Chapter 4 - Shadows and Bullet Holes
The third-floor walk-up in Astoria was quiet, dark, and unmistakably compromised.
Khloe stood in the shadowed hallway outside her apartment door, her hand resting on the suppressed pistol Frank had discreetly slipped into her jacket before they left the docks. Her military instincts screamed a warning before her eyes even registered the signs: the deadbolt had been picked with surgical precision, and a faint smudge of industrial boot-black stained the white doorframe.
She didn't knock. She didn't hesitate.
With a swift, practiced kick, she swung the door wide, sweeping the small living room with her weapon raised.
Empty.
The apartment had been completely tossed. Drawers were upended, cushions slashed, and her laptop was missing from the kitchen counter. But it wasn't the ransacked mess that made her breath catch in her throat—it was the single, heavy object sitting on the center of her kitchen table.
A silver pocket watch.
Recognizable instantly. It was her father’s watch. The one he had been wearing the night he died—the one the police claimed had been lost in the rubble of Pier 42.
Clack.
A metallic sound echoed from the open window leading to the fire escape.
Khloe didn't call out. She pivoted on her heel, lunged across the living room, and crashed through the window frame just as a dark figure in a tactical hoodie dropped over the iron railing toward the alley below.
“Freeze!” Khloe shouted, leaning over the railing and leveling her pistol.
The figure didn't freeze. He fired two rapid rounds upward. Splinters exploded from the brick wall inches from Khloe’s head. She returned fire, her bullet clipping the assassin’s shoulder before he vanished into the labyrinth of Queens alleyways.
“Damn it,” Khloe cursed, lowering her smoking weapon.
Behind her, heavy footsteps echoed up the wooden stairwell.
“Khloe!”
Arthur burst through the apartment door, pistol drawn, flanked by Leo and Frank, who still had his arm in a sling. They swept the room in seconds, weapons ready.
“Clear,” Frank panted, lowering his gun. Then he saw the ransacked room and the silver pocket watch on the table.
Arthur walked slowly over to the kitchen table. He looked down at the watch, his face turning pale as ancient stone.
“It’s Robert’s,” Arthur whispered.
“They left it here as a message,” Khloe said, her voice shaking slightly with cold fury as she walked back inside. “They’re telling me they know who I am, they know what I took from the docks, and they’re hunting me.”
Arthur looked up, his dark eyes burning with an intensity that brooked no argument. “You’re not sleeping another night in this city alone, Khloe. Pack your bag. You’re coming to my estate in Westchester.”
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“I don't hide, Mr. Costello,” Khloe shot back.
“This isn't hiding, soldier,” Arthur snapped back, using her military title with absolute authority. “This is consolidating our forces. If Marcus wants a war, we’re going to give him one—on our terms.”
