Chapter 13
The northern access road wound deep through the dense pine forest, flanked by steep embankments and thick underbrush.
Belvin’s armored SUV pulled up behind a thick grove of oak trees, lights killed. He stepped out into the crisp mountain air, his gun raised, scanning the winding gravel road ahead.
Parked fifty yards up the road was a sleek, black sedan with tinted windows and its hazard lights blinking rhythmically. The driver's side door stood wide open, but the vehicle appeared empty.
"Ambush?" Naomi whispered, stepping out of the passenger side, keeping Titan firmly at her side on a heavy tactical lead.
"Too sloppy," Belvin muttered, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the treeline. "Castellano’s men wouldn't park in the open like a beacon unless they wanted us to find something."
He signaled with two fingers for his security detail to flank the vehicle from the ridge above, while he and Naomi approached down the center of the road.
As they closed the distance, a sound drifted through the pine trees—a faint, rhythmic tapping noise, metallic and hollow.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Naomi froze, her blood running cold. She recognized that sound. It was the mechanical ping of an encrypted emergency beacon—the exact model her father had carried before he disappeared into the federal prison system twenty years ago.
"Belvin..." she breathed, grabbing his sleeve. "Look at the windshield."
Scratched into the dust on the driver’s side window with a sharp blade were three letters and a set of coordinates: J.R. — 40.7128° N, 74.0060° W.
J.R.
Julian Rivers. Belvin’s older brother. The man who was supposed to have died in the Brooklyn warehouse fire in ninety-nine.
Belvin stared at the windshield, his face draining of all color. For the first time since Naomi had met him, the legendary mob boss looked utterly, terrifyingly shaken.
"That's Julian's code," Belvin whispered, his voice trembling slightly. "No one else knew that scratch pattern. No one."
"He's alive," Naomi said, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. "Your brother is alive."
Before Belvin could process the impossible revelation, the trunk of the black sedan popped open with a loud, pneumatic hiss.
Belvin raised his Glock instantly, stepping in front of Naomi, shielding her body with his own as Titan let out a deep, ferocious roar that shook the surrounding trees.
May you like
Slowly, the heavy trunk lid lifted all the way up.
Inside, bound loosely by nylon zip-ties and gagged with a cloth strip, was an elderly man with sharp, familiar cheekbones, silver hair, and dark, piercing eyes that looked up at them through a haze of exhaustion and pain. On his lap rested a heavy, fire-scarred leather ledger—the exact book Naomi’s mother had died trying to protect.
