Chapter 12
The dock worker’s hands were shaking when they brought him into a room that resembled a police holding room, with its one way mirror. She knew Dimitri was standing on the other side watching.
Bea noticed the details first, she always did.
Mid-forties, rough palms with oil stains that wouldn’t wash out no matter how hard he scrubbed.
Wedding ring, thin gold band worn smooth from years of wear.
Exhaustion carved into the lines around his eyes.
The kind of tired that came from working double shifts and still wondering if it would be enough.
She sat across from him in the warm-lit interrogation room, her posture relaxed, her smile gentle. The room was designed to feel safe, dark wood paneling, soft lighting, a low table with water. No chains. No blood. Just her, and the weight of what she could make him confess.
“Eric Smith?” she asked, her voice honey-smooth.
“Yes Ma’am” His voice cracked.
“Eric.” She let his name sit between them for a moment. “Tell me about the night of the hijacking, walk me through your evening, if you don’t mind?”
His eyes flickered. Fear, then something softer.
“It was like every other night, we get there around 11:30 pm, we do our rounds, check the perimeter, we put up our road blocks a couple of miles down the road since there is only one way in and out.” He stated his hands constantly moving, something she notices like she notices his legs bouncing. He’s scared.
“The entire crew was present?” Bea asks calmly, showing him that she is listening. She sees that he visibly swallows thickly. She turns her head to the side and narrows her eyes. “Eric, was everyone on your crew present? The log indicates that every man was accounted for.”
His head falls to his chest before his eyes meet hers. “We all checked in yes, and we were all technically there.”
Bea doesn’t say anything letting him carry this conversation.
Eric takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.
“When we had the shipment unloaded and ready, I always work with Rich, as I’m looking around for him, a man came up and started loading the truck.
” Another deep breath expands in his chest as he continues.
“I asked him who he was and where was Rich, this man was a big motherfucker, he shoved me against the truck and said don’t ask another fucking question or Cathy and Emery will be gutted” his voice tight with emotions and Bea could see the tears in his eyes.
“Who are Cathy and Emery, Eric?” She asks softly, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.
“My wife and nine-year-old daughter.” he whispered
Bea’s chest tightened. She kept her face neutral, but something shifted behind her ribs.
Nine. The age when you still believed your father could protect you from monsters.
“So I didn’t ask any more questions, and I didn’t say anything to the Marchetti’s. I feel so ashamed but I couldn’t let anything happen to my family, you have to believe me.” The man’s throat worked. “If they found out that I let that shipment go with someone unauthorized I was good as dead.”
She studied him, really looked at him. The way his shoulders curved inward like he was trying to make himself smaller.
The tremor in his hands wasn’t just fear, it was exhaustion.
Defeat. This wasn’t a man who’d betrayed an empire for greed.
This was a man who was keeping himself and his family alive, he was doing what most men should do when they had a family, protect them.
“You’re free to go Eric,” she said.
His eyes went wide. “What?”
“You’re not the threat we are looking for.
” Bea leaned back in her chair, her gaze steady.
“You didn’t mean to get involved in the hijack, someone forced your hand by threatening your loved ones.
I do believe you should have talked to Dimitri instead of worrying yourself sick and having to look over your shoulder constantly.
” She stops and takes a deep breath. “But, I know why you didn’t, you work for dangerous people and whether you want to admit it or not, the lives of your family are always at stake.
Most men don’t care about other men’s families but I truly believe the Marchetti’s would. ”
His face crumpled. “Please. Please, I didn’t…I couldn’t-”
“I know.” Her voice was soft, almost kind. “You’re not a bad man, Eric. You’re just a man trying to protect his wife and child.”
She stood, smoothing her hands down her thighs. “Go home. Kiss your wife. Hug your daughter, and don’t come back to this life, find a new career.”
Eric stared at her like she’d just offered him salvation. “You’re… you’re letting me go?”
“Yes, I am, and I am going to make sure you and your family will be cared for, but Eric.” She stops him from getting up just yet and tells him, “If you come back into this life, I can not guarantee your safety or your family’s.”
“Yes ma’am,” He scrambled to his feet, nearly tripping over the chair in his haste to leave. The door opened, and he disappeared into the hallway, his footsteps echoing as he ran.
Bea stood there for a moment, watching this young man walk away to be with his family. Memories of her old life came flooding back. Her father would have been 65 now, if he hadn’t been killed. She was quickly brought back to the present when the door slammed open.
Dimitri filled the doorway, his face a mask of cold fury. “What the hell was that?”
Bea turned slowly, her expression unreadable. “That was me doing my job.”
“Your job,” Dimitri said, his voice dangerously low, “is to find the rat. Not to play God with my interrogations.”
