Chapter 2 - Shadows at Four O'Clock
The thumb hit the glass screen.
"Dante," Gabriel said into the dark room before the first ring had even finished. "I need a name. A phone number. A license plate."
On the other end of the encrypted line, Dante—Gabriel’s chief of security and the only man who had seen him bleed and survive—didn't ask questions. You didn't ask Gabriel Castellan why he wanted a man dismantled. You simply waited for the grid coordinates.
"Who’s the target, boss?" Dante’s rough voice cut through the rain drumming against the window.
"Find out who Vera Halloway is meeting tomorrow at five," Gabriel said, his tone flat, cold, and stripped of all human warmth. "I want his financial records, his criminal history, his ex-girlfriends, and every unpaid parking ticket he’s had since he was eighteen. By midnight."
A brief silence hung on the line. Dante knew the house rules. Everyone knew the rules. Vera Halloway was the invisible girl who scrubbed the marble floors in the east wing. She was the ghost who never spoke unless spoken to, the girl whose father had died in debt to a rival crew, leaving her to clean up the wreckage of a life she hadn't built.
"Boss..." Dante hesitated, a rare slip for a man who managed twenty armed enforcers. "Is she a security risk?"
"She’s my maid," Gabriel said, and the word felt heavy, like lead on his tongue. "Just get me the file."
He cut the call and stared down at the dark phone.
Downstairs, the quiet hum of a vacuum cleaner stopped.
Gabriel stood up, walking silently out of his third-floor office onto the dark interior balcony overlooking the grand foyer. The estate was built like a fortress—seventy feet of reinforced concrete and tinted glass cantilevered over the icy waters of the Atlantic. It was a palace designed for a king who expected assassins behind every curtain.
At the bottom of the curved marble staircase, Vera was packing her cleaning caddy.
She had taken off her rubber gloves. In the dim amber accent lighting of the hallway, her hair—usually pinned back in a tight, sensible knot—had come slightly loose, soft tendrils framing the delicate curve of her neck. She looked small down there. Small, exhausted, and fragile.
Gabriel felt the dangerous, suffocating instinct to walk down those stairs, grab her by her wrists, and lock her in the master bedroom where no man in Boston could ever look at her again.
He closed his eyes, taking a slow, deep breath to quell the dark urge.
You're losing your mind, he told himself. She's twenty-six. She’s innocent. You are a monster with blood dried under your fingernails.
At four o'clock the next afternoon, the rain had settled into a thick, miserable fog rolling off the bay.
Vera stood in the estate's rear service entrance, holding her umbrella. She wore a simple navy blue dress she had bought from a thrift rack two years ago. It was modest, slightly faded around the seams, but it hugged her waist in a way that made Gabriel’s jaw clench from where he stood in the shadow of the doorway.
"Your cab is here, Miss Halloway," Dante said, standing by the idling sedan.
Vera looked back toward the dark hallway leading to Gabriel’s private quarters. She didn't see him standing in the shadows, but she felt him. She always felt him. He was like a thunderstorm brewing just over the horizon—dangerous, magnetic, impossible to ignore.
"Thank you, Dante," she whispered.
She stepped out into the fog and slid into the backseat of the cab.
Gabriel stepped out of the shadows the moment the cab's taillights disappeared into the mist. He adjusted the cuffs of his bespoke charcoal suit, his face carved out of stone.
Dante stepped up beside him, holding a thick manila folder.
"His name is Mark Sullivan," Dante said, opening the folder. "Thirty-six. Mid-level accountant at a regional firm. Lives in a two-bedroom condo in South Boston. Drives a leased BMW. No criminal record. He met her at the grocery store three weeks ago when she dropped her wallet."
Gabriel took the folder. He didn't open it. He simply squeezed the cardboard until the edges crushed in his grip.
"Where are they going?" Gabriel asked quietly.
"A Italian bistro on Hanover Street," Dante replied. "Table for two. Five-thirty."
May you like
Gabriel turned toward his matte-black SUV parked in the private courtyard.
"Get the car," Gabriel ordered. "We're going to dinner."
