THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME CROSS HIS DINING ROOM ON MY TOES

The hallway spun.

Mrs. Gable, the kind woman who baked oatmeal cookies and knitted sweaters for Toby, was holding a gun to my six-year-old son.

“Drop the gun, Mr. Moretti,” Mrs. Gable said. Her voice wasn’t shaking. It was cold. Professional.

Luca didn’t lower his weapon. His eyes shifted from Thomas to Mrs. Gable.

“Who are you?” Luca demanded.

“I’m the person who has been living next door to the architect’s widow for three years, waiting for her to find what her husband hid,” she said flatly. “Drop it. Or the boy dies.”

Toby was frozen, his wide eyes staring at the dark metal barrel inches from his temple.

“Don’t hurt him,” I begged, dropping to my knees. “Please, Mary. He loves you.”

“Shut up, Rachel,” she snapped, dropping her grandmotherly act entirely. “Drop the gun, Luca.”

Luca slowly lowered the Sig Sauer. He placed it on the marble floor and kicked it away.

Thomas let out a ragged breath and stood up, clutching his broken hand against his chest. He walked over and picked up Luca’s gun.

He aimed it at Luca.

“Check his ankles, Mary,” Thomas ordered.

Mrs. Gable kept her gun on Toby while she quickly patted down Luca’s legs. “Clean.”

“Good,” Thomas said. “Now, we are all going to take a nice, quiet ride to Pier 41.”

“Why?” Luca asked, his voice dead calm.

“Because that’s where the blueprints are,” Thomas said. He looked at me. “Your husband was clever, Rachel. He knew I was onto him. So he hid the master schematics in the one place he knew his wife would eventually go.”

I stared at him, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“David set up a dummy corporation to hire your cleaning company,” Thomas explained, a cruel smile on his face. “He specifically requested you for the Pier 41 route. He hid the blueprints down there, knowing that if anything happened to him, you would eventually find them while cleaning.”

“I never found anything!” I cried.

“Because you didn’t know what to look for,” Mrs. Gable said.

Thomas gestured with the gun. “Move. Down the service stairs. We take my SUV.”

We were marched down the narrow back stairwell of the estate. My ankle screamed with every step, but I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled to keep from making a sound.

I held Toby’s hand so tightly his fingers turned white. He was crying silently, tears tracking down his dirty cheeks.

We reached the underground garage. Thomas’s black SUV was parked near the exit.

“Get in the back,” Thomas ordered. “Mary, drive.”

Mrs. Gable slid into the driver’s seat. Thomas sat in the passenger seat, his gun trained on us in the back.

The heavy garage doors opened, and we sped out into the rainy night.

The drive to the port took twenty minutes. It felt like a lifetime.

Luca sat beside me, his thigh pressed against mine. He wasn’t looking at Thomas. He was looking at the passing streetlights, counting the intersections. Memorizing the route.

He reached over and gently took my hand, squeezing it once. It was a silent promise.

I will not let you die.

We pulled into the abandoned lot of Pier 41. The massive, rust-covered warehouse loomed in the darkness against the crashing waves of the ocean.

“Out,” Thomas barked.

We stepped out into the freezing rain.

Thomas forced us through a side door and down a flight of concrete stairs into the basement offices.

It looked exactly as I remembered it. Fluorescent lights humming loudly. Gray carpet. Rows of empty cubicles.

“Where did he hide them, Rachel?” Thomas asked, pointing his gun at my chest.

“I told you, I don’t know!”

Thomas cocked the hammer. “Think harder. You cleaned this place every week for a year.”

I panicked, looking frantically around the empty office.

Desks. Chairs. Filing cabinets.

Wait.

I looked at the heavy steel door at the back of the room. It was the server room.

“The server room,” I blurted out. “David loved electronics. If he hid something, he would put it near the wiring.”

Thomas smiled. “Open it.”

He tossed me a ring of keys.

I walked to the door on shaking legs. I found the right key and unlocked it.

The room was dark and smelled like ozone. Tall black server racks lined the walls, covered in thick dust.

“Check the panels,” Thomas ordered Luca.

Luca walked to the nearest rack. He pulled a small pocket knife from his watch pocket—Thomas hadn’t checked his watch—and unscrewed the metal casing of the server.

He pulled the panel away.

Inside, taped to the back of the metal plate, was a thick, yellow manila envelope.

Thomas’s eyes lit up with greedy triumph.

“Give it to me,” Thomas demanded.

Luca held the envelope. He didn’t hand it over.

“These blueprints give the Rossis complete access to our smuggling routes,” Luca said. “You hand these over, and my family falls.”

“That’s the idea, boss,” Thomas laughed.

Suddenly, a loud, heavy metallic CLANG echoed from the stairwell.

Someone else was in the building.

Thomas spun around, raising his weapon toward the door. Mrs. Gable panicked, stepping backward.

“Who is that?” Mrs. Gable hissed.

“I didn’t tell anyone else to come early!” Thomas said, his arrogance cracking.