Chapter 2 - A Message From My Dead Husband
I stopped so suddenly that Marco nearly ran into me.
“What?”
I couldn’t answer.
My eyes were locked on the phone.
David.
Not “unknown.”
Not a random number.
David.
The contact I had never deleted.
The little photograph beside his name showed him holding newborn Logan in the hospital, exhausted and smiling.
I had looked at that photograph hundreds of times during sleepless nights.
Now it sat above a message warning me not to trust Alessandro Romano.
“Mommy?”
Logan touched my cheek.
“You’re crying.”
I hadn’t realized I was.
Marco reached toward the phone.
“Let me see.”
I stepped back.
“No.”
“Catherine—”
“I said no.”
Behind him, Alessandro leaned heavily against two guards.
Even half-conscious, he saw enough.
“David?”
My face must have answered.
Alessandro closed his eyes briefly.
“Of course.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he finally decided to talk to you.”
“Finally?”
My voice echoed through the maintenance tunnel.
“You knew he was alive for two years, and you let me bury him?”
Alessandro’s eyes opened again.
“You think I had a choice?”
“Yes!”
Marco raised a hand.
“Keep your voices down.”
I rounded on him.
“My husband has been alive for two years.”
Logan looked up.
I froze.
Too late.
His little forehead wrinkled.
“Daddy?”
No.
Not like this.
I knelt immediately.
“Sweetheart, Mommy is confused right now.”
“Daddy is alive?”
I couldn’t lie.
But I couldn’t tell a three-year-old something I didn’t understand.
“I don’t know.”
He looked at my phone.
“Can we call him?”
My throat closed.
“I’m trying to figure that out.”
Alessandro’s face changed when he looked at Logan.
For the first time, the feared mafia boss looked almost ashamed.
“Keep moving.”
We reached a metal stairwell.
Marco opened the door and checked both directions.
“Clear.”
We descended.
Alessandro managed three steps before his knees gave out.
His men caught him.
“You need a stretcher,” I said automatically.
He looked almost amused.
“Nurse?”
“Environmental services.”
“You knew exactly what my monitor was doing.”
“I worked as a medical assistant before Logan was born.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Because life happened.”
Because David died.
Or didn’t.
Because childcare cost almost as much as my paycheck.
Because grief had turned everything into survival.
We reached the basement.
A black SUV waited beside a loading dock.
I stared at it.
“No.”
Marco opened the rear door.
“Get in.”
“I am not getting into a mafia getaway car.”
A bullet struck the concrete wall beside me.
I got in.
Marco smiled faintly.
“Good choice.”
“Don’t enjoy this.”
“I’m enjoying that you’re alive.”
Logan climbed onto my lap.
Alessandro was lowered into the seat across from us.
His face had gone gray.
“You’re bleeding through the dressing.”
“I’ve been shot before.”
“Three times?”
“Five.”
“Tonight?”
“Total.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
Marco slammed the door.
The SUV accelerated before he had fully climbed into the front.
I looked back.
Three men appeared at the loading dock.
Not police.
Not hospital security.
They wore plain clothes and carried suppressed rifles.
One lifted his weapon.
Our rear window exploded.
I threw myself over Logan.
Alessandro lunged forward, covering both of us with his body despite his injuries.
More shots struck the SUV.
The driver swerved.
Then we burst onto the street.
Baltimore flashed past in wet orange light.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Alessandro slowly pushed himself upright.
“You see now?”
I glared at him.
“I see people trying to kill us.”
“They’re trying to kill me.”
“They photographed my son’s bedroom.”
His expression hardened.
“Yes.”
“Who are they?”
“That answer starts with David.”
“Everything starts with David.”
“Yes.”
“Then start talking.”
Alessandro wiped blood from his mouth.
“Your husband worked for a private intelligence firm called Halcyon Strategic.”
I stared.
“He worked for Mason Logistics.”
“That was the cover.”
“Mason Logistics had an office.”
“So does Halcyon.”
“He had coworkers.”
“Halcyon employees.”
“He complained about warehouse inventories.”
“Cover stories are supposed to be boring.”
I hated how easily his words fit.
David had traveled unexpectedly.
Late-night calls.
Two phones during the last year of our marriage.
He told me one belonged to the warehouse.
I had believed him.
Because married people were supposed to believe each other.
“What did Halcyon do?”
“Officially? Corporate security and risk assessment.”
“And unofficially?”
“Surveillance. Political pressure. Private military contracts. Blackmail.”
“Why would David work for them?”
“He was recruited after the Army.”
I blinked.
“David never served.”
Alessandro said nothing.
My stomach twisted.
Another lie.
“How much of my husband was real?”
“I don’t know.”
“You knew him.”
“I knew the man he became after he came to me.”
“Why would he come to a mafia boss?”
