A delivery worker entered carrying a large cardboard box.
He dropped it.
Gunfire exploded through the glass.
The window shattered inward.
People screamed and fell to the floor.
Grant grabbed me and dragged me behind the counter. For one stunned second, I thought he was protecting me.
Then I felt metal against my ribs.
He had a gun.
“Get up,” he said.
The café’s side door burst open.
Adrian entered with two agents behind him.
He saw the gun pressed against me.
Everything in his face disappeared.
Grant pulled me backward. “Tell them to lower their weapons!”
“Grant,” I whispered, “don’t make this worse.”
“Shut up!”
Adrian raised one hand. His voice was calm.
“Let her go.”
“You ruined everything!”
“You did that yourself.”
“I have debts. People you don’t understand—”
“I understand them better than you do.”
Grant’s grip tightened around my shoulder.
Adrian’s eyes met mine.
He wasn’t asking me to be brave.
He was asking me what I needed.
So I gave him the smallest shake of my head.
Don’t shoot.
Grant dragged me toward the rear exit.
I let my knees buckle.
He cursed, shifting his weight to keep me upright.
That was the opening I needed.
I drove my heel down on his foot and slammed my head backward into his nose.
The gun fired into the ceiling.
Adrian crossed the room before the plaster finished falling.
He hit Grant once.
The blow sent him across a table.
Adrian reached for him again.
I grabbed Adrian’s arm.
“Stop.”
His chest heaved. Grant lay bleeding from the nose, stunned but conscious.
“Evelyn,” Adrian said, his voice shaking with fury.
“Don’t become what they say you are.”
For one terrible second, I thought he would pull away.
Then he lowered his hand.
The agents arrested Grant.
Outside, sirens screamed through Midtown.
The shooter had fled, but security cameras captured the getaway vehicle. It belonged to a shell company controlled by Gabriel Vescari.
Grant agreed to cooperate before sunset.
He confessed to planting the listening device, falsifying audits, and helping Gabriel move illegal shipments. In exchange for protection, he revealed the location of the final transfer.
Pier Nineteen.
Thursday at midnight.
But when Adrian’s investigators searched Gabriel’s office, they found something worse than shipping records.
They found photographs of me leaving my apartment.
Photographs of my mother’s house in Pennsylvania.
And a typed message scheduled to be delivered to Adrian at eleven thirty Thursday night.
Bring Evelyn to the pier, or we begin with her family.
Part 3
My mother believed Adrian was a security consultant.
Explaining why armed federal agents were moving her to a safe location would have required a conversation I wasn’t prepared to have.
So I told her there had been a threat connected to a case at work.
She stared at the bruise on my wrist through the phone screen.
“Is this about that man you used to date?”
“Partly.”
“And the other man?”
I glanced toward Adrian, who stood across the safe house kitchen speaking with investigators.
“He’s trying to protect me.”
My mother’s expression softened.
“Protection isn’t the same as love, Evie.”
“I know.”
“Good. Make sure he knows too.”
After the call ended, I found Adrian alone on the back porch.
The safe house stood beside a frozen lake in upstate New York. Bare trees scratched against a gray evening sky. He had removed his tie, and for the first time since I had met him, he looked tired.
“You should stay here,” he said.
“The pier is a trap.”
“Yes.”
“They want me there.”
“Yes.”
“Which means they expect you to refuse.”
He looked at me.
I continued. “Gabriel knows you’ll send agents, lock down the terminal, and hide me somewhere safe. He’s planned for that.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“That we give him what he expects to see.”
“No.”
“You promised to trust me.”
“I trust you. I do not trust bullets.”
“The art crimes team needs Gabriel and Vincent together with the shipment. Grant’s testimony isn’t enough to prove your father is involved.”