Chapter 3 - The Woman Called Lillian
Vivien reached the rear exit two seconds before the guard caught her arm.
His fingers closed around the sleeve of her gray coat.
She twisted violently, leaving the coat in his hand, and pushed through the door into a freezing service lane behind the station.
Snow struck her face.
The Omaha bus had begun pulling away from Gate 4.
Vivien sprinted toward it, waving both arms.
The driver saw her and slowed.
Behind her, the guard shouted.
Vivien reached the folding door just as it opened.
“My bag was stolen,” she gasped. “Please, I already have a ticket.”
The driver looked past her toward the approaching men.
Something in Vivien’s terrified expression made his decision.
“Get in.”
She climbed aboard.
The door closed, and the bus accelerated into traffic.
Through the rear window, Vivien watched the two men stop beneath the station lights.
One raised a phone to his ear.
She sank into the nearest empty seat, struggling to breathe.
Her coat was gone.
Her hands shook uncontrollably.
The other passengers stared, but no one spoke.
A teenage girl across the aisle removed an oversized sweatshirt from her backpack and offered it to Vivien.
“You look cold.”
Vivien accepted it.
“Thank you.”
The girl glanced toward the back window.
“Were those men police?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
The girl studied her, then turned away as if deciding she did not want to know more.
Vivien pulled the sweatshirt over her sweater and placed both hands against her stomach.
“You’re safe,” she whispered. “You’re safe.”
But she no longer believed it.
The men at the station knew which route she had taken. Mateo had access to Harrison’s network, or someone had betrayed him.
Vivien could not contact Harrison again. The call might already have been traced.
She needed to reach Montana without following any predictable path.
Over the next thirty-six hours, Vivien moved through Omaha, North Platte, Denver, and Casper. She paid cash for every ticket, changed her hair by cutting several inches inside a gas-station restroom, and purchased dark dye from a pharmacy.
In a motel outside Casper, she stared at herself in a cracked mirror while the copper color disappeared beneath deep brown.
The woman looking back no longer resembled Dominic Russo’s elegant wife.
Her cheeks were hollow from exhaustion. Her eyes remained swollen. Her clothes were inexpensive and mismatched.
She looked ordinary.
For the first time in years, ordinary felt like freedom.
It also felt lonely.
Vivien slept for four hours and dreamed of Dominic standing before the fireplace. In the dream, he held their baby but had blood covering both hands.
She woke with a cry.
The motel room was dark.
For a moment, she reached instinctively toward the empty space beside her.
Then she remembered.
Dominic was not there.
He would never be there again.
Vivien turned on the bedside lamp and opened her duffel. Beneath the cash and clothing was a small photograph from their wedding.
She had intended to leave every reminder behind.
She did not remember packing this one.
In the image, Dominic stood behind her beneath white roses, his hand resting at her waist. Everyone else looked toward the camera.
Dominic looked only at Vivien.
She traced his face with one finger.
“You should have told me the truth,” she whispered.
Her anger came suddenly.
“You should have trusted me enough to let me choose.”
She tore the photograph in half.
Then she pressed both pieces together again, unable to destroy it.
By the time she reached Billings, a winter storm had closed several roads.
Vivien entered a nearly empty diner across from the bus station and sat in the back booth. Harrison had told her that Ruth Calder would wear a red scarf and order black coffee without drinking it.
At 6:20 p.m., an older woman entered.
She was in her late sixties, tall, silver-haired, and dressed in worn jeans beneath a heavy ranch coat. A red scarf circled her neck.
She ordered black coffee.
Then she carried the cup to Vivien’s booth.
“You are Lillian?” she asked.
Vivien said nothing.
Ruth sat across from her.
“Harrison said you would be careful. He did not say you would look half-frozen.”
“How do I know he sent you?”
Ruth placed an old photograph on the table.
It showed Harrison as a young man standing beside Vivien’s father outside a courthouse.
On the back, in her father’s handwriting, were the words: Every person deserves one honest defender.
Vivien’s throat tightened.
“Where did you get this?”
“Your father gave it to Harrison. Harrison gave it to me twenty-one years ago, when he needed somewhere to disappear.”
Ruth pushed the coffee aside.
“We should leave.”
“Why do you hate the Russo Syndicate?”
The older woman’s expression changed.
“My son worked at the docks in Chicago. He saw a shipment he was not supposed to see. Three days later, police found his truck at the bottom of the Calumet River.”
Vivien lowered her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry does not raise the dead.”
Ruth’s voice was not cruel, only tired.
“Was Dominic responsible?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why help me?”
“Because unborn children are not responsible for their fathers.”
Ruth stood.
“That is enough for tonight.”
They drove for nearly four hours in an aging pickup truck. Snow thickened as they left the main highway and followed narrow roads into the foothills.
The cabin stood beyond a frozen lake surrounded by black pine trees. It had no internet connection, no nearby neighbors, and no address visible from the road.
Ruth unlocked the door.
Inside were two bedrooms, a wood stove, canned food, medical supplies, and shelves of old novels.
“You can stay until the baby comes,” Ruth said.
Vivien stared at her.
“That could be seven months.”
“Harrison paid for eight.”
“Where is he?”
Ruth’s silence answered before her words did.