“Because Halcyon wanted my organization.”
“To destroy it?”
“To own it.”
Alessandro’s voice turned colder.
“They wanted ports, trucking routes, political contacts. They weren’t interested in crime. They were interested in infrastructure.”
“That sounds insane.”
“It sounds expensive.”
The SUV turned sharply.
My phone buzzed.
Another message from David.
GET OUT OF THE CAR.
I stared at it.
Then another.
ALESSANDRO WILL TAKE YOU TO FORT HENRY. DO NOT GO THERE.
My eyes moved to the front.
“Where are we going?”
No one answered.
“Marco.”
He looked over his shoulder.
“Where are we going?”
Alessandro studied my face.
“Fort Henry.”
Every hair on my arms rose.
I held up the phone.
“He knows.”
Alessandro’s expression barely changed.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“He’s tracking you.”
“That is not good!”
“It means he wants you alive.”
“How comforting.”
“Catherine.”
His voice sharpened.
“David disappeared because he discovered Halcyon had ordered the assassination of someone important.”
“Who?”
“You.”
Silence filled the SUV.
I laughed because the alternative was screaming.
“Me?”
“You weren’t the real target then. You were leverage.”
“For what?”
“For David.”
“Why?”
“He stole something.”
“What?”
“A file containing enough evidence to put senators, judges, corporate executives, and three intelligence contractors in prison.”
I stared at him.
“And he abandoned his wife and newborn child because of a file?”
“No.”
Alessandro looked at Logan.
“He abandoned you because Halcyon told him they would kill both of you if he didn’t disappear.”
The anger I had carried exploded.
“So he protected us by making me identify a burned body?”
Logan flinched.
I lowered my voice.
“By letting me bury him?”
“He believed it would end the threat.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
“Clearly.”
The SUV slowed.
We entered an industrial district near the harbor.
Warehouses.
Fences.
Dark water beyond shipping cranes.
A gate opened ahead.
My phone buzzed again.
CATHERINE, ASK HIM WHO WAS IN THE CAR.
I looked at Alessandro.
“The accident.”
He stiffened.
“Who was in the car?”
No answer.
My pulse climbed.
“Who did I bury?”
Alessandro looked out the window.
“Someone Halcyon needed gone.”
“Name.”
“Catherine—”
“NAME.”
Marco turned slightly.
“Boss.”
Alessandro ignored him.
“Thomas Vane.”
The name meant nothing.
“Who was he?”
“A Halcyon accountant.”
My stomach turned.
“You used his body.”
“David did.”
“No.”
“He needed dental records switched. Halcyon controlled the medical examiner’s subcontractor. David knew exactly how to do it.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would Halcyon help him fake his death?”
“They didn’t.”
Alessandro paused.
“Someone inside Halcyon did.”
The SUV stopped inside a fortified warehouse.
Steel doors closed behind us.
Men rushed forward.
A doctor approached with a medical kit.
I refused to move.
“Who helped him?”
Alessandro was lifted from the vehicle.
“That is the question that got me shot tonight.”
My phone rang.
Not a text.
A call.
DAVID.
The world disappeared.
My thumb hovered.
Then I answered.
“Hello?”
Silence.
I heard breathing.
My knees weakened.
“David?”
More silence.
Then a voice I had memorized long before grief changed me whispered through the phone.
“Cat.”
Nobody else had called me that.
Not once.
My hand flew to my mouth.
“Oh my God.”
“I’m sorry.”
I began shaking violently.
“You’re alive.”
“I’m sorry.”
“YOU’RE ALIVE.”
Logan stared at me.
Every man in the warehouse stopped moving.
“Cat, listen to me.”
“No. You listen to me. I buried you.”
“I know.”
“I told our son you were in heaven!”
“I know.”
“You know?”
His voice broke.
“I watched you at the cemetery.”
That was worse.
Much worse.
“You were there?”
“Across the road.”
I couldn’t speak.
“I wanted to run to you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“If I had, they would have killed you before sunrise.”
Tears blurred the warehouse lights.
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Then this conversation is over.”
“No. Catherine, please.”
“You don’t get to say please.”
“Logan is in danger.”
“You lost the right to say his name.”
Another silence.
Then David whispered, “Ask Alessandro about Lazarus.”
I looked at the injured man.
His face changed.
“What is Lazarus?”
Alessandro said nothing.
David continued.
“That’s why Romano survived tonight.”
My skin prickled.
“What are you talking about?”
“It wasn’t your son who brought him back.”
I looked at Logan.
“He was already alive.”
“No.”
David’s breathing became uneven.
“Alessandro was dead.”
I stared at the mafia boss.
Then David said the words that made every armed man in the warehouse turn toward him.
May you like
“Lazarus brought him back.”
The phone went dead.
