Chapter 2 - The Ghost of the River
The name dropped into the quiet room like a dropped grenade.
Julianna Vance. Seven years ago, her disappearance had been the only thing on every news channel in the tri-state area. The daughter of Kenneth Vance, the titan behind Vance Global Logistics—the company that controlled forty percent of the freight moving through the Port of New York. Her car had been found submerged beneath the murky water near the George Washington Bridge. The driver’s side door was open. Her purse was on the passenger seat. Blood had been found on the steering wheel, but the body was never recovered. The police ruled it a suicide or a carjacking gone wrong. After six months of search teams dragging the river, the Vance family held a closed-casket memorial, collected the immense life insurance policies, and handed the family empire over to her cousin, Julian Vance.
And now, the drowned girl was sitting in a salon chair, dripping wet, wrapped in a black silk robe that Jean-Paul had thrown over her shivering frame.
Dante stepped forward, his heavy leather boots loud against the marble. He didn't look at the stylists or the salon director. He looked only at the woman.
Her hair was cut down to a short, jagged bob around her chin, feathering out over her pale ears. Without the grime, her eyes were startling—a deep, luminous emerald green that stared back at him with the raw, animal intensity of a trapped wild creature.
“Julianna?” Dante murmured, keeping his voice down, pitched to that calm, soothing frequency one uses when handling a wounded predator.
She flinched. The sound of her own name seemed to physically burn her. Her cracked, bleeding lips parted, but all that came out was a dry rasp. She gripped the armrests of the styling chair so hard her knuckles turned the color of chalk.
“Water,” she whispered. It was barely a breath. A sound made of rusted metal and dry wind.
Jean-Paul tripped over his own feet rushing to pour a crystal tumbler of filtered water. He brought it forward, his hands shaking so violently the glass clinked against the rim. Dante took the glass from the stylist, knelt down on one knee in front of her chair, and held it to her lips himself. He didn't care that her damp robe soaked the knee of his five-thousand-dollar trousers. He didn't care that her gaze was wild and tracking the door.
She drank frantically, water spilling over her chin and down her neck, coughing as her dry throat struggled to process the liquid.
“Slowly,” Dante said gently, his free hand resting on her trembling wrist. “You’re safe now. No one is coming for you here.”
“They have the river,” she rasped, her eyes darting to the glass storefront outside. “The gray men. They have the river.”
Dante’s jaw tightened. The gray men.
He stood up and pulled his phone from his inner pocket. He dialed three numbers. “Marco. Bring the suburban to the side alley. Tell the boys to sweep the perimeter for Vance security. Clear the penthouse on 84th. We have a passenger.”
He turned back to Jean-Paul. The salon director was pale as milk, clutching a clipboard to his chest like a shield.
“You forget what you saw today,” Dante said flatly.
“Mr. Serrano, I swear on my mother’s life—”
“If a single word leaves this room before tomorrow morning, I won’t just burn this salon down. I will erase your name from every ledger in this state. Do you understand me?”
Jean-Paul nodded so fast his glasses slipped down his nose. “Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir.”
Dante stripped off his heavy charcoal overcoat. He draped it over Julianna’s narrow shoulders. The coat swallowed her whole, making her look even smaller, a fragile ghost wrapped in wool and gunpowder. He bent down and scooped her up into his arms.
She weighed almost nothing. It was like lifting a bundle of dry sticks. She let out a small, terrified gasp and buried her face into the crook of his neck, her dirty fingernails digging into his leather collar. The scent of rain and old concrete lingered in her pores, but underneath it, faintly, was the warmth of a living, breathing woman who had refused to die.
Dante carried her out the back door into the biting rain.
The alley was narrow, shielded by high brick walls. A black armored SUV idle-hummed in the mist, its windows tinted opaque. A tall man in a leather jacket stepped out of the driver’s seat, his hand resting on his waist.
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“Boss,” Marco said, eyes widening as he took in the woman in Dante’s arms. “Who the hell is that?”
“Get the door, Marco,” Dante ordered, sliding into the leather back seat with the woman still clutched against his chest. “And call Dr. Alvarez. Tell him to bring IV fluids, antibiotics, and a psychiatric sedative. We just pulled Kenneth Vance’s daughter out of the gutter.”
