Chapter 1 - The Man Beneath the Sheets
The man beneath the dirty sheets was still breathing when they pushed the needle into his neck.
One of his captors checked his watch; the other told him to keep the body out of sight.
Behind a shelf of hotel towels, Leah Moreno realized she had less than a minute to decide whether he would disappear.
Leah had thirteen dollars in tips tucked inside her vest and a message from the pharmacy asking when she could collect Matteo’s prescription. Upstairs, the charity guests had spent more than that on individual glasses of champagne. Down here, beneath the Grand Aurelia Hotel’s chandeliers and polished promises, her right shoe was coming apart at the heel.
She pressed it against the floor until the loose edge settled, then lifted another stack of plates.
Her back had been aching since dinner service. Two servers had called out, and the banquet captain had decided Leah could cover their tables because she was “sturdy.”
At table six, a man had watched her clear the remains of his steak.
“Careful,” he told his wife. “She might eat the evidence.”
His wife laughed into her napkin.
Leah steadied the plates against her forearm and asked whether they wanted coffee.
She could still hear their laughter when she reached the kitchen.
Now the ballroom was empty, its linen stained with wine and candle wax. Rain battered the windows, blurring the city into pale streaks. Someone had left a diamond earring beside a crushed rose, and Leah placed it in the supervisor’s envelope before continuing toward the service corridor.
Her phone vibrated against her ribs.
He took his evening medicine. Sleeping now.
Mr. Alvarez had sent a picture of Matteo beneath his train blanket. At eight, her nephew still slept with one hand around the little wooden engine whose red paint had worn away beneath his thumb.
Leah enlarged the photograph to look at his face.
Then she put the phone away.
Tomorrow she would collect the prescription, call the hospital’s assistance office again, and ask whether somebody had reviewed the application. Tonight she needed to finish before the last bus.
She pushed a linen cart through the swinging doors.
A sound stopped her near the freight elevator.
It was too low to be a voice, too uneven to be machinery.
Leah held the cart still and listened.
Beyond the turn in the corridor, something scraped against metal.
“Keep his head down.”
The speaker sounded irritated, as if somebody had delivered the wrong wine.
Leah eased behind a shelving unit stacked with towels.
Through the narrow gap, she saw two men in dark suits rolling a laundry cart toward the elevator. Neither wore an employee badge.
A hand hung over the cart’s edge.
The cuff was white, the fingers slack.
A heavy black ring caught the fluorescent light.
Beneath a heap of crumpled sheets, a man’s head shifted just enough for Leah to see dark hair and a pale, stubbled jaw.
She recognized him.
He had been sitting in the ballroom less than an hour earlier.
The quiet man in black.
Unlike the guests who snapped their fingers at servers, he had barely spoken. He had sat beside a glamorous blonde woman in a red gown while slowly drinking whiskey.
Leah remembered something else.
The woman had dropped something into his glass.
At the time Leah had thought it was sugar or medicine.
Now her stomach tightened.
One captor lifted the unconscious man’s chin.
The other pressed a syringe against his neck.
Leah’s own hand went to her throat.
“Enough,” the first man said. “We need him breathing until Sable decides.”
The syringe disappeared into a jacket pocket.
Thunder struck so close that the corridor lights trembled.
One man checked his phone, then swore at the freight elevator’s dark indicator.
“Lower gate’s out. Driver has to come around.”
They moved toward the loading passage to argue about the route, leaving the cart beside the elevator.
Leah could hear their shoes on the concrete, their annoyance, their complete confidence that nobody would interfere.
She thought of Matteo upstairs, sleeping beneath the blanket she had washed three times that week.
Then the man in the cart made another sound.
Leah looked toward the staff exit.
She could leave.
She could go home, hold Matteo, and tell herself that calling somebody afterward counted as helping.
But the limp hand moved against the rail.
She pulled her own cart beside his, swallowed the cry rising in her throat, and reached beneath the sheets.
His skin was cold.
“Sir?”
His eyelids fluttered.
Leah grabbed his wrist.
“Can you hear me?”
Nothing.
Then his fingers suddenly closed around hers.
“Don’t…” he whispered.
Leah leaned closer.
“Don’t let them take me.”
Footsteps sounded from the loading passage.
Someone was coming back.
Leah’s heart slammed against her ribs.
There was no time to pull him from the cart.
She looked around.
The service corridor split twenty feet behind her. One direction led toward the kitchen. The other led to maintenance rooms, storage closets, and an old employee staircase almost nobody used.
Leah released the brake on the cart.
It rolled silently.
She pushed.
Fast.
The wheels rattled once over a floor seam.
Behind her, a voice shouted.
“Hey!”
Leah pushed harder.
The unconscious man was heavier than anything she had ever moved through that hotel.
“Stop!”
