Chapter 4 - THE HOUSE WHERE DAMIAN CROSS LEARNED TO KILL
I thought Damian would tell me to stay behind.
He did.
I ignored him.
"No."
"Elena."
"My brother is there."
"Which is exactly why you shouldn't be."
"You're going."
"I'm not his sister."
"Congratulations."
Damian's jaw tightened.
"This isn't a restaurant dining room. There won't be a silver tray between you and the next bullet."
"Then make sure there isn't a next bullet."
Marcus entered the apartment carrying a black duffel.
He stopped when he saw me wearing my coat.
"No."
"Apparently everyone learned the same word tonight."
"You're staying here," Marcus said.
"I know the address."
"So?"
"So if you leave without me, I'll call a taxi."
Marcus looked at Damian.
Damian looked at me.
"You wouldn't."
"You've known me three hours. Don't get confident."
Marcus muttered, "I believe her."
Damian's nostrils flared.
"Fine."
"That sounded painful."
"You stay in the car."
"I'll decide when we arrive."
"No. That part isn't negotiable."
I didn't answer.
He took my silence as surrender.
It wasn't.
The building stood near the industrial edge of Red Hook, three stories of crumbling brick between a closed machine shop and a fenced lot filled with shipping containers.
Rain had begun.
Fine, cold needles beneath the streetlights.
Damian stared through the windshield for several seconds before getting out.
His face was different.
Not harder.
Younger somehow.
Like whatever memory lived behind those broken windows had stripped fifteen years from him.
Marcus noticed too.
"You're good?"
Damian opened his door.
"Don't ask me that again."
"That's why I ask."
They exited.
Two more vehicles stopped behind us.
Men spread into the rain.
Before Damian closed the door, he leaned toward me.
"Lock it."
"Damian—"
"Whatever you hear, don't get out."
Then he was gone.
I lasted forty-eight seconds.
In my defense, the first thirty were very responsible.
I locked the doors.
I watched Damian and Marcus disappear through a side entrance.
I tried to breathe.
Then I saw movement in the building across the street.
Third floor.
A silhouette.
A rifle.
The barrel angled toward the doorway Damian had just entered.
I didn't think.
Apparently thinking wasn't my best survival skill.
I threw open the car door.
"Damian!"
The figure shifted.
I ran.
Someone shouted my name from behind.
The window above flashed.
A shot struck the pavement beside me.
I dove behind a concrete barrier.
More gunfire erupted, controlled and brief.
The sniper disappeared from the window.
Marcus's voice roared from inside the building.
"Cross!"
Damian emerged from the side door, grabbed the back of my coat, and dragged me behind the wall.
"Are you insane?"
"Sniper."
"I noticed."
"You're welcome."
He looked furious enough to set rain on fire.
Then his hands moved over my face and shoulders.
"Are you hit?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
He closed his eyes for one second.
When they opened, the anger had changed into something I couldn't name.
"Get back in the car."
"Daniel is inside."
"We don't know that."
"His phone traced here."
"Phones can be planted."
"Then why did somebody shoot at you?"
"Because someone wanted me here."
The sentence silenced both of us.
Marcus appeared around the corner.
"Third floor clear. Shooter bailed across the roof."
"Inside?" Damian asked.
"One body."
My heart stopped.
"Daniel?"
Marcus looked at me.
"No."
I almost collapsed with relief.
"Who?"
Marcus's expression darkened.
"Victor Hale."
Damian went still.
I didn't know the name.
But everyone else did.
"Who's Victor Hale?" I asked.
Neither answered immediately.
Marcus finally said, "He worked for Damian's father."
"Worked how?"
Damian looked toward the building.
"He was there the night my father died."
Rain collected along his hairline.
"What happened here?"
Marcus glanced at him.
Damian spoke before Marcus could.
"My father was Vincent Cross."
I knew that name.
Anyone who read newspapers ten years ago knew it.
Vincent Cross had been described as a businessman, racketeer, suspected organized crime leader, philanthropist, extortionist, and neighborhood benefactor depending on which article you opened.
