Chapter 12 - The Astoria Walk-Up
The stairs to Elena’s apartment smelled of fried onions, damp linoleum, and thirty years of tenant neglect. I knocked twice on the peeling green paint of door 4B.
The lock clicked—once, twice, then a heavy deadbolt slid back with a metallic clatter.
Nora opened the door. She wore an oversized gray hoodie, her dark hair tied back in a messy knot, a heavy wrench dangling casually from her right hand. She didn't look surprised to see me. She simply stepped aside, leaving a narrow path through a room packed from floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes, ledger books, and framed photographs of a smiling girl with dark eyes.
“You took your time,” Nora said, tossing the wrench onto a battered kitchen table.
“The marshals wanted to inventory my socks,” I said, stepping inside and kicking the door shut against the howling Astoria wind. “What is all this?”
“Everything Carmine thought he burned,” Nora replied, walking over to a stack of water-damaged binders. “The night the feds raided the estate, I didn't just grab the server drive. I spent three weeks prior copying every physical shipping ledger Carmine kept locked in his private vault. The digital files can be scrubbed by high-priced defense attorneys. Paper trails left in old warehouses don't lie.”
I looked around the tiny apartment. Every square inch was covered in evidence of a conspiracy that stretched from the ports of New Jersey straight into the boardrooms of global shipping cartels.
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“You’re still hunting them,” I said quietly.
“They killed my sister, Mateo,” Nora turned, her eyes flashing with that same cold, terrifying clarity I had seen in the basement tunnel. “And the federal government is already cutting plea deals with half of Carmine’s lieutenants in exchange for soft sentences. The system is wrapping it up in a neat little bow so the politicians can go back to sleep. I’m not sleeping.”
