Chapter 9 - Pier Seventeen
Rain began ten minutes before Claire reached the waterfront.
Not heavy.
Just enough to make every metal surface shine beneath the distant city glow.
Pier Seventeen had been officially inactive for three years.
The gates were chained.
The security booth was dark.
Stacks of aging containers formed long corridors toward the river.
Claire parked outside.
Her hands remained on the steering wheel.
Aleandro's voice came through the tiny earpiece hidden beneath her hair.
"Last chance."
"You've said that four times."
"I'll make it five."
"No."
"Claire."
"I'm going."
A pause.
"Then don't improvise."
She almost laughed.
"You really don't know me very well."
"Unfortunately, I'm starting to."
She stepped out.
No visible weapon.
No visible protection.
The silver flash drive rested inside her coat.
A decoy.
The original remained with Luca.
At least, that was what they hoped Matteo believed.
Aleandro and Luca were positioned inside an empty maintenance building two hundred yards away.
Giovanni remained near the river with two trusted men.
No one else knew the plan.
Claire entered through a gap in the fence.
"Section Four," Aleandro said.
"I remember."
"Camera left."
She looked ahead without turning her head.
"I see it."
"Don't look at it."
"Then stop pointing things out after I notice them."
Luca whispered in the background, "You two can argue later."
Claire moved between the containers.
Numbers passed.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
She stopped.
Container Twenty-Two had no company markings.
A single padlock hung from the doors.
"Locked."
Aleandro replied, "Key?"
Claire remembered Ethan's things.
After his death, police returned his wallet, phone, wedding ring, and keys.
One strange brass key had remained on his keychain.
Claire had never known what it opened.
She had brought it.
Her fingers shook as she inserted it.
The lock turned.
"Oh my God."
"Claire?"
"It's Ethan's key."
Aleandro said nothing.
She opened the container.
Darkness.
She switched on a small flashlight.
Shelves.
Boxes.
A folding desk.
A battery lantern.
Files.
Hundreds of them.
Claire stepped inside.
"Ethan was here."
She found photographs attached to the wall.
Containers arriving after midnight.
Truck plates.
Employees.
Invoices.
Safety reports.
And Aleandro Moretti.
Several photographs showed him arriving at the waterfront.
But something was written beneath them in Ethan's handwriting.
A.M. MAY NOT KNOW. VERIFY BEFORE CONTACT.
Claire covered her mouth.
Ethan had been investigating quietly.
Not just Matteo.
Everyone.
She found a recorder.
A notebook.
Then a box labeled SOPHIE.
Her heart stopped.
"There's a box with my daughter's name."
Aleandro's voice sharpened.
"Do not open it."
"Why?"
"Because Matteo wanted you here."
Claire froze.
This was too easy.
The key worked.
The evidence waited.
Matteo had known.
Which meant—
The container doors slammed behind her.
Darkness.
"Claire!"
Aleandro's voice exploded through the earpiece.
She spun.
The doors locked from outside.
"Aleandro!"
"We're moving."
Her earpiece crackled.
Then died.
Claire pounded the doors.
Nothing.
Outside, footsteps retreated.
Aleandro left the maintenance building at a run.
Luca followed.
"No response."
"Signal jammer."
"Container Twenty-Two?"
"Yes."
They crossed between stacked metal corridors.
A vehicle engine started somewhere toward the eastern gate.
"Giovanni!"
No answer.
Jammed communications.
Aleandro reached Container Twenty-Two.
Locked.
He fired no weapon.
Instead he grabbed a steel bar from nearby.
Luca joined him.
Together they broke the lock.
The doors opened.
Empty.
Aleandro stared.
Files.
Boxes.
Desk.
No Claire.
Luca found an opening in the rear wall.
A cut panel large enough for a person to pass through.
Aleandro's blood went cold.
"Tunnel."
Behind the container, a narrow service passage led toward another row.
Tire marks waited at the end.
Matteo had never intended to meet Claire.
The container was bait.
The old evidence was bait.
And Aleandro had walked her directly into it.
Luca's face hardened.