He had been murdered twelve years earlier.
Officially unsolved.
"You were here?" I asked.
Damian's gaze stayed on the building.
"I was twenty-one."
"What happened?"
"My father asked me to meet him. Said he had discovered someone was stealing from him."
"The traitor?"
"We never identified him."
"What does that have to do with my brother?"
"That's what we're going inside to learn."
He should have sent me back.
Instead, maybe because the street was no longer safe, he put me between himself and Marcus as we entered.
The smell hit first.
Dust.
Mildew.
Old oil.
The building had once been a metalworking warehouse. Rusted equipment sat beneath plastic sheets. Water dripped somewhere in the dark.
Victor Hale was in an upstairs office.
Dead.
I didn't look closely.
I looked instead at the table beside him.
A recorder.
An envelope.
And a photograph.
Marcus picked up the photograph with gloved fingers.
It showed three men outside a restaurant.
One was Victor Hale, older but recognizable.
The second was my brother.
The third—
Damian took the photograph.
His face changed.
"Who is he?" I asked.
Marcus swore quietly.
Damian answered.
"Anthony Bell."
One of the six men I'd served at Volante.
The man who had sat two chairs from Damian all night.
His friend.
His lieutenant.
I remembered Anthony laughing during dessert.
I remembered him leaving the table once to take a call.
I remembered Damian trusting him enough to sit with his back toward him.
Marcus found another photograph.
Then another.
Daniel with Anthony.
Anthony with Noah Vance.
Anthony entering a Queens restaurant.
The secret meeting.
My hands began shaking.
The envelope was addressed to me.
ELENA MARLOWE.
Damian opened it.
Inside was one sheet of paper.
My father's handwriting.
I knew it instantly.
I hadn't seen it in four years, but grief memorizes strange things.
The angle of his capital E.
The way his lowercase r barely closed.
My knees weakened.
"That's my dad."
Damian handed the letter to me.
Elena,
If this reaches you, I failed to solve something before it reached our family.
Daniel does not know the whole truth.
Do not blame him until you understand what was done to him.
The Marlowe company was used to move money for people I should never have trusted.
One of them was Vincent Cross.
Another was the man who betrayed him.
I kept proof because I was afraid destroying it would be worse.
The proof is not in the company files.
It's where your mother used to hide Christmas money.
Trust the one who refuses to take the apartment from you.
No one else.
Dad.
For several seconds, all I could hear was rain striking the roof.
Damian read over my shoulder.
"What does that mean?" Marcus asked.
I could barely speak.
"My mother used to hide cash."
"Where?"
"Inside things."
"Which things?"
"Flour tins. Books. Sewing boxes."
"At your apartment?"
I shook my head.
"No."
A memory came back.
Summer afternoons.
My mother laughing.
My father complaining about sawdust on the kitchen floor.
A blue ceramic jar above the refrigerator.
"No," I whispered again. "At the old workshop."
Damian looked at Marcus.
"Marlowe Restoration?"
"It closed four years ago," I said. "Building was sold."
"To who?"
"I don't know."
Marcus was already checking his phone.
His face slowly changed.
"Damian."
"What?"
"The property wasn't sold."
I stared at him.
"Yes, it was."
Marcus turned the screen toward us.
"The deed transferred four years ago through an LLC."
"So?"
"The LLC belongs to Cross Holdings."
Damian frowned.
"I never bought it."
Marcus looked at him.
"Someone using your company did."
A noise came from downstairs.
Metal scraping.
Every man in the room froze.
Then the building's lights went out.
Marcus drew his weapon.
Damian shoved me behind him.
From somewhere in the darkness below, my brother shouted my name.
"ELENA!"
I moved instinctively.
Damian caught me.
Then another voice floated upward.
Calm.
Familiar.
Anthony Bell.
"Bring Damian downstairs, Elena."
May you like
A pause.
"Or your brother dies where his father hid the truth."
