Chapter 3 - The Corner Booth
They returned to Lombardi’s.
Sadie hated the irony.
For three years she had lived by one rule whenever danger appeared.
Go somewhere else.
Tonight, every exit seemed to lead back to Roman.
Arthur had cleared the restaurant’s rear corner booth completely.
A privacy screen now separated it from nearby tables.
Tommy stationed himself where he could see both entrances.
Roman sat opposite Sadie.
Between them lay Elias Mercer’s note and the brass key.
Sadie had not touched the water in front of her.
“Start talking.”
Roman folded his hands.
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“That will take longer than five minutes.”
“You’ve already stolen three years.”
He looked down briefly.
“That’s fair.”
Sadie leaned forward.
“Who was Elias Mercer?”
“An accountant.”
“For you?”
“For several businesses.”
“Legal businesses?”
“Some.”
She gave him a cold look.
Roman did not pretend otherwise.
“Mercer handled books for Victor before he handled anything for me.”
“And the ledger?”
“I had never seen it until you described it tonight.”
“How can you expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t.”
The answer stopped her.
Roman continued.
“I expect you to verify everything yourself.”
“Since when?”
“Since believing me almost got you killed.”
Sadie’s fingers tightened around the brass key.
“What happened to Daniel?”
Roman looked toward the restaurant.
For a moment, the feared man disappeared.
He looked tired.
“Your brother worked for the city comptroller’s office.”
“I know.”
“He was auditing municipal contracts.”
“I know that too.”
“One company was Mercer Infrastructure.”
Sadie remembered the name.
Her brother had complained about work during their final Christmas together.
Too many shell companies.
Too many invoices.
At the time, Nora had barely listened.
Daniel always talked about spreadsheets.
“He found irregularities?”
“He found money disappearing.”
Roman nodded.
“Millions.”
“Into your organization.”
“Into Victor’s.”
“You keep separating yourself from him.”
“I’m not innocent.”
Roman’s voice was firm.
“Don’t mistake anything I’m telling you for that.”
Sadie studied him.
He continued.
“I built the machine Victor used. I gave him access. I gave him power. I trusted him because he raised me after my father died. Whatever he did with that access happened because I made it possible.”
“But you didn’t know.”
“No.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Yes.”
Again, no defense.
Sadie hated the strange honesty.
“What did Victor do with the money?”
“We don’t know all of it.”
“We?”
“Tommy and I.”
“How long have you been investigating him?”
“Since eight months after you disappeared.”
Her eyes widened.
“Why then?”
“Because that was when Victor stopped pretending he wanted you found.”
Sadie frowned.
“I don’t understand.”
Roman leaned back.
“The night you left, I thought you had been taken.”
She stared.
“What?”
“I came home and you were gone. Your phone was dead. Your passport was missing. The safe was open.”
“I took my passport.”
“I know that now.”
Roman’s jaw tightened at the memory.
“At the time, I thought someone had breached my home.”
Sadie remembered the sentence she had overheard.
Find her before sunrise.
She can never walk out with what she knows.
“You were talking about me.”
“Yes.”
“You said I couldn’t walk out with what I knew.”
“No.”
Roman’s gaze held hers.
“Victor said that.”
Sadie’s memory shifted.
Two voices beyond a door.
Fear.
Adrenaline.
Rain hammering windows.
Had she been so terrified she had assigned the wrong words to the wrong man?
“What did you say?”
Roman’s expression darkened.
“I told him if anyone touched you, I would destroy everything they loved.”
Sadie felt cold.
Roman continued.
“Victor told me you had stolen information.”
“The ledger.”
“He never told me what.”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He claimed you had accessed shipping accounts and could compromise us.”
Sadie laughed bitterly.
“So you hunted me.”
“For twelve days.”
Her face tightened.
Roman looked at her.
“Then I stopped.”
“Why?”
“Because I realized something.”
“What?”
“You hadn’t been kidnapped.”
Sadie looked away.
“You left voluntarily.”
His voice dropped.
“And once I understood that, I had no right to drag you back.”
Silence settled between them.
Three years ago, Roman would never have admitted that.
Sadie remembered fights about bodyguards.
About privacy.
About him deciding which restaurants were safe.
Which friends were trustworthy.
Which streets she should avoid.
Control disguised as protection.
Sometimes sincere.
Always suffocating.
“What changed after eight months?”
Roman said, “Victor asked me whether you had contacted anyone.”
“That sounds normal.”
“It was the way he asked.”
Sadie almost smiled despite herself.
“You built a criminal empire based on tone of voice?”
“Frequently.”
She shook her head.
Roman continued.
“I told him no. He looked relieved.”
“Maybe he was.”
“He should have been frustrated. He had spent months pretending finding you mattered.”
Sadie began to understand.
“So you investigated him.”
“Quietly.”
“And Mercer?”
“Disappeared around the same period.”
Tommy approached the booth.
He placed a phone on the table.
Roman looked at the screen.
“What?”
“We identified the sedan.”
Sadie leaned forward.
Tommy hesitated.
She noticed.
“You can say it in front of me.”
Tommy looked at Roman.
Roman nodded.
“Registered through a holding company connected to Hale Maritime.”
Sadie’s stomach tightened.
“Victor.”
“Indirectly,” Tommy said.
Roman’s expression hardened.
“Where is he tonight?”
“Charity dinner at the Belmont.”
Roman almost laughed.
“Of course.”
Sadie looked between them.
“What?”
“Victor never misses an opportunity to be photographed helping people.”
She picked up Mercer’s letter.