"We'll find her."
Aleandro said nothing.
That frightened Luca.
"Aleandro."
"If he hurts her—"
"He wants the drive."
"He knows she brought a decoy."
"How?"
Aleandro looked back at the container.
"Because somebody told him."
Only five people knew the original drive was not on Claire.
Aleandro.
Claire.
Luca.
Giovanni.
And Sophie, who had overheard part of their conversation.
Sophie obviously hadn't told Matteo.
Which left three men.
Aleandro looked at Luca.
Luca stared back.
"You think it's me?"
"I think right now I trust proof."
Luca took one step backward.
"Fair."
The answer sounded painfully familiar.
Exactly what Aleandro had told Claire.
Luca slowly removed his weapon and placed it on the ground.
"If you need to search me, do it."
Aleandro didn't.
Instead, he asked, "Where's Giovanni?"
They found him near the river.
Unconscious.
Breathing.
A small dart embedded in his jacket sleeve.
One of his men was missing.
The second lay several yards away, also drugged.
"Not Giovanni," Luca said.
Aleandro checked his pulse.
"No."
A phone rang.
Matteo.
Aleandro answered.
"Where is she?"
Matteo sounded almost amused.
"You really do care."
"Where."
"That is dangerous, Aleandro."
"Matteo."
"For years I wondered whether anything could make you irrational."
Aleandro's hand tightened.
"Turns out all I needed was a widow with brown eyes and a little girl who trusts too easily."
"Touch her and—"
"And what?"
Matteo's voice hardened.
"You'll kill me? That's what men expect from you. That's why the evidence works."
Aleandro said nothing.
"I have Claire. You have the original drive."
"Trade."
"Eventually."
"What do you want?"
"First, Container Twenty-Two."
"I'm standing inside it."
"Then you've seen what Ethan collected."
"Some."
"You see why he had to disappear."
Aleandro's expression became lethal.
"You killed him."
"I solved a problem."
Luca looked away.
Matteo continued.
"You should thank me. Ethan's evidence would have brought federal investigators into every company you owned."
"He tried to tell me."
"And you would have done what? Become moral overnight?"
Aleandro looked at Ethan's photographs.
Maybe Matteo had once counted on that exact question.
"You'll never know."
Matteo laughed.
"Oh, I know you better than anyone."
"No."
Aleandro's voice became quiet.
"You knew who I was."
A pause.
"You don't know who I'm becoming."
The line went silent.
Then Matteo gave him an address.
An abandoned printing plant in Queens.
"Bring the original drive at sunrise."
"Claire first."
"You'll see her."
"If she's hurt—"
"She isn't."
Matteo paused.
"Yet."
The call ended.
Inside the printing plant, Claire sat tied to a chair.
Her lip was cut from being dragged through the service passage, but she was conscious.
A man stood behind her.
Matteo Rinaldi entered.
Expensive suit.
Perfectly calm.
Nothing about him resembled the monster Claire had imagined.
That made him worse.
He placed a photograph of Ethan on the table.
"You look at me as though I'm the villain."
Claire stared at him.
"You murdered my husband."
"Your husband made unfortunate choices."
"He tried to stop you."
"He tried to stop something much larger than himself."
Matteo sat opposite her.
"Do you know what Ethan's mistake was?"
"Believing men like you had souls?"
Matteo smiled.
"No."
He leaned forward.
"His mistake was believing Aleandro Moretti could be saved."
Claire's heartbeat changed.
Matteo opened a folder.
Inside were records Claire had never seen.
"Your husband discovered something about Aleandro."
"What?"
"Something Aleandro doesn't even know Ethan discovered."
Claire refused to look.
Matteo slid a photograph toward her.
She did.
And her face went pale.
It showed Ethan Bennett standing beside Aleandro's younger brother Niccolo.
Years before Claire had ever met Ethan.
Matteo watched her reaction.
"Your husband and the Moretti family were connected long before you knew."
Claire stared at the photograph.
The entire story she believed she understood had just changed again.
May you like
And sunrise was less than five hours away.
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