Chapter Six
MARCO
The following afternoon, my phone vibrates halfway through a meeting.
I ignore it.
It vibrates again.
Then a third time.
Gio glances at my jacket pocket. He knows only a handful of people would call repeatedly while I’m working.
The conference room occupies the top floor of one of our downtown properties. Glass walls overlook the harbor, and a scale model of the proposed waterfront development sits on a pedestal near the windows. Twelve men in expensive suits surround the table.
All of them notice the phone.
Only Gio understands why it matters.
I excuse myself and step into the hallway.
Three messages from Armando wait on the screen:
Possible sighting.
A grainy photograph follows, taken through the front window of a diner.
A woman sits alone in a booth, wrapped in an oversized gray cardigan. Her dark hair falls over one shoulder, partly hiding her face. Both hands curl around a chipped coffee mug.
A plate sits in front of her.
Even through the reflections on the glass, I recognize her.
I don’t need the final message:
Confirmed.
I call Armando.
He answers on the first ring.
“Boss?”
“Where is she?”
Fabric rustles on the other end, followed by the muted slam of a car door.
“A diner in the South End.”
“Doing what?”
A pause.
“Eating pie, it looks like.”
I study the photograph again.
“What kind?”
“What?”
“The pie.”
Another pause.
“Apple, maybe.”
“Where has she been staying?”
“A motel not far from Saint Cecilia’s. The priest sends people there sometimes when they need a place.”
I know exactly which one he means.
It’s barely a motel. More like a boardinghouse that rents rooms by the night and doesn’t ask questions as long as someone pays in cash.
“Any sign of Mikhailov’s people?”
“Not in this area.”
There’s enough hesitation in his answer to make the rest obvious.
“But?”
He sighs.
“Yevgeny Petrov was seen canvassing the neighborhood.”
Shit.
If Petrov has reached Saint Cecilia’s, he’s asking the right questions. It won’t take him long to connect Father Russo to the boardinghouse.
“Stay on her,” I say. “You’re not to approach unless necessary.”
“Understood.”
“If Mikhailov’s men find her, you get to her first.”
“Yes, boss.”
I end the call.
Lucia looks smaller in the photograph than she did on Vesuvio’s security footage. The cardigan swallows her. Her hands are wrapped tightly around the mug, as though she’s using it to keep warm.
The diner window reflects traffic and passing pedestrians over her face. To anyone else, she would be nearly invisible.
I hadn’t wanted to step in this soon.
She escaped Mikhailov on her own. After six years inside his house, she deserved more than a single night without someone deciding where she slept or what she did.
Even if she chose to spend part of that freedom eating pie in a diner.
But freedom won’t do her much good if Petrov finds her.
I can’t let him reach her first.
Which means I’m going to have to approach her.
And somehow convince a woman who has spent six years as Viktor Mikhailov’s prisoner that she can trust me.
When I return to the meeting, they’re still arguing over the waterfront property.
Gio looks up as I take my seat. The question is clear in his dark eyes.
I give a small shake of my head.
Not now.
He lets it go.
The plans for Pier Seven cover most of the conference table. Architectural renderings sit beside revenue forecasts, traffic studies, and a stack of reports thick enough to qualify as structural support.
Beyond the windows, sunlight flashes across the harbor. Cranes move over the waterfront property under discussion, shifting steel and concrete according to schedules I approved months ago.
My attention remains somewhere in the South End, inside a diner where a frightened woman is eating apple pie because she doesn’t know where else to go.
“...which leaves us with Pier Seven,” James is saying.
“It floods,” someone argues.
“Not after the seawall improvements.”
“It still has terrible parking.”
“It has visibility.”
“It has tourists,” another man counters. “Tourists don’t become regulars.”
“Marco?”
I look up from my phone.
“What?”
Gio gives me a look.
“James asked whether the revenue projections justify paying the premium for Pier Seven.”
“Oh.”
I exchange my phone for my tablet and pull up the feasibility report.
“One hundred seats puts us just under five million in annual revenue.” I scroll to the next column. “One hundred fifty pushes us past eight, assuming eighty-percent occupancy.”
James frowns.
“Those are your projections?”
“No.” I tap the comparison column. “These are ours.”
He leans forward.
“The comparable waterfront restaurants are doing ten to twelve.”
“They’ve also been operating for years. We’ll need time to build a clientele.”
“Then we’re paying a premium for a property that may not be profitable in the short term.”
“I’m not building it for year one.” I lock the tablet and set it on the table. “I’m building it for year five.”
Silence settles around the table.
Finally, James nods.
“Fair enough.”
My phone vibrates again.
This time, I don’t bother pretending I’ll ignore it.
Armando’s name lights the screen.
She just left. Heading north on foot.
“Marco?” James asks.
Before I can answer, Gio speaks.
“Go.”
Every head turns toward him.
James looks between us.
“Is everything all right?”
Gio doesn’t hesitate.
“If Marco is checking his phone during a meeting, then no.”
I hold my brother’s gaze.
He already knows.
Not the details, perhaps, but enough.
I push back my chair.
“Gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me.”
I slip the phone into my pocket.
“James, finish walking everyone through the projections. I’ll review the final numbers tonight.”
He nods.
I shake his hand and leave before anyone can ask one.
I text Bruno as I cross the foyer.
Traffic shouldn’t be heavy at this hour, but I’ll be cutting it close.
I redial Armando.
“What’s the status?”
“She’s going into a pharmacy.”
“Is she still headed toward the boardinghouse?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“She feels safe there,” I murmur.
Or as safe as she’s capable of feeling.
But Mikhailov’s men are already knocking on doors. It won’t be long before they reach hers.
“I’m on my way,” I tell him.
I push through the front doors and jog down the steps.