She reached the intersection.
A hand grabbed the back of her vest.
Leah screamed and swung her elbow.
It struck something soft.
The man cursed.
She spun around and drove the metal edge of her serving tray directly into his face.
He stumbled backward.
Leah ran.
The cart crashed through a pair of swinging doors.
She heard another man shouting into a phone.
“She's got him!”
Leah turned into the laundry room.
Rows of industrial machines filled the room.
She knew this floor better than they did.
That was her only advantage.
She shoved the cart behind a row of dryers and pulled the emergency lever on a rolling fire partition.
The heavy divider dropped behind her.
Someone slammed into it from the other side.
Leah ran toward the employee stairs.
The man in the cart groaned.
“Stay with me.”
His eyes opened for half a second.
Dark.
Sharp.
Then unfocused again.
“Who…” he whispered.
“My name is Leah.”
His fingers tightened around her wrist.
“Phone.”
“What?”
“My phone.”
“You don't have one.”
His expression changed.
Even drugged, fear passed through it.
“They took it.”
Leah heard pounding behind them.
She pushed through the stairwell door.
Going up was impossible.
Going down led to the basement garage.
She chose down.
One floor.
Two.
The cart wouldn’t fit.
Leah hooked one of the man's arms around her shoulders.
“Come on.”
His knees buckled.
She almost collapsed beneath him.
He was tall and solid, and whatever they had injected into him had turned his body into dead weight.
“Help me,” she whispered.
His eyes opened.
For a moment, something returned to them.
Control.
He forced his feet beneath him.
Together they stumbled downward.
The door above them opened.
Leah heard footsteps.
She dragged him through the basement door.
Rows of parked cars stretched beneath fluorescent lights.
“Which one?” she whispered.
He shook his head.
“Not mine.”
“Why?”
“They’ll watch it.”
Leah almost laughed from panic.
“I don't exactly have a getaway car.”
A horn sounded.
Leah flinched.
An elderly dishwasher named Ernesto sat behind the wheel of a dented blue minivan.
He rolled down his window.
“Leah?”
She stared at him.
“Who is that?”
“A guest who’s sick.”
Ernesto looked at the stairwell.
Then at the unconscious stranger.
Then at Leah.
He didn’t ask another question.
“Get in.”
They barely closed the sliding door before two men emerged into the garage.
“Drive,” Leah said.
Ernesto drove.
One captor ran after them.
The other lifted something beneath his jacket.
The Mafia Boss saw it before Leah did.
He pulled her down.
A sharp crack exploded behind them.
The rear window shattered.
Ernesto shouted.
The minivan shot through the garage exit and into the rain.
For several blocks nobody spoke.
Leah held a towel against a cut on the Mafia Boss’s forehead.
His breathing was slowing.
Too much.
“Hospital,” she said.
His hand shot up and grabbed her wrist.
“No hospital.”
“You were drugged.”
“No police. No hospital.”
“You need a doctor.”
His eyes opened fully for the first time.
There was something in them that made Leah stop speaking.
Not cruelty.
Authority.
The instinct of a man accustomed to being obeyed.
“They own people in both.”
Leah stared at him.
“Who are you?”
He looked toward the broken rear window.
“Adrian Vale.”
Ernesto almost drove onto the sidewalk.
Leah frowned.
The name meant nothing to her.
Apparently it meant something to Ernesto.
His face had gone pale.
“Madre de Dios.”
“What?” Leah demanded.
Ernesto looked at her in the mirror.
“You really don't know?”
“No.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
Ernesto swallowed.
“Everybody knows Adrian Vale.”
Leah looked down at the man leaning against her shoulder.
“What does that mean?”
Ernesto hesitated.
Then he said the words that changed the night completely.
“He runs half the city.”
Leah slowly removed her hand from Adrian's forehead.
Adrian opened his eyes.
“And tonight,” he murmured, “someone decided they wanted the other half.”
Leah wanted out.
Immediately.
But then Adrian looked at her phone.
“Who is Matteo?”
Leah froze.
The lock screen still displayed Mr. Alvarez’s photograph.
“My nephew.”
Adrian stared at it.
Then his face hardened.
“Turn the phone off.”
“Why?”
“They may already know who you are.”
Her blood went cold.
“No one knows I saw anything.”
“The men downstairs saw your face.”
Leah reached for the power button.
Before she could touch it, the phone rang.
Unknown number.
Nobody spoke.
The ringing filled the minivan.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Adrian looked at her.
“Don't answer.”
The ringing stopped.
A message appeared.
Leah read it.
Every drop of warmth left her body.
There were only six words.
We know where Matteo is sleeping.
And beneath the message was a photograph.
It had been taken less than a minute ago.
May you like
Through the window of Mr. Alvarez’s apartment.
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