Chapter 5 - The Ashes of the Past
The kitchen went dead silent. The hum of the refrigerator sounded like a freight train.
Andrew’s breath hitched in his throat. The room seemed to tilt sideways.
“What did you say?” he whispered, his voice losing all its iron.
Sarah reached into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out a small, charred piece of metal—a melted fragment of a digital circuit board—and laid it gently on the marble counter beside the apple peels.
“It’s not a grease fire, Andrew,” she said, her eyes unsnervingly steady. “I found it hidden behind the gas line in the back of the pantry during my first week here. That’s a remote-detonated incendiary relay switch. It wasn't an accident. Emma was murdered.”
Andrew stared at the blackened scrap of metal. The ground beneath his feet felt like it was turning to ash.
All these years, he had blamed himself. He had blamed his enemies in general terms, assumed it was collateral damage from his life in the syndicates. He had spent four years weeping over a ghost while the real monster walked free.
“Who?” Andrew choked out, his hands curling into fists so tight his knuckles turned bone-white. “Who did it?”
“Salvatore,” Sarah said quietly. “He wanted your empire. He figured if he took your wife, you’d burn yourself out from the inside, leaving the docks ripe for a takeover. When Alex saw something he shouldn't have seen that night—when he saw Salvatore’s men planting the device—they threatened to kill him too. That’s why he stopped speaking. He was terrified that if he made a sound, they’d come back for him.”
Andrew didn't move. For ten seconds, he looked like a statue carved out of grief and rage.
Then, very slowly, he turned away from the counter. He walked out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and into his private study.
Sarah watched him go, expecting him to reach for his gun, expecting him to call his men and start a civil war in the streets of Manhattan.
Instead, she heard the heavy mahogany door click shut.
A moment later, her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out.
It was a text message from an unknown number:
The front gates are unlocked. Vinnie has the cars ready.
Let’s go hunting.
— A.
Sarah looked down at the charred circuit board on the counter, then toward the hallway leading to Alex’s room, where the little boy was currently sleeping peacefully for the first time in months, wrapped in the quiet safety of a flour-dusted morning.
She slipped her hand into her pocket, felt the cold steel of her police-issue service Glock, and smiled faintly.
May you like
She had spent four years trying to bring down the head of the James syndicate.
She never expected she’d end up riding shotgun with him to burn the rest of the underworld to the ground.
