Chapter 3: What Robert Hayes Never Said Out Loud
Sienna watched Damian's hand stay flat on top of the phone.
He didn't pick it up.
He didn't explain it.
"What problem?" she said.
"The kind that doesn't wait." He looked at Silas.
"Get the car."
Silas left without a word.
"Wait." Sienna pushed back from the table.
"You said you knew my father.
You don't get to just move past that."
Damian looked at her.
Not with irritation.
With something closer to assessment.
"How much do you know about why your father lost his badge?"
"He drank," she said.
"It caught up with him."
"That's what he told you."
"That's what happened."
Damian was quiet for a moment.
He picked up his glass, turned it once in his hand, set it back down without drinking.
"Robert Hayes was assigned to the Russo task force in 2015," he said.
"He was the lead investigator.
The man building the case that was supposed to put my father in federal prison."
Sienna didn't move.
"For eight months he was the most dangerous man in New York, as far as my family was concerned." Damian paused.
"Then one night, he came to my father directly.
No wire.
No backup.
Alone."
"That's not possible," Sienna said.
"He would never—"
"He sat across from my father in a room not much different from this one.
And he told him that the case had a problem." Damian looked at her steadily.
"The problem was that two of the witnesses the prosecution was building around had been fabricated.
The evidence linking my father to the Caruso warehouse fire had been planted by someone inside the department.
Your father had found it.
And he had a choice."
Sienna's voice came out smaller than she intended.
"What choice?"
"He could file the report and watch a corrupt case go forward anyway — because the men above him wanted a conviction regardless of the truth.
Or he could come to my father and tell him what he'd found, knowing my father would use it to walk free." Damian's eyes didn't leave hers.
"He came to my father."
The lamp hummed.
Somewhere beyond the walls, the bass from the club moved through the floor like a slow pulse.
"He let your father go," Sienna said.
"He told the truth.
To the wrong person, in the wrong room, for the right reason." Damian stood.
"The department found out he'd made contact.
They couldn't prove what was said, but it was enough.
They took his badge.
Called it conduct unbecoming.
Let the drinking story do the rest."
Sienna stared at the table.
Her father had never said a word.
Not once.
She had spent three years watching him pour whiskey at the kitchen counter, thinking it was weakness.
Thinking it was failure.
Thinking he had simply fallen apart.
"Why are you telling me this?" she said.
"Because the man who planted that evidence is still in the department," Damian said.
"And tonight, the message on my phone was from someone telling me he knows you're here."
Sienna looked up.
"He's been watching Leo," Damian said.
"Your brother didn't just borrow money from Mickey's people.
He borrowed it from a shell company that man controls.
Leo found something he wasn't supposed to find — something about the warehouse fire — and when he started asking questions, they made sure he had a reason to run."
"Leo didn't flee because of the debt," Sienna said slowly.
"Leo fled because someone inside the NYPD told him that if he didn't disappear, you would be used to bring him back."
The room felt smaller.
"They were going to use me as leverage," she said.
"Mickey wasn't just collecting a debt."
"Mickey was the delivery mechanism," Damian said.
"Someone with a badge was going to be waiting at the other end."
Sienna pressed both hands flat on the table.
"Who?" she said.
"Who is he?"
Damian picked up the phone.
Turned it over.
Showed her the screen.
A name.
A badge number.
A photograph of a man in his fifties with a careful smile and a department commendation pinned to his chest.
Sienna knew the face.
She had seen it once, years ago, at a departmental function her father had taken her to before everything fell apart.
"He came to our apartment," she said quietly.
"After my father lost his badge.
He came to the door and told my father he was sorry for how things had gone."
"He wasn't sorry," Damian said.
"He was checking."
Sienna's jaw tightened.
"His name is Vincent Carrow," Damian said.
"And right now, he thinks you're already in Mickey's hands."
May you like
He slid the phone into his jacket pocket.
"We have until he finds out otherwise."