“What does the key open?”
“No idea.”
Tommy looked at it.
“Storage deposit box?”
“Too small for some bank lockers,” Roman said.
Sadie turned it beneath the chandelier light.
Tiny numbers had been etched along the base.
314.
Tommy frowned.
“That mean anything?”
Sadie stared.
“Yes.”
Roman watched her.
“What?”
“Daniel’s apartment.”
She swallowed.
“He lived at 314 Mercer Street.”
Tommy and Roman exchanged a look.
“Mercer Street?” Tommy asked.
Sadie nodded.
Her brother had joked about working with a company sharing the street’s name.
The memory returned suddenly.
Daniel standing in his kitchen.
A beer in one hand.
A stack of audit documents on the table.
If anything ever happens to me, kid, don’t let them call me careless.
She had laughed.
He had been thirty-four.
Healthy.
Annoyingly responsible.
Two weeks later he was dead.
Sadie looked at Roman.
“The building was sold after Daniel died.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know.”
Tommy was already typing.
Thirty seconds later, he stopped.
His expression changed.
Roman noticed.
“Say it.”
Tommy turned the screen.
“Building was purchased eighteen months after Daniel’s death by Mercer Property Group.”
Sadie’s skin prickled.
“Elias Mercer?”
“Looks like it.”
Roman leaned forward.
“Then the key may open something inside the building.”
Sadie stood.
Roman immediately did too.
“Where are you going?”
“Mercer Street.”
“No.”
Her eyes flashed.
“You don’t get to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Tell me no.”
“Fine.”
Roman took his coat.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Now who’s giving orders?”
Sadie glared at him.
Tommy looked like he might almost be enjoying the exchange.
Roman became serious again.
“If Victor has been watching you, he may know Mercer left you something.”
“Then staying here doesn’t help.”
“No.”
Roman buttoned his coat.
“But walking into a building without knowing what’s waiting there is stupid.”
“I did it every day I lived with you.”
Tommy looked away to hide a reaction.
Roman accepted the insult.
Sadie walked toward the kitchen to retrieve her bag.
Roman followed at a distance.
Before they reached the door, Arthur stepped into Sadie’s path.
“You’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“You’re still on shift.”
Sadie stared at him.
Arthur glanced at Roman behind her.
Then immediately corrected himself.
“I mean—obviously this is an unusual circumstance.”
Sadie untied her burgundy apron.
She placed it in Arthur’s hands.
“You told me if I walked out, not to come back.”
Arthur paled.
“I may have been emotional.”
“For three years?”
His mouth opened.
Sadie looked around Lombardi’s.
The place had saved her.
Not because it was kind.
Because it was ordinary.
She had hidden inside routine.
Tables.
Orders.
Tips.
Double shifts.
Complaints.
Maybe she had spent too long confusing hiding with living.
“Thank you for the job.”
Arthur stared at the apron.
“Sadie—”
She walked away.
Roman waited beside the door.
He said nothing.
Outside, Tommy’s black SUV idled at the curb.
Sadie stopped before getting in.
“One condition.”
Roman looked at her.
“No lies.”
He nodded.
“No lies.”
“No orders.”
He paused.
“I’ll try.”
“That isn’t good enough.”
Roman sighed.
“No orders.”
“And if I tell you to leave?”
A longer pause.
Roman’s eyes searched hers.
“I leave.”
That answer frightened her almost as much as everything else.
Because the Roman she had run from would never have promised it.
Sadie climbed into the vehicle.
They drove downtown.
Mercer Street sat on the edge of an older neighborhood where glass towers had slowly consumed brick warehouses and century-old apartment buildings.
Number 314 had been boarded up.
A faded notice hung near the entrance.
CONDEMNED.
Sadie stared from the back seat.
“Daniel lived there?”
“Yes.”
Roman frowned.
“Why would Mercer buy a condemned building?”
“To keep anyone else from owning it.”
Tommy parked.
Sadie stepped onto the sidewalk.
Roman followed.
Snow had begun falling lightly.
She approached the front door.
The brass key did not fit.
Her disappointment was immediate.
Then she noticed something.
An old row of mailboxes behind the shattered lobby glass.
Box 314.
Sadie looked at the key.
She reached through the broken panel.
The key slid perfectly into the mailbox.
Click.
Inside was nothing except another key.
And a photograph.
Sadie pulled it out.
Her brother Daniel stood beside Elias Mercer.
Both men looked nervous.
Behind them was a warehouse.
On the back of the photograph, Daniel had written four words.
ROMAN DOESN’T KNOW YET.
Sadie’s heart stopped.
Below the sentence was an address.
Roman read it over her shoulder.
Tommy went pale.
Sadie noticed.
“What?”
Tommy looked at Roman.
“That warehouse…”
Roman’s expression turned to stone.
“What about it?” Sadie asked.
Tommy swallowed.
“It belonged to Roman’s father.”
Roman stared at the photograph.
“No.”
Sadie looked at him.
“You recognize it?”
Roman nodded slowly.
“It burned down twenty-two years ago.”
He looked at the address again.
“At least that’s what Victor told me.”
The three of them stood beneath falling snow.
And suddenly the story was no longer only about Daniel Callahan.
It reached back to Roman’s childhood.
To his father.
To Victor.
To a building that supposedly had not existed for more than two decades.
Sadie tightened her hand around the second key.
“Looks like we know where we’re going.”
Roman did not answer.
He was still staring at the photograph.
Because for the first time that night, Nora saw something she had never once seen in Roman Vale.
May you like
Fear.
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