Chapter 2 - The City He Set on Fire
Taylor Rossi had always ruled through control. The morning I disappeared, he lost it.
I learned the details weeks later from encrypted news reports, criminal forums, and a frightened telephone call from someone who had once worked inside the Rossi organization. Taylor returned to the penthouse after searching the building’s underground tunnels and found my diamond necklace resting on the financial ledger. Beneath it, I had written the words he had given me.
I mean nothing.
He stared at the message for nearly five minutes.
Then he destroyed the room.
The first chair struck the window hard enough to splinter. The second went through a glass display cabinet. Taylor swept bottles, lamps, and framed photographs from every surface while armed guards stood in silence.
Vincent claimed the chaos proved I had been abducted.
Taylor almost believed him.
Almost.
But the disabled cameras, the opened maintenance route, and the missing financial files suggested planning. I had not been taken.
I had escaped.
That realization was more unbearable to him than kidnapping.
Taylor ordered every airport, train station, hotel, and private marina watched. Police officers on his payroll received my photograph. Taxi dispatchers were bribed. Homeless informants searched subway platforms. Men visited my old apartment, my mother’s house, my brother’s campus, and every restaurant I had entered during the previous five years.
No one found me.
Taylor concluded the Morettis were hiding me.
By the second night, Rossi soldiers raided a Moretti casino in Brooklyn. They removed the customers, emptied the safe, and set the building on fire.
The next morning, a warehouse belonging to Rossi Enterprises exploded near the waterfront.
New York’s hidden war had begun.
I watched it unfold from a rented cottage near the Oregon coast.
Elias Fletcher, the forger who created my new identity, had selected the location because it was small enough to disappear in and distant enough from Taylor’s territory. Beneath the name Chloe Jenkins, I rented a weathered house overlooking a gray stretch of ocean.
I cut my hair to my shoulders and dyed it black. Brown contact lenses concealed my blue eyes. I wore secondhand clothes and avoided cameras.
Freedom felt strange.
For years, someone had always known where I was. Guards opened doors, drivers waited at curbs, and Taylor’s voice followed me through every room.
Now there was only wind, rain, and silence.
I should have felt safe.
Instead, I woke every night expecting to see Taylor standing beside my bed.
The backpack remained within reach at all times.
During the day, I studied the evidence. The files revealed a conspiracy more complicated than I had imagined.
Vincent had been meeting with Leonardo Moretti for at least four years. He transferred shipping schedules, police payroll lists, and the identities of Rossi informants. In return, the Morettis helped him build a private financial network.
But Vincent was not the highest-ranking traitor.
Several authorization codes belonged to Taylor’s uncle, Dominic Rossi, the respected family adviser who had helped raise Taylor after his parents died.
Dominic had spent years convincing Taylor that every threat came from outside the family.
Meanwhile, he was selling the empire piece by piece.
My father had discovered part of the arrangement while investigating Northstar Strategic Services. Vincent and Dominic ordered his death before he could expose them.
Taylor had not known.
That fact should have brought relief.
It did not erase three years of captivity or the words he had spoken at the gala.
“You mean nothing to me.”
I repeated them whenever memories softened.
On the fifth day, an encrypted message appeared on one of the stolen drives.
The sender used a communication key known only to Rossi accountants.
You took something that belongs to us. Return it, or your mother dies first.
A photograph followed.
My mother stood outside a grocery store in Vermont.
The image had been taken that morning.
I nearly dropped the laptop.
I had expected Taylor to search for me. I had not expected Vincent to discover the offshore communication system so quickly.
I opened a secure telephone and called my brother, Daniel.
He answered after the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Daniel, listen carefully. Don’t say my name.”
Silence.
Then his breathing changed.
“Alex?”
“You and Mom are in danger.”
“We thought you were dead.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
His voice broke. “What happened to you?”
“Leave Vermont tonight. Take Mom somewhere crowded and public. Don’t use your own car or credit cards.”
“Who are we running from?”
Before I could answer, someone knocked on the cottage door.
Three slow knocks.
My blood went cold.
No one knew where I lived.
I closed the laptop and reached for the small pistol Elias had provided.
The knocking came again.
“Chloe?” called an elderly voice. “It’s Mrs. Palmer. Your package was delivered to my porch.”
I exhaled shakily.
“Daniel, go now. I’ll contact you again.”
I ended the call and looked through the peephole.
Mrs. Palmer stood outside holding a brown box.
