financial catastrophe someone was paying him to untangle that ordinary human obligations seemed to become optional.

He forgot meals, ignored plans, and once left Isolde standing outside his apartment for twenty minutes after inviting her over because he'd gotten trapped on a conference call with Singapore and somehow failed to remember that opening the door was still required.

Usually, though, he resurfaced. There was almost always a late-night busy, not dead, followed by a phone call at an hour when most reasonable people were asleep and an accusation that she sounded like their mother when she pointed out that answering a text every few days wasn't a demanding expectation.

Their mother had been dead for eleven years.

Corwin had been twenty-four when Marianne Dacre died, Isolde twenty-one, and over time they had learned there were certain jokes you could make only with the person who had lost the same people you had.

She checked the time. 8:37.

“Okay,” she murmured. “You're officially being an asshole.”

She typed, Call me before I decide you're dead.

Her thumb hovered over the send button for a second. It was exactly the kind of message she'd usually send without thinking, and if Corwin called ten minutes from now he would probably tell her she was dramatic and offer photographic proof of life solely to be irritating.

She sent it.

The message showed delivered.

That should have been enough to settle the small, persistent unease that had followed her through the day.

Instead, Isolde placed the phone facedown and looked toward the shelves opposite her station, where several incoming objects waited for assessment: a brass sextant with a damaged sighting tube, two waterlogged account books recovered from a condemned chandlery, a painted wooden nameboard from a coastal steamer, and an old book Corwin had brought her ten days earlier as if delivering century-old maritime texts to his sister were something brothers routinely did on Wednesday afternoons.

The Crownport Harbor Pilot and Tide Register, 1912 wasn't particularly rare.

The museum already owned similar editions in better condition, but Corwin had turned up with it tucked beneath one arm and announced that he'd found it at an estate sale because the word Crownport on the spine made him think of her.

The cloth binding had faded almost white at the corners, and somebody had repaired the spine badly enough that newer stitching remained visible beneath the loosened covering.

Isolde had noticed the wrong thread and modern adhesive immediately, but there was nothing mysterious about a careless repair.

People had spent most of the twentieth century doing terrible things to old books with glue, tape, staples, pressure-sensitive labels, and optimism.

Corwin had asked when she would get to it.

“When I get to it.”

“That sounds intentionally vague.”

“It is. You gave it to me for free. That doesn't put you ahead of paying conservation work.”

“I'm your brother.”

“Yes, which is why I'm not charging you storage.”

He'd given her the crooked smile he used when he'd decided arguing would only entertain her, then leaned down and kissed the top of her head while she tried to push him away without transferring dust from her gloves onto his shirt. He had left before she could convince him to stay for dinner.

That had been the last time she'd seen him.

Isolde looked at the book a moment longer, then returned to the manifest. Four days wasn't a disappearance.

Corwin was thirty-five years old with a demanding job, a deeply irritating relationship with his phone, and no obligation to report his whereabouts to his younger sister simply because she disliked being ignored.

If something serious had happened, someone would have called.

Probably.

The problem was that once the thought existed, concentration became difficult.

She removed another softened strip of adhesive and transferred the residue to a disposal sheet, forcing herself back into the rhythm of the work.

Inspect. Test. Stabilize. Remove only what could safely be removed.

Resist the human impulse to fix damage quickly just because looking at it made you uncomfortable.

People saw torn paper or split bindings and wanted to attack the problem immediately—scrape it off, glue it down, replace what was missing, make the object look new again.

That was how well-meaning people destroyed things.

Damage couldn't truly be undone. The best work preserved what remained and made sure the intervention didn't become another injury.

At a little after nine, Isolde finally admitted she was no longer doing particularly good conservation. She documented the evening's treatment, covered the manifest properly, cleaned the work surface, and washed her hands at the deep utility sink before checking her phone again.

Nothing.

This time she called.

The line rang five times before Corwin's voicemail answered with the same dry, professionally neutral recording he'd used for years.

“You've reached Corwin Dacre. Leave a message.”

Isolde tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear while switching off the task lamp. “Hi. It's the sister you've apparently decided you don't need to acknowledge anymore. I'm leaving work, and I'm serious now, Corwin. Call me tonight, okay? I don't care if it's late.”

She nearly added that she was worried. Instead, she ended the call, slipped the phone into her coat pocket, and told herself he'd hear the rest in her voice.

The museum had dimmed into overnight lighting when she left the laboratory.

Her footsteps carried along the service corridor, past the darkened navigation gallery and into the central hall, where brass instruments and polished cases reflected emergency lights in faint, uneven shapes.

Crownport Maritime had been expanded over decades around a former customs warehouse, which meant the building was an architectural argument between exposed brick, iron beams, climate-control systems, newer glass additions, and preservation committees that had lost several battles while loudly insisting otherwise.

Isolde liked those contradictions. Buildings accumulated changes just as objects did, and the interesting part was usually where one generation had tried to hide what the previous one left behind.

Marcus sat inside the security enclosure near the staff exit with one hand wrapped around a paper coffee cup and a baseball game playing silently on the monitor beside him. He looked up when Isolde approached and reached for the release control.

“Late one tonight.”

“I blame adhesive chemistry and poor historical judgment.” She adjusted her work bag higher on one shoulder while he unlocked the exterior door. “If Paul asks, tell him I didn't destroy anything.”

Marcus smiled. “He's going to be disappointed.”

“He'll cope.”

“Drive safe.”

“You too, although you're sitting in a chair.”

“Still dangerous.”

Isolde laughed quietly and stepped through the door.