Chapter 4 - The Terminal StationThe kitchen doors swung shut behind Wren as she pushed her way out of the main dining room, but Nathaniel’s words echoed louder than the clatter of pots and pans. He's still alive.
She didn't go back to the locker room to grab her coat. She walked straight through the back exit into the humid Providence alleyway, the evening air hitting her hot skin like a cold splash of water. Her chest heaved. For twelve years, she had carried the guilt of her father’s supposed suicide—the haunting finality of the police report, the cold water of Narragansett Bay, the endless nights of wondering if she could have said something different the morning he left.
And now, a man in a tailored suit sitting with a giant mastiff casually drops the truth like a discarded receipt.
"You shouldn't walk alone in this district after dark," a deep voice murmured from the shadows near the brick wall.
Wren spun around. It wasn't Nathaniel. It was a man she recognized from the service entrance—one of the quiet, burly individuals who usually stood outside the restaurant’s private back lot, smoking cigarettes and watching the street corners.
"Leave me alone," Wren snapped, stepping backward.
"Mr. Vance doesn't leave loose ends, Miss Kelly," the man said, his tone entirely neutral, neither threatening nor kind. "And he certainly doesn't let people walk away from table eleven until the conversation is finished."
"I am not his employee, and I am not his prisoner," Wren snarled, raising a hand. "If he wants to talk to me, he can come out here himself instead of sending his shadows."
A door clicked open behind the guard. Nathaniel stepped out into the alley, his suit jacket unbuttoned, the massive black mastiff walking silently at his side. The dim amber streetlamp cast long, jagged shadows across the wet pavement.
"She's right," Nathaniel said, stopping a few feet away. He looked at the guard with a subtle tilt of his head, and the man immediately stepped back into the shadows, disappearing without a sound.
"You think you can control everything," Wren said, her voice shaking as she crossed her arms against the chill. "You think because you have money, because you can clear a hospital debt with a stroke of a pen, that people are just pieces on a board for you to move around."
"No," Nathaniel replied quietly. "I know people are unpredictable. That's why I buy stability. Your father was unpredictable. He thought he could steal from the docks and outrun the port syndicate. He was wrong. But you... you've spent twelve years keeping a sinking restaurant afloat, gluing your shoes back together, and carrying a debt that wasn't yours to begin with. You have his hands, Wren. I saw you fix the espresso machine line yesterday when the head technician was too blind to see the gasket fracture."
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Wren blinked, caught off guard. "How do you know about the espresso machine?"
"I own the building, Wren. I own the block. I know every gear that turns in this neighborhood." Nathaniel took a step closer, close enough that she could smell the faint scent of cedar and expensive tobacco. "Your father didn't just leave you debt. He left behind a vault. And right now, three very dangerous people from Boston are looking for the key."
