Chapter 2 - The Boy on the Other End
Sebastian stared at the phone long after the connection disappeared.
Marco was the first to move.
“Trace it.”
Sebastian handed him the device.
Marco called the security operations room.
“Last incoming call. Now. I want tower data, routing, anything you can get.”
Arthur stood beside the desk, forgotten.
Sebastian picked up Luca’s photograph again.
A child.
His child.
He had lived five years in a city where people crossed streets when they saw his cars coming, where politicians returned his phone calls before their own spouses, where men who wanted him dead sometimes apologized before attempting it.
None of that power had told him he was a father.
“Play the call back,” he said.
Marco had already transferred it to the office system.
The recording filled the room.
Are you Sebastian?
Each word was small and cautious.
Then:
My mom said if anything happened, I should call my dad.
Sebastian closed his eyes.
“My mom.”
Not “my mother.”
Not “Meline.”
My mom.
Present tense.
Marco caught it too.
“He said ‘my mom said.’”
Sebastian opened his eyes.
“She’s alive.”
“Maybe.”
Sebastian looked at him.
Marco did not soften the truth.
“A frightened kid can talk about someone in the present tense even if—”
“She’s alive.”
Marco held his gaze for a second.
Then nodded.
“All right.”
A security analyst called back.
“Burner phone. Activated today. Call bounced through an internet relay, but the first tower ping was local.”
“How local?”
“East Houston.”
“Give me a radius.”
“About three miles.”
Marco turned toward Sebastian.
“Could be bait.”
“Of course it’s bait.”
“You’re going anyway.”
“Yes.”
Arthur finally spoke.
“Mr. Falcone, Meline was terrified someone inside your organization—”
Sebastian looked at him.
Arthur stopped.
Sebastian’s voice remained level.
“You are going to stay here tonight.”
“I have a wife.”
“And she will be brought here safely.”
“You can’t—”
“Someone came asking about Meline two weeks ago. If the Vescari know you carried this letter, your life stopped being ordinary the moment you walked into my building.”
Arthur’s argument died.
Sebastian turned to Marco.
“No large team.”
Marco shook his head.
“If there’s an internal leak, we don’t know who to trust.”
“Exactly.”
“Three cars. Men I choose personally.”
“Two cars. Four men total.”
Marco exhaled sharply.
“You just learned you have a son and now you’re trying to prove you’ve lost your mind?”
“I need speed, not an army.”
“You need to survive long enough to meet him.”
The sentence landed.
Sebastian glanced at Luca’s picture.
“Five men.”
Marco nodded.
“Good. Progress.”
Twenty-seven minutes later, Sebastian’s convoy moved east through rain so heavy the freeway signs blurred.
The storm had driven most traffic off the road.
Houston looked hollow.
Sebastian sat in the rear of an armored SUV, holding Meline’s letter beneath the dim interior light.
He read it again.
And again.
Each time, different words hurt.
I bought a tiny pair of shoes.
Our baby.
I will love you when I walk through your door again.
He remembered the week before she disappeared.
She had been distracted.
He had noticed.
Of course he had noticed.
At dinner she barely ate. Twice she stared at him as though about to say something, then changed the subject.
He assumed she was preparing to leave him.
How arrogant grief could make a man.
He had interpreted every frightened silence as evidence that she no longer wanted him.
Now he saw something else.
She had been saying goodbye.
Marco rode beside him.
“You keep reading it, the words aren’t going to change.”
“I know.”
“You want to tell me what you’re thinking?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll guess.”
Sebastian gave him a tired glance.
Marco continued.
“You’re blaming yourself.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“If I had seen what was happening—”
“There it is.”
Sebastian looked out the window.
“If she believed my own people were compromised, she should have told me.”
“And you would’ve done what?”
Sebastian said nothing.
Marco gave a humorless laugh.
“Exactly what she wrote. Started a war.”
“I would have protected her.”
“You would have tried.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened.
“There’s a difference.”
The trace led them to a neighborhood of warehouses and small machine shops near the Ship Channel.
The burner phone had last pinged near an abandoned motel.
The sign had lost half its letters.
Only M TEL remained.
Sebastian stepped out into the rain.
Marco caught his arm.
“You stay behind me.”
Sebastian looked down at the hand.
Marco removed it.
“Worth trying.”
They entered through a side door.
The lobby smelled of mildew, cigarette smoke, and wet carpet.
No electricity.
A flashlight beam cut across broken furniture.
Room 114 had a fresh lock.
Marco’s man picked it.
Inside, they found a mattress, canned food, children’s books, bottled water, and a small blue backpack.
Sebastian crossed the room.
A toy dinosaur lay on the pillow.
The bed was warm.
“Recently occupied,” Marco said.
Sebastian opened the backpack.