Behind her, across the road, a black SUV idled beneath the rain.
The driver was invisible.
I opened the door only a few inches.
“Thank you.”
Mrs. Palmer smiled. “You’ve got visitors?”
“No.”
She glanced toward the SUV. “That vehicle has been there for ten minutes.”
The engine started.
The SUV pulled away.
I brought the package inside and placed it on the kitchen table. There was no return address.
I opened it carefully.
Inside was Taylor’s black silk tie, folded around a burner telephone.
The phone rang.
Every instinct told me not to answer.
I did anyway.
“Hello?”
Taylor’s voice entered the room.
“Are you injured?”
For a moment, I could not speak.
Not Where are you?
Not What did you steal?
His first question was whether I was hurt.
“That depends,” I said. “Did you fire the shot?”
“No.”
“Vincent?”
“I don’t know.”
“You trusted him more than you trusted me.”
“I trusted him since I was seventeen.”
“And you knew me for three years.”
“Alex—”
“That isn’t my name anymore.”
His breathing sharpened.
“Vincent believes the Morettis took you.”
“Vincent knows exactly why I left.”
“What do you have?”
“Proof that he betrayed you.”
“Send it to me.”
“So you can destroy it?”
“So I can protect you.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You pointed a gun at me.”
“I thought you were carrying account records that could expose every person beneath my protection.”
“I was.”
“Then you understand why I reacted.”
“No, Taylor. I understand why you chose your empire over me. You made that choice every day.”
Silence settled between us.
When he spoke again, the command had disappeared from his voice.
“Tell me where you are.”
“No.”
“People are dying.”
“Because you started a war.”
“I started it because I believed they had taken you.”
“You burned a casino because you missed your accountant?”
His answer came quietly.
“I have not slept since you left.”
The words struck somewhere I had worked hard to numb.
I gripped the phone tighter.
“You said I meant nothing.”
“I lied.”
“Why?”
“Because Isabella’s return was part of a negotiation. Dominic warned me the Morettis had identified you as my weakness. He said they would use you against me unless I convinced everyone—including you—that I did not care.”
“You humiliated me to protect me?”
“I thought anger would keep you alive.”
“It made me leave.”
“I know.”
The regret in his voice sounded real.
That frightened me more than his anger ever had.
“Taylor, Dominic is involved.”
Silence.
“Explain.”
“He and Vincent approved payments to Northstar Strategic Services. Those payments funded murders, including my father’s.”
“Your father died in an accident.”
“He was investigating them.”
“Send me the evidence.”
“I can’t trust you.”
“You can trust that I will destroy anyone responsible.”
“That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”
A movement outside caught my attention.
Two men crossed the road toward the cottage.
They wore rain jackets, but their posture was unmistakably military.
“Taylor,” I whispered.
“What?”
“They found me.”
The front window shattered.
I dropped to the floor as a bullet struck the kitchen wall.
Taylor shouted through the phone.
“Alex! Get out!”
The cottage’s back door burst inward.
I fired once toward the doorway and ran into the bedroom. One of the attackers followed. I slammed the door against him, climbed through the window, and landed in wet grass.
Rain blinded me as I sprinted toward the cliffs.
A second man appeared near the road.
There was nowhere to go.
Then the black SUV returned.
It skidded across the gravel, and the rear door flew open.
A woman leaned out.
“Get in!”
I recognized her immediately.
Isabella Costa.
I hesitated only a second before diving into the vehicle.
Gunfire struck the rear window as the SUV accelerated.
Isabella pulled me down behind the seat.
“You are difficult to rescue,” she said.
I stared at her.
“What are you doing here?”
“Preventing Vincent from killing the woman Taylor is destroying New York to find.”
I still held the burner phone.
Taylor’s voice came through the speaker.
“Alex? Answer me!”
Isabella took the phone from my hand.
“She’s alive,” she told him. “For the moment.”
Taylor’s reply was so cold it seemed to lower the temperature inside the vehicle.
“Bring her home.”
Isabella looked toward me.
“She may not want to come.”
“Then keep her safe until I reach you.”
The call ended.
I sat trembling while the cottage disappeared behind us.
“Why are you helping him?” I asked.
Isabella gave me a strange smile.
“I’m not helping Taylor.”
She reached into her coat and handed me a photograph.
It showed my father standing beside a younger woman outside a federal courthouse.
May you like
The woman was Isabella’s mother.
“I’m helping you finish what our parents started.”