“I have not heard from him since yesterday.”
Fear moved through Vivien.
“Do you think they found him?”
“I think Harrison has survived worse men than Mateo Serrano.”
“You know Mateo?”
“I know his name.”
Ruth added wood to the stove.
“And I know he was in charge of the docks when my son died.”
Vivien looked toward the dark window.
A pattern was emerging, but she could not yet see its shape.
Mateo had searched for her independently.
Mateo had controlled the docks.
Mateo had been connected to Peter Walsh.
Perhaps Dominic was not the only monster in his organization.
The possibility did not absolve her husband.
But it changed the danger.
In Chicago, Dominic began performing grief for the man who had betrayed him.
He stopped attending meetings. He allowed shipments to be delayed and payments to go uncollected. He appeared drunk at a private club and deliberately lost an argument before two captains.
Mateo watched with concealed satisfaction.
“Let me handle the organization,” he told Dominic on the tenth day. “Until we recover Mrs. Russo.”
Dominic sat behind his desk, an untouched glass of bourbon before him.
“You think I cannot lead?”
“I think you are in pain.”
“I have been in pain before.”
“Not like this.”
Mateo stepped closer.
“Love has made you careless.”
Dominic looked at him.
“Perhaps.”
The single word encouraged Mateo.
“We received a possible sighting in Iowa. A woman matching Vivien’s description boarded a bus toward Omaha.”
Dominic already knew.
Gabriel had traced the two guards Mateo sent.
“Did your men speak with her?”
Mateo’s eyes flickered.
“My men?”
“Do not insult me.”
Silence filled the room.
Then Mateo smiled faintly.
“We all want the same thing.”
“No,” Dominic said. “I want my wife alive.”
“And you believe I do not?”
Dominic leaned back.
“I believe you want whatever she took.”
Mateo’s smile disappeared.
Before either man moved, Gabriel entered without knocking.
“We found Harrison Cole.”
Dominic stood.
“Alive?”
“For now.”
Mateo’s expression remained controlled, but the muscles in his jaw tightened.
“Where?”
“An abandoned warehouse near Cicero.”
Dominic walked toward the door.
Mateo followed.
Gabriel blocked his path.
“The boss gave no instruction for you to come.”
For one dangerous second, neither man spoke.
Then Mateo adjusted his cuff.
“Of course.”
At the warehouse, Harrison Cole hung from a chair by his bound wrists. Blood covered one side of his face. Two dead men lay near the loading entrance.
He had killed them before a third attacker struck him from behind.
Dominic cut him loose.
“Where is she?”
Harrison laughed weakly.
“You think I would tell you?”
“I am not the person who did this.”
“You are the reason it happened.”
Dominic accepted the accusation.
“Mateo is hunting her.”
Harrison’s expression sharpened.
“Why?”
“Because she found evidence of his betrayal.”
“Or because you are using his name to reach her.”
Dominic placed Vivien’s wedding ring on the floor between them.
“She is pregnant.”
Harrison stared at it.
The anger in his face shifted.
“She told you?”
“She left a recording.”
Dominic crouched.
“I will not force her to return. But Mateo will kill her if he believes she can expose him.”
Harrison studied Dominic’s face for a long time.
“What happens after you save her?”
“That is her decision.”
“You expect me to believe the great Dominic Russo will allow his wife to walk away with his heir?”
The old language of ownership made Dominic feel sick.
He had once used it without thought.
“My child is not an heir,” he said. “And Vivien is not property.”
Harrison leaned back against the chair.
“Maybe losing her taught you one honest sentence.”
“Where is she?”
“I do not know her exact location. I arranged layers.”
“Who has the final address?”
“A woman in Montana.”
“Name?”
Harrison closed his eyes.
“Ruth Calder.”
Dominic rose.
Gabriel searched a database on his phone.
After less than a minute, his face hardened.
“Boss, Mateo’s people accessed records connected to a Ruth Calder forty minutes ago.”
Dominic turned toward the warehouse door.
“How long until they find her?”
Gabriel looked at the snowstorm map spreading across his screen.
“Not long.”
At the cabin, Vivien woke to the sound of Ruth loading a shotgun.
The older woman stood beside the front window with the lights off.
“What is it?” Vivien whispered.
Ruth raised one finger for silence.
Across the frozen lake, headlights appeared between the trees.
One vehicle.
Then another.
Then a third.
Ruth handed Vivien a heavy coat and pointed toward the back door.
“There is a snowmobile behind the shed.”
Vivien’s heart began pounding.
“What about you?”
“I will delay them.”
“No.”
“You are carrying a child. This is not the time for bravery.”
Ruth opened the shotgun.
“Take the northern trail. Do not stop until you reach the ranger station.”
The headlights turned onto the cabin road.
Vivien grabbed her duffel.
A gunshot shattered the front window.
Ruth pulled her to the floor.
Men shouted outside.
The cabin walls shook as bullets tore through the wood.
Vivien crawled toward the rear door, both arms wrapped protectively around her stomach.
Before she reached it, the door burst inward.
A man in a black coat stepped through with a pistol raised.
Vivien recognized him from Chicago.
Mateo’s captain.
May you like
He smiled.
“Mrs. Russo,” he said. “Your husband has been looking everywhere for you.”
