Chapter 5 - The Hunt Begins
“Marco!” I bellowed, sprinting down the grand staircase two steps at a time, the pain in my healing shoulder tearing open beneath my shirt. “Get every vehicle on the road! Block the train stations, the bus terminals, the bridges out of the borough! No one leaves Brooklyn!”
Marco scrambled behind me, pulling out his encrypted phone, barking orders to the capos stationed across the city. “On it, Boss! What are we looking for?!”
“A woman with a child and a stuffed rabbit!” I roared, bursting through the front doors of the estate into the biting morning air.
My men moved with terrifying, clockwork efficiency. Within fifteen minutes, fifty black sedans were fanned out across the Lower East Side, combing through bus stops, subway entrances, and cheap motels.
I sat in the back of my own vehicle, clutching Poppy the rabbit so tightly my knuckles turned white. The fabric was damp from my own sweat.
How could I have been so blind?
I had spent nineteen years building a fortress of fear because I thought love was a weakness—a fatal flaw that invited enemies to carve out your heart. I had surrounded myself with killers and accountants, believing that power was the only shield worth having.
And yet, a three-year-old girl had walked into the darkest room in my life, handed me a paper heart, and taught me more about sacrifice in one month than my entire bloodline had in a lifetime.
If anything happened to her—if the cruel, unforgiving streets of this city swallowed her up because of an order I had spoken in blind, unthinking rage—I would burn the entire borough of Brooklyn to cinders. I would tear down every brick, every dock, and every safehouse until I found her.
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“Boss,” Marco said from the front passenger seat, his phone pressed tightly to his ear, his voice tight with tension. “We got a hit. A station attendant at the Atlantic Avenue subway terminal thinks he saw a woman matching Clara’s description about twenty minutes ago. She looked distressed, carrying a heavy duffel bag, heading toward the southbound platform.”
“Drive,” I ordered, my voice dropping into a subterranean growl. “Step on it.”