“He wasn’t the rat.”
“He let my shipment go with someone who was not authorized to be there. HE WAS INVOLVED! You do not get to decide who walks out a free man without my permission.”
Bea’s eyes flashed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot you’re the Don, I should have asked if that man’s life was worthy of being spared, please forgive me sire!”
Dimitri’s jaw clenched so hard she could hear his teeth grind. “Go get in the car.” Bea brushed past him without saying anything to him.
The car ride was silent. Thirty seconds of suffocating, furious silence as the driver pulled away from the docks and merged into Chicago traffic.
Bea stared out the window, her arms crossed, her jaw tight.
Dimitri sat on the opposite side of the back seat, his hands folded in his lap, his knuckles white. Then he exploded.
“You overstepped.” His voice was a whip crack in the enclosed space. “You do not have the authority to release my men without consulting me first.”
“My job is to find out who is guilty and who is not,” Bea shot back, still not looking at him. “I was not going to let you kill an innocent man just so you could prove a point!”
“You need to understand that this world does not stop being what it is because a fool has children.”
“THOSE CHILDREN PAY FOR IT!”
Something in her voice made him pause, it was raw and full of emotions, it was personal.
Dimitri’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
Bea stared out the window as the city passed by. The words hung in the air like smoke.
Dimitri didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
His chest tightened. He wanted to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t come.
Bea’s reflection in the window was ghostly, her eyes distant.
“Do you want to know what happens to little girls when their fathers are murdered in this lifestyle? They suffer a fate so horrible, you wouldn’t wish it on your enemy.
Her mom spirals into depression and forgets about her child, and then that little girl is left to survive, alone and scared. ”
Her voice didn’t waver. It was clinical.
Detached. Like she was describing someone else’s life.
“You know what happens when her mom falls for a guy just because he showed her a little bit of attention and bought her alcohol? She marries him and moves him into her home with her adolescent daughter. And when her mom is too drunk, that man thinks he has a right to discipline that daughter and by that, I mean, beats her for asking for food.”
Dimitri’s hands curled into fists.
“Do you want to know what happens when that little girl turns eighteen?” Bea’s voice finally cracked, just a hairline fracture. “He sees his opportunity to try to take something that she isn’t ready to offer.” The silence that followed was deafening.
Dimitri stared at her profile, his mind reeling. Horror. Fury. A rage so deep and visceral it felt like it was clawing its way up his throat. Not at her. For her.
“Bea-”
“Don’t.” Her voice was sharp, cutting him off. “I don’t need your pity.”
“It’s not pity.”
She finally turned to look at him, and the expression on her face was so carefully blank it made his chest ache. “Then what is it?”
He didn’t have an answer. For a moment he just stared, searching her face before turning to look out the window.
Chicago slid past outside the windows. The city lights blurred together, gold and red and white, a living, breathing thing that didn’t care about the people it chewed up and spat out.
Dimitri reached over. He didn’t look at her.
He kept his eyes fixed on the window, his jaw tight, his breathing controlled.
But his hand found hers in the space between them, his fingers curling around hers with a gentleness that felt foreign to him.
Bea glanced over, her breath catching. He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring out his window, his profile carved from stone. his hand holding hers like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.
She let him. She turned back to her window, her throat tight, her vision blurring. And for the first time in years, she let the tears fall. Silent. Unstoppable. Sliding down her cheeks as the city she loved and hated in equal measure carried them home.
The car pulled up to the compound gates. Bea pulled her hand free gently, wiping her face with the back of her hand. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t say a word. She just opened the door and stepped out into the cool night, her boots thudding against the pavement as she walked toward the house.
Dimitri sat in the back seat, staring at the empty space where she’d been.
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. “Sir?” Dimitri didn’t answer. The driver shifted uncomfortably. “Should I-”
“Get out.”
The driver didn’t need to be told twice. He exited the car quickly, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
Dimitri sat alone in the silence.
And then he screamed.
Raw. Gut wrenching. Furious.
He slammed his fist into the leather seat, repeatedly until his knuckles split and bled. The expensive interior busting under the force of his rage, the seems ripping open, stuffing spilling out like exposed wounds.
He was angry, for her, at himself, for the little girl whose father was taken from her.
The teenager who’d been beaten by a man who should have protected her.
The eighteen-year-old who’d had to fight off a monster in her own home.
For the woman who’d let a dock worker go because she couldn’t bear to see another child lose their father.
Dimitri’s chest heaved, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His hands were shaking, blood dripping onto the ruined leather.
Beatrice Rossi had become his greatest vulnerability.
And he would burn the entire world to keep her safe.