Chapter 4 Tristan
FOUR
TRISTAN
The salty sea air fills my lungs the second I step out of the car. In Naples, the houses cling to the hillside like they're trying to escape the ground. The one I'm headed toward doesn't bother. It squats at the top of the road, pale stone with shuttered windows and too many cameras.
The Black Door has always liked its metaphors.
"Last chance to turn around," Nick says in my ear.
The line crackles. He and Zara are the only two I trust—have been since we ran ops together in a life that feels like a hundred years ago.
Most people have a right hand. I have two, because redundancy isn't paranoia when everyone's trying to kill you.
We move like a single unit, think three steps ahead of each other, finish sentences and missions with the same efficiency.
They built the crew for this operation, vetted every member, but I'll only deal with them directly.
Everyone else is expendable.
"You know I can't do that. Can you stop being like an overprotective mother?"
A soft chuckle. "And you know I can't do that."
I roll my eyes, and he continues with his lecture. "You and I both know these people don't smuggle drugs in crates anymore—they use corpses. Dead bodies, Tristan. Tax benefits and a place no one checks twice."
"At least they're efficient." I walk up the stone steps. "Keep the line open."
"Thought you didn't need back up."
"Shut up."
The front door opens before I knock. A man fills the frame—late fifties, linen shirt, hair slicked back too neatly for the heat. His tan's uneven, but his smile is perfectly in place.
"Signor Barlowe," he says with a thick accent. "Welcome."
"Romano." I nod once. "Appreciate you answering my call.”
His gaze slides to the car, then to my hands. "Please. Come inside."
The foyer's beige marble stretches beyond the entrance toward floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sea. Expensive oil portraits line the walls, all worth more than this house and land put together. Romano leads me down a long hallway full of locked doors.
We stop at the very end, in front of a black door with no handle.
The Black Door.
It's what the network calls itself and how it operates—a trade route that hides its cargo inside the dead. Drugs. Weapons. People. Every shipment goes through a coffin, every deal paid in silence. Once something passes the door, it doesn't come back.
A woman in a red dress pushes a covered gurney past us, wheels clicking softly on stone. She doesn't look up.
I wish I could say this is the worst I've seen on the job, but I'd be lying.
Romano punches in a code, and the door clicks open. He gestures me into a sitting room that smells faintly of cigars and lemon polish. Heavy curtains frame tall windows. A low table sits between two worn leather chairs with a bottle of grappa already open beside it.
This room is arranged to look normal for a reason.
"Drink?" he asks.
"Whiskey." I take the chair with my back to the wall.
He pours only for himself. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I'm looking for someone."
"Aren't we all." He takes a sip, watching me over the rim. "Who?"
I pause before giving him her name. "Keira."
Romano's fingers tighten around the glass. A thread of muscle shifts along his jaw. He masks it with another swallow, but I catch the way his eyes drop.
He definitely knows something.
"It doesn't ring a bell. Last name?"
"Lynch. Irish. Red hair. Blue eyes. Freckles. Worked for the Doyle clan for a long time. One of the best spies in the industry."
He gives a polite shrug. "You think I run a missing persons bureau?"
"No," I reply evenly. "But you remember every name that's ever passed through your hands. I believe she was one of them."
He sets the glass down, aligning it perfectly with the edge of a coaster. "You're mistaken."
My phone vibrates three times in my pocket. Zara's code to let me know she's got something, but I ignore it for now.
"You moved a container from Red Hook the same week she went dark," I say. "No paperwork or official cargo assigned, but you received cash the same day from a deactivated account she used to access. That's not a coincidence, Matteo."
His eyes go slightly wide for a millisecond.
Gotcha, bitch.
"You shouldn't know these things. It's not safe for you."
"I'm not looking to stay safe. I'm here for answers, and you're going to give them to me."
He laughs dryly. "Americani…always in such a hurry to die."
"I'm not going to die."
But you are.
He reaches for his glass, swirling what's left before taking another swig. "There are names we don't speak in this house. Women we don't mention. Deals we pretend never happened. It keeps the world balanced."
"For who?"
"For everyone."
"That's a lot of protection for one woman."
He studies me for a long beat, then shakes his head like I'm the fool in the room. "You should go home. This isn't your business. Forget about it. Forget about her. Good-looking guy like you can have any woman he wants. It's time to move on."
Well, all hope of making this a quick visit just went to shit.
"You really shouldn't have said that."
He smirks. "Is that a threat, Signor Barlowe?"
I shake my head. "Patience, old man."
He pushes to his feet and heads for the door, clearly done with me. "Any woman you describe is no one I know."
A loud thud echoes somewhere below us.
"Let me help you remember," I say, leaning forward, elbows on my knees.
My voice stays level—it's the only thing that does.
"New York City roughly seven months ago.
Mortelle family revamp. The Irish girl working in the shadows.
She looked like she hadn't slept in weeks.
Bruised before the takedown. Disappeared before anyone even noticed. "
He knows exactly who I'm talking about.
"You move bodies," I continue. "Someone paid you to make her disappear, and I need to know who."
Romano's hand pauses on the door handle.
"You think you're dangerous. I understand. You have the suit. The name. The reputation." He gives a slow shrug. "But there's someone above all this. Above me and you. Above the families you think matter. He doesn't need people to fear his name because they don't say it."
The first real uncertainty of the night threads through me. There are a dozen possibilities, but I'm drawing a blank. His description doesn't bring anything to mind.
Nick's dry whisper cuts into my ear. "He's talking about the Ferryman."
"The Ferryman," I repeat aloud.
The color drains from Romano's face.
"We don't utter that name here," he whispers.
