Chapter 3: Nine Minutes
The hospital corridor was empty at that hour except for a single orderly pushing a cart at the far end.
Luca walked past him without slowing.
His shoulder felt like something was tearing loose with every step.
He didn't stop.
He pressed the phone back to his ear.
"Rachel.
Stay on the line."
"I'm here." Her voice was tight.
Controlled the way trauma nurses learn to be controlled.
"I'm outside.
I tried to follow them but they were already—" A sharp breath.
"They were already gone."
"Which direction?"
"North on Delancey.
That's all I saw."
Luca pushed through a stairwell door.
Two of his men were already in the lobby below — he could hear them moving.
"Did she make a sound?" His voice came out lower than he intended.
"When they took her.
Did you hear her?"
Rachel didn't answer immediately.
"She called for me," she said finally.
"That's all."
He stopped on the landing.
One sentence.
Four words.
And something inside his chest that had nothing to do with his heart condition cracked completely open.
"I'm coming," he said.
"Luca—"
"I'm coming, Rachel."
"You were sh*t three days ago."
"I know."
"Your heart—"
"I know."
A pause.
Then, quietly: "She's three years old."
"I know." His jaw tightened.
"That's why I'm coming."
He pushed through the lobby door.
His two men turned immediately.
One of them — Caruso, twenty-eight, fast — took one look at Luca's face and reached for his keys without being asked.
The second man, Tieri, held up a hand.
"Marco said you stay—"
"Marco doesn't give me orders."
"He said you'd say that."
"Then he also knows it won't work." Luca held out his hand for the keys.
"Which vehicle?"
Tieri looked at Caruso.
Caruso looked at the floor.
Luca lowered his hand.
"I'm not asking."
Tieri handed over the keys.
The car was a gray sedan parked half a block from the hospital entrance.
Luca got in the passenger side — his shoulder made driving impossible and he knew it — and Caruso took the wheel without comment.
Marco's voice came through the car's speaker system thirty seconds later.
"Tell me you're not in a vehicle."
"I'm in a vehicle."
"Luca—"
"What do we have on the black sedan?"
A pause.
Marco exhaled.
Then, because twelve years had taught him when arguing was a waste of time: "Partial plate.
Outer borough registration.
We're running it."
"Sokolov's crew uses a warehouse in Greenpoint."
"I know."
"And a secondary location in Maspeth."
"I know that too."
"Then why are we still talking?"
"Because," Marco said carefully, "I need you to understand something before you walk into either of those places."
Luca looked at the city moving past the window.
The lights.
The bridges.
The millions of people who had no idea what was happening in the dark spaces between their ordinary lives.
"Say it."
"Sokolov called me twenty minutes ago."
The car went quiet.
Caruso kept his eyes on the road.
"He called you," Luca said.
"Yes."
"On what number?"
"My secondary."
"Which means he's had it for a while and chose tonight to use it." Luca's voice was flat.
"What did he say?"
Marco's answer came slowly.
Like he was choosing each word.
"He said Emma is safe."
"She's not safe.
She's with his people."
"He said she won't be h*rmed.
He said this is a conversation, not a war."
"Taking a three-year-old child is a war."
"I know."
"What does he want?"
Marco went quiet again.
Long enough that Luca turned toward the speaker as if he could see through it.
"Marco."
"He wants to meet.
Tonight.
Just you.
No security."
Luca said nothing.
"He said if you bring anyone, the conversation ends."
"And Emma?"
The pause that followed was the longest yet.
"He didn't specify."
Luca looked out the window again.
They were crossing the bridge now, the East River black and wide beneath them, the lights of the far borough scattered ahead like something that couldn't decide whether it was a city or a warning.
"Where?" Luca said.
"Red Hook.
The old loading dock on Van Brunt."
Of course.
The place where the shipping agreement had fallen apart.
Sokolov's idea of poetry.
"Time?"
"One hour."
Caruso glanced sideways.
His expression asked the question he was too smart to say out loud.
Luca answered it anyway.
"Turn around."
"Where are we going?"
Luca reached into his jacket.
His fingers found the small photograph he kept in the inside pocket.
He had put it there three days ago, before the restaurant, before Mulberry Street, before any of this.
Emma at the preschool table.
Dark curls.
Green sweater.
Crayon in hand.
He looked at it for exactly two seconds.
Then put it back.
May you like
"Red Hook," he said.
"But we're making one stop first."