Inside was a folded piece of paper covered in a child’s handwriting.
MOM PHONE
POLICE 911
DAD SEBASTIAN FALCONE
Under Sebastian’s name was a phone number.
The private number.
The one only twenty people had.
Meline had given it to him.
Sebastian swallowed.
Then something moved in the bathroom.
Every gun came up.
“Don’t shoot!” Sebastian snapped.
Silence.
He approached slowly.
“Luca?”
No answer.
Sebastian lowered his weapon onto the carpet.
Marco stared at him.
Sebastian raised both empty hands.
“Luca, my name is Sebastian.”
A tiny sound came from behind the bathroom door.
“I know.”
Sebastian’s pulse surged.
“Can I open the door?”
“No.”
“All right.”
He remained where he was.
“Are you hurt?”
Silence.
Then:
“No.”
“Is your mother with you?”
Another long pause.
“No.”
Sebastian looked at Marco.
“Where is she?”
A sob escaped from behind the door.
Sebastian crouched.
“Luca, listen to me. You don’t have to come out. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I just need to know if your mom needs help.”
The bathroom door opened two inches.
One gray-green eye appeared.
Sebastian forgot how to breathe.
The boy in the photograph had looked like a child.
The boy behind the door looked like him.
Not vaguely.
Not enough to wonder.
Enough to know.
Dark curls.
Strong brows.
A tiny cleft in his chin.
Luca stared at him with equal shock.
“You look like my picture.”
Sebastian’s voice failed the first time.
“What picture?”
“Mom has one.”
The door opened another inch.
“She said you were scary.”
Marco looked away, possibly hiding a smile.
Sebastian said, “She wasn’t wrong.”
Luca studied him.
“Are you bad?”
That question had frightened stronger men than this child.
Sebastian answered carefully.
“I’ve done bad things.”
Luca frowned.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Marco definitely smiled now.
Sebastian almost laughed.
Almost.
“No,” he said finally. “I don’t think I’m bad.”
The door opened.
Luca wore jeans, sneakers, and a navy shirt too large for him.
He held a kitchen knife with both hands.
Sebastian’s heart broke so quietly nobody else heard it.
“Where did you get that?”
“Mom gave it to me.”
“She told you to use it?”
“She told me if Mr. Tomas came back, I should lock the door and call you.”
Sebastian went cold.
“When did Tomas come?”
“Tonight.”
“Where is your mom?”
Luca’s mouth trembled.
“They took her.”
Marco moved closer.
“Who?”
“Mr. Tomas and another man.”
Sebastian’s entire body changed.
The gentleness did not disappear.
It went somewhere deeper.
Covered by ice.
“Did they hurt her?”
“She hit one with a lamp.”
Marco muttered, “Sounds like Meline.”
Luca continued.
“She told me to run to the bathroom. There’s a little door under the sink that goes to the next room. She showed me before.”
A hidden maintenance access.
Meline had prepared him.
“She said wait twenty minutes, then call Dad.”
Sebastian looked at the frightened five-year-old holding a knife.
Five.
Exactly five years.
Meline had survived.
She had raised their son alone while hiding.
And tonight, someone had found them.
Sebastian extended one hand.
“Can I hold the knife for you?”
Luca tightened his grip.
“Will you give it back?”
“No.”
The boy narrowed his eyes.
Sebastian added, “But I’ll give you something better.”
“What?”
“Five armed adults.”
Luca considered that.
Then slowly offered him the knife.
Sebastian took it and placed it on the floor.
“Come here.”
Luca did not.
Sebastian nodded.
“That’s okay.”
A phone buzzed beneath the mattress.
Everyone turned.
Marco found it.
Another burner.
One new text.
A photograph loaded.
Meline.
Alive.
Tied to a chair.
A bruise darkened her cheek, but her eyes were open.
Sebastian stepped closer.
Below the image was a message.
BRING THE LEDGER.
MIDNIGHT TOMORROW.
COME ALONE.
OR THE BOY BECOMES AN ORPHAN FOR REAL.
Sebastian stared at the photograph.
Luca came up beside him.
“Is Mom okay?”
Sebastian immediately turned the screen away.
“Yes.”
It was the easiest lie he had told in years.
Luca looked at him suspiciously.
“Promise?”
Sebastian glanced at Meline’s frightened face.
Then at his son.
He crouched so they were eye level.
“No,” he said.
Luca’s eyes widened.
“I won’t promise something I can’t know.”
The boy stared at him.
Sebastian continued.
“But I can promise something else.”
“What?”
“I’m going to bring her home.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“What if the bad men won’t let you?”
Sebastian looked toward the storm outside.
May you like
For the first time in five years, purpose replaced grief.
“Then they’re going to learn why your mother called me scary.”