"But you know who I mean."
He doesn't answer. "You should go now."
"Who is he?"
He shakes his head quickly, in a sudden rush now, looking petrified.
"There is an order to things in our world.
Lines you shouldn't cross. People you should stay away from.
Families, cartels, and men who think they own oceans.
This business is inescapable. There is no leaving.
But the man you name is far worse than any of that.
He is the one death takes orders from. Mors obtemperat charonti. "
I've heard the phrase before. It's the kind of thing that gets whispered in the field when the impossible happens, when missions go sideways in ways that defy explanation. A term borrowed from Greek mythology, wrapped in warning.
"What does he want with her?"
Matteo answers without looking at me. "You don't want to know. And if you do know, he will want something with you."
"He already does."
The look of pity in his eyes pisses me off more than anything else.
"You are not here about a woman. What is it you really want?"
The question should be simple, but it's not.
Deep down, I'm fucking furious with Keira. The old inventory of grudges rises to the surface like something buried that refuses to stay dead.
I try not to give it space to breathe, focusing on the single thing that will keep me moving: find her, find the child.
Everything else can wait.
"Tell me where she is. Right now, Matteo."
"You don't understand. Everyone pays to cross the Black Door, Signor Barlowe. Some pay with money, some with blood, some with a name. The woman you ask for…she paid with something else."
"What?"
"Her life."
She can't be dead. It doesn't make sense. I would know if she was dead. I would feel it, as crazy as that might sound.
"You processed her through here?" I ask.
"Paperwork says she went out as cargo. Maybe a death certificate too."
"But was she in the box? Did you see her with your own eyes? When?"
"Boss…" Nick warns in my ear.
A muscle jumps in Romano's brow. "I can't talk about—"
"Where is she?" My patience is growing obnoxiously thin.
"You think I would still be breathing if I knew?" He takes a step back. "You must go now."
I move before I can rationalize it, charging across the room. My shoulder slams into his back and he hits the door hard enough that the wood clicks in its frame. His hands go up uselessly. Up close, his age really shows, and fear looks ugly on him.
"You will tell me what you know before I break every bone in your body."
He tries to speak, scrabbles for a word, an angle…anything that will buy him a few more seconds.
"There," Matteo shouts, pointing toward his desk. "Per favore, there is always a mark on the ledger. A symbol the client uses. I can check the order."
"Show me," I demand, grabbing hold of the gun hidden under my jacket.
I seize his collar, dragging him to the desk as I flip the folder open. "Palms on your head. Feet crossed."
He does as I say.
Matteo's breath comes uneven as he looks to the bottom corner of a manifest sheet. There's a stamp pressed into the paper—faint, oily black ink spreading outward like someone spilled it. It looks like smoke drifting across water, tendrils swallowing light.
"He marks his contracts with it. No name. Always only this."
The mark looks alive, like it's still moving under the paper, tainting everything it touches.
"That's how you identify his work?"
Matteo nods. "It means the cargo belongs to him. That's all we ever know."
"And you move whatever he wants you to move without ever checking it?"
"Si." He glances toward the closed door, as if expecting someone to break through it.
"Tell me his name."
"I don't know his name. Please, you got what you came for. Leave now, before someone sees—"
I shake my head. "We both know I can't do that."
His mouth opens and I take the shot. One bullet through the mouth—a single stark line that removes the conversation and whatever protection he thought he had. The sound barely echoes before Matteo drops, a man reduced to silence by his own secrets. The saint in the painting above him watches me.
I stare at it while cleaning my gun before sliding it back under my jacket. "At least I didn't break off his fingers, so quit looking at me like that."
I'm talking to paintings now, apparently. Well past the sanity check.
Grabbing the ledger from the desk, I stare at the symbol bleeding faintly through to the next page. On the back, the word PROCESSED is crossed out in red. There's something else in Italian, and I don't need a translator to make it out:
Transferred to pri—the pen line ends in a sharp streak, like someone pulled the page away mid-signature.
She was here, but he changed his mind. Was he trying to teach her a lesson?
I roll my neck, hating the tension in my shoulders.
Nick's voice cuts through the static in my ear. "You breathing?"
"Yeah."
"Did you have to kill him?"
"I'm going to ignore that tone every time you try to sound like a therapist. He was wasting my time. Told me to forget about her." I pause at the door, glancing back at the mess I made. "Who the fuck does he think he is telling me to move on?"
Nick groans, not even bothering at this point. "You get coordinates at least?"
"No. Just confirmation." I step into the night, gravel crunching under my shoes. "I'm going to need you to pull everything you can on the Ferryman."
"Have you thought about this?"
"I'll stop at nothing to find her, Nick. And god help anyone who gets in my way."
"I know." He pauses. "We're on it."
The line goes dead, and I stop walking before getting in the car, inspecting the ink again in the moonlight. The logo looks like something the grim reaper would have.
She's alive.
And this fucker has put his hands on her.
That's all I need to know.
I'll peel the skin from his bones while he's still breathing. Dismantle everything he's ever built and make him watch it burn. I'll carve through his entire operation with the patience of a monk and the mercy of a starved wildfire.
I don't know where he is yet.
Doesn't matter.
I'll find a way. I always do.
I want him to know I'm coming. Want that knowledge to settle into his bones like a sickness he can't name. I want him waking in the middle of the night, pulse racing, dread pooling in his gut, not understanding why.
Until he does.
And when I finally reach him, when there's nowhere left to run and no one left to hide behind, I'm going to make sure her face is the last thing he sees.
Because she was mine first.
Before him. Before any of this.
Mine.
And no one takes what's mine and keeps breathing.