Chapter 2 - Shadows on Skid Row
The Los Angeles heat radiated from the cracked asphalt, thick with the stench of exhaust, rotting garbage, and despair. Parker drove the tinted SUV thirty yards behind the girls, keeping pace with their halting, uneven progress.
Through the windshield, my hands gripped my knees so hard my knuckles turned bone white. Every time the shopping cart’s rusted front caster locked up, Lily stumbled. Her tiny shoulder dipped, the worn cotton of her oversized shirt slipping to reveal that faint, milk-pale crescent birthmark.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a caged beast.
*Six years.*
Six years of waking up in a cold sweat, reaching for a phantom crying in the dark. Six years of hiring mercenaries, private investigators, former Mossad agents, and tech trackers who all hit dead ends. The LAPD had called it an open-and-shut kidnapping gone wrong; they’d told me to accept that my nine-month-old daughter had drowned in the Pacific after the ransom boat vanished into a storm. They had even handed me an empty coffin to bury.
Yet here she was. Alive. Pushing garbage through the belly of the city.
"Boss," Parker murmured, his eyes flicking between the street and the rearview mirror. "They’re turning south onto San Julian. Deeper into Skid Row. We’re losing clean sightlines. The tents are four deep on the sidewalk."
"Stay on them," I said, my voice low and dangerously steady. "If anyone touches a hair on their heads, kill them where they stand."
"Understood."
The girls veered into an alleyway between two decaying brick warehouses. Spray-painted gang tags smeared the brickwork, and broken glass glinted beneath discarded pallets. Rose, the darker-haired girl who had shielded Lily, kept glancing nervously over her shoulder. Her survival instincts were sharper than those of most grown men I employed. She knew someone was lingering, even if she couldn't see us through the tint.
The cart came to a final stop beside the fire escape of a partially collapsed four-story tenement. The ground floor windows were boarded up with plywood, but a cellar door stood propped open with an iron pipe.
Rose grabbed Lily’s hand, leaving the cart behind, and practically dragged her down into the darkness of the basement.
"Parker. Now."
I didn't wait for him to circle around. I kicked open the heavy door of the SUV and hit the pavement running. Four of my personal security team poured out of the trailing black Escalade, their tailored jackets sweeping back to reveal holstered sidearms.
"Surround the perimeter," I commanded quietly, adrenaline coursing through my veins. "No sirens. No loud breaches. I go in first."
"Dante, wait," Parker warned, stepping up beside me, his Glock already chambered. "We don't know who’s down there. If this is a setup—"
"If it’s a trap, I’ll burn the building down around them," I replied. "Cover the exit."
I pulled a tactical flashlight from my coat and descended the slick concrete steps. The air grew colder, damp with mildew and stagnant water. As my polished Italian leather shoes hit the flooded floorboards, a sound drifted through the gloom.
A violent, rattling cough.
Then, a child’s trembling voice: *"Mama... we brought the bottles. We got forty cents. We can buy the soup."*
I moved forward silently, rounding a rotting drywall partition. The beam of my flashlight caught the scene, and the sheer cruelty of it nearly broke my knees.
In the corner of a windowless cellar, resting on a stained mattress thrown directly over concrete, lay a woman. She was skin and bones, her cheeks sunken, her skin coated in a grayish sweat. She looked barely thirty, but illness had aged her by decades.
Kneeling beside her were the two little girls. Lily was pressing a plastic bottle filled with murky tap water to the woman's chapped lips, while Rose smoothed back strands of the woman's matted hair.
Suddenly, the beam of my light cut across the room.
Rose shrieked, instantly throwing her small body across Lily and the dying woman. "Get back! Don't touch her! We didn't steal nothing! Please!"
Lily buried her face in Rose’s shirt, trembling violently.
I immediately tilted the flashlight toward the ceiling, softening the glare so it only illuminated the room with a warm, gentle glow. I went down on one knee, raising both hands empty in front of me.
"Nobody is going to hurt you," I said, fighting to keep the tremor out of my voice. "I swear to God on my life, no one is hurting you."
The sick woman opened glassy, bloodshot eyes. She squinted through the dimness, her gaze locking onto my face. For a second, nothing happened. Then, her pupils dilated with pure, unadulterated terror.
"You..." she rasped, blood flecking her lips as another cough seized her frail chest. "Dante... Moretti..."
A shockwave ripped through my spine.
I didn't know this woman. I had never seen her in my life. Yet she knew my name.
"Who are you?" I demanded softly, stepping closer. "How do you know who I am?"
The woman began to weep, tears cutting pale tracks through the grime on her hollow cheeks. "I didn't... I didn't want to hurt them, Mr. Moretti. I swear... I couldn't do it. They told me to drop the baby in the marina... they said they’d kill my brother if I didn't... but I couldn't throw an innocent baby into the ocean."
The room spun. The floor seemed to tilt beneath my boots.
Six years ago, the private investigator found baby clothes soaked in saltwater washed ashore near San Pedro. A death certificate had been issued. I had held a service. I had spent six years living in an emotional graveyard.
"You took her," I whispered, the words tasting like ash. "You took my Marie."
"Not alone..." The woman choked, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. "I was just... a maid in your house. Elena. I worked the night shift on the east wing... but it wasn't my plan. He paid the guards. He shut off the security cameras. He handed her to me through the terrace doors..."
I stopped breathing. The air turned to lead. "Who?"
Elena reached down with trembling, skeletal fingers. She pulled Rose toward Lily, holding both tiny girls against her chest.
"Two of them..." Elena sobbed. "You only thought... there was one. But your wife... Clara... she had two girls that night at the private clinic. He hid the second child before you even arrived from New York... he kept Rose hidden to use as a backup... to blackmail Clara..."
My mind shattered.
*Twins.*
I looked at Rose. Her wide, defiant hazel eyes. The stubborn angle of her chin. The exact shape of Clara’s brow. Clara had died three months after Marie was taken, wasting away from grief, a broken heart that simply stopped beating. Or so the doctors had claimed.
"Who did this?" I roared, the composure cracking, my voice echoing off the brick walls like thunder.
Both little girls began to cry in terror. Seeing their fear, I instantly bit back my rage, sinking back onto my knee, my hands shaking uncontrollably. "Please. Elena. Tell me who gave them to you."
Elena gripped a silver chain hanging around her neck. At the end of it was a single brass key.
May you like
"Julian..." Elena gasped, her pulse fluttering visibly in her throat. "Julian Vance... your partner. He found us three days ago. He knows... he knows I didn't kill them. His men... they’re coming here tonight to finish it."
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