Chapter 4: The Debt That Was Never About Money
The car was black, unmarked, and moved through midtown without hurrying.
Silas drove.
One of the bodyguards sat in the front passenger seat.
Damian sat beside Sienna in the back with two inches of space between them and his attention fixed on the window.
Sienna watched the city slide past.
"Where are we going?" she said.
"Somewhere Carrow can't reach tonight."
"And tomorrow?"
Damian didn't answer immediately.
"That depends on what your brother left behind."
Sienna turned to look at him.
"What do you mean, left behind?"
"Leo didn't run empty-handed," Damian said.
"He found something in those shell company records.
Something specific enough that Carrow has been moving money and people for the past three weeks trying to contain it." He paused.
"I need to know what Leo found.
And I need to know where he is."
"I told you.
I don't know where he went."
"I believe you," Damian said.
"But I think he left you a way to find him.
People like Leo — people who run scared but still love their family — they always leave something.
A number.
A name.
A place only the two of you would know."
Sienna looked back at the window.
Leo had called her once, eight days after he disappeared.
A payphone.
Forty seconds.
He had said: *I'm okay.
Don't look for me.
Check the blue box.*
She hadn't understood it.
There was no blue box in her apartment.
She had searched twice and found nothing.
"There's a place," she said carefully.
"Our grandmother's house in Flushing.
We used to stay there every summer when we were kids.
Leo had a hiding spot in the basement.
An old metal box, painted blue.
He used to keep baseball cards in it."
Damian looked at her.
"You haven't checked it," he said.
"I didn't think it was real.
It sounded like something he said just to say something.
Just to make me feel like there was a plan."
"It was real," Damian said.
"Leo is careful.
He always has been."
Sienna frowned.
"How would you know anything about Leo?"
Damian was quiet for a moment.
"Because eighteen months ago, Leo came to me," he said.
The car moved through a yellow light.
"He came to you," Sienna repeated.
"He had found a discrepancy in a property filing.
A development company that listed my family's name as a silent partner in a warehouse acquisition from 2013.
The Caruso warehouse." Damian's voice stayed level.
"My family had nothing to do with that acquisition.
Someone had forged the connection.
Leo had found the original filing and the altered version, and he wanted to know if I knew."
"Did you?"
"No.
But I knew what it meant." He turned to look at her directly.
"Someone had used my family's name to cover the paper trail on that fire.
The same fire that k*lled four people and that your father's task force was investigating when Carrow planted the false evidence." He paused.
"My father didn't order that fire.
But for ten years, the documents said he did."
Sienna absorbed that.
"So Leo found proof that your family was framed," she said.
"Leo found the beginning of the proof.
Enough to confirm the forgery existed.
Not enough to name Carrow directly." Damian looked back at the window.
"I told him to stop digging and come to me when he had more.
He agreed.
Then three weeks ago he went silent, and Mickey started looking for you."
"Leo kept digging," Sienna said.
"Leo found something bigger than a forged document." Damian's voice was quiet.
"And now Carrow knows it."
The car slowed.
They had crossed into a quieter part of the borough, away from the lights.
"What happens when Carrow realizes I'm not with Mickey?" Sienna asked.
Silas answered from the front seat without turning around.
"He'll move to the next option."
"Which is?"
Damian said it plainly.
"Your father."
Sienna's hand went to the door handle without thinking.
"Robert is alone," she said.
"He's in that apartment alone right now."
"I know," Damian said.
"That's why we're not going to Flushing tonight."
May you like
He leaned forward and said one word to Silas.
The car turned north.
