Chapter 6 - THE GHOST OF BROOKLYNMy hands shook violently against the steering wheel.
Turn around and hand my daughter over to a syndicate executioner, or run and leave the only family I had left—the uncle who had just bled to protect us—to die alone in a concrete tomb.
I slammed my foot down on the accelerator.
The Mercedes roared to life, tires spinning furiously in the mud before gripping the gravel driveway. I didn't head for the main gates where Marcus's men were waiting. Instead, I wrenched the wheel hard toward the service road leading down into the dense Brooklyn industrial district.
If Marcus thought I was going to play by his rules, he didn't understand what a mother pushed to the edge was capable of doing.
Twenty minutes later, I pulled the SUV into the shadows of an abandoned shipping yard near the East River. My phone buzzed violently in the cup holder—a secure burner line flashing with an incoming encrypted text message.
“Don't trust the safehouse in Queens. They switched sides. Come to the docks. Pier 42.”
The sender ID was masked, but at the bottom of the message was a single, unmistakable emoji: a silver locket.
Could it be Victor? Or was it a trap set by Marcus to flush me out?
"Hold on, baby," I whispered back to Lily, who was sleeping peacefully now, her breathing steady and deep.
I slipped the pistol Victor had given me out of my jacket pocket, releasing the safety with a trembling click, and stepped out into the freezing midnight fog.
The rusted metal gates of Pier 42 groaned in the howling wind off the river. As I stepped onto the wooden planks, a heavy shadow detached itself from the crane overhead and dropped silently onto the ground ten feet in front of me.
A tall figure in a dark trench coat stepped into the dim amber glow of a flickering overhead streetlamp.
It wasn't Marcus Vance.
And, to my utter shock, it wasn't Victor either.
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The man lowered his hood, revealing a scarred face, cold gray eyes, and a familiar silver ring on his right hand—the exact same crest carved into Lily's locket.
"Hello, niece," the man said softly, his voice cutting through the wind like a razor. "It’s been a long time since your mother and I spoke."