Bruno has already brought my car around. He stands beside the open driver’s door, one hand resting on the roof.
He is the oldest man on my security team, broad through the chest and going silver at the temples. Age has done nothing to diminish him. It has merely taught everyone else not to mistake patience for softness.
The engine is running.
I give him a nod and slide behind the wheel.
“Boss?” Armando says through the phone.
I put the car in gear.
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Keep eyes on her.”
I park down the street from the three-story walk-up where Armando is waiting.
A faded, hand-painted sign hangs crookedly from a post out front.
ELLISTON HOMESTEL
Plastic toys are scattered across the small lawn. A tricycle lies on its side near the walkway. The building’s yellow siding is peeling badly enough to expose bare wood beneath it.
I cross the street and slip into the passenger seat of Armando’s SUV.
“This is where she’s staying?”
He lifts one shoulder.
“It looks like a dump, but the priest’s arrangement gets a room for fifty-seven dollars a night.”
Armando is in his early forties, with close-cropped dark hair beginning to gray near his ears. He has a compact, solid build and a face that rarely reveals more than he intends. At the moment, the set of his mouth says he has already reached the same conclusion I have.
I stare at the building.
The porch sags toward one corner. Two windows on the third floor are covered with plastic instead of glass. A stiff wind would probably bring down half the siding.
“I don’t know if it’s worth that.”
“It’s a bargain for Boston.”
“True.”
We watch the building.
A place like this disappears into the neighborhood. Mikhailov’s men will check shelters, churches, hotels, and transportation hubs before they consider a boardinghouse surrounded by children’s toys.
A plastic curtain lifts and falls behind one of the broken third-floor windows. Someone has planted red flowers in a coffee can on the porch railing. A child’s sweater hangs over the back of a chair beside the door.
People live here despite the condition of the building.
Still, obscurity only buys time.
“It won’t take much for them to find her.”
Armando shakes his head.
“Probably not. She’s not exactly hiding.”
I let my head rest against the seat.
“I can’t exactly knock on the door.”
He looks over at me.
“Probably not. She’ll take one look at you and bolt.”
I glance down at my suit.
Dark suit. Dark shirt. Expensive watch.
A black SUV with tinted windows.
I look exactly like the sort of man she should avoid.
“You’re probably right.”
A woman walking a terrier slows as she passes the SUV. Her eyes move over the tinted windows, then to the license plate.
“I don’t think this is the kind of neighborhood where we can sit in a parked car unnoticed.”
“Too many nosy neighbors,” Armando agrees.
Nosy neighbors call the police.
“We can’t stay here all day.”
Silence fills the SUV.
“Boss, can I ask you something?”
I turn my head.
Armando has been with me almost from the beginning. He’s one of my most trusted captains and the only man working for me who can question an order without immediately regretting it.
“Go on.”
“Are you planning to tell her the truth?”
The way he asks makes it clear he isn’t expecting an answer.
“Because she isn’t going to believe a word you say.”
My jaw tightens.
“I know.”
“She’s spent six years with Mikhailov. Will she believe all you want to do is help?”
“That’s the truth.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
He looks through the windshield.
“I said she won’t believe it.”
I study the boardinghouse.
“I know.”
“Then how are you going to get her into the car?”
“I’m not.”
Armando looks at me.
“She’s going to get in herself.”
I reach for the door handle.
Before I can open it, the boardinghouse door swings outward.
Lucia steps onto the porch.
She closes the door behind her and pauses at the top of the steps. Her gaze moves in both directions before she heads left.
“Where the hell is she going?” I ask.
“The diner is the other way.”
“Hell.”
I open the door and lean into the car.
“I’ll follow on foot. Stay back at least three blocks.”
Armando nods.
I step onto the sidewalk and begin walking, leaving enough distance between us that I can stop if she turns around.
This is the first time I’ve seen Lucia in person.
The school photograph reduced her to dark hair, serious eyes, and a name typed beneath the image. Vesuvio’s cameras turned her into a figure moving between grainy patches of light.
Neither prepared me for the woman walking half a block ahead.
She is perhaps five foot seven, tall for a woman and slender without appearing fragile. Long dark hair moves across the back of her gray cardigan whenever the wind catches it. When she glances over her shoulder, I see a fine-boned face, dark eyes, and a mouth held in a tense line.
She is beautiful.
The observation arrives as a fact rather than a revelation, and I put it aside with the others.
Her donated clothes are all slightly too large.
The cardigan nearly reaches her knees, and she has folded its sleeves several times to uncover her hands.
Her tennis shoes don’t fit properly either.
One slips at the heel when she walks, and she favors her right foot—perhaps from walking barefoot through the city after leaving Vesuvio.
More concerning is the way she watches the street.
Lucia checks every dark vehicle that passes. She studies men standing near corners and looks into recessed doorways before walking past them. She is alert to anything she associates with Viktor.
She doesn’t know how to look for anyone else.
I’d like to say she makes following her difficult.
She doesn’t.
The route she takes is direct but unwise. She cuts down side streets with too little traffic and too many recessed doorways. An alley opens between two buildings. A parked van blocks the view of the next corner.
I keep scanning ahead of her.
No black SUVs.
No Russians.
Not yet.
She finally stops at a squat brick building where two busy streets intersect.
Wide concrete steps lead to a glass entrance beneath a carved stone sign.
A library.
I slow.
She climbs the front steps and disappears through the doors.
Most people running from the mob head for bus stations.
Lucia Romanova goes to a library.
I have no idea what she expects to find inside.
I suppose I’m about to learn.
I drop a pin and send Armando the location.
Public library. Stand by.
I’ll need a ride when I’m finished here.
And I’m hoping we’ll have an extra passenger.