Chapter 3 - the gold keycard
Elena didn’t breathe. She pulled Sofia against her chest, slipping the gold keycard into her apron pocket as she backed toward the dark corner behind the small kitchen counter.
A sharp, deliberate knock rattled the thin wood of her apartment door.
*Three beats. Pause. Two beats.*
It wasn’t a random street vagrant or the landlord. It was a rhythmic signal.
“Elena?” a muffled male voice called through the crack. “I saw your light flick on. Open up. It’s Tommy.”
Elena’s pulse hammered in her throat. Tommy was the night-shift freight elevator operator at the St. Jude. He lived two doors down in the same miserable basement complex. But Tommy never knocked at three-thirty in the morning.
“I’m sleeping, Tommy,” Elena called out, keeping her voice as steady as possible while muffling Sofia’s mouth gently against her collarbone. “What do you want?”
“You left early through the delivery lane tonight,” Tommy said, his tone strained, unnatural. “The floor manager is checking lockers. He says somebody took master access cards from the security desk. He’s offering five hundred bucks to anyone who knows who walked out last.”
Elena gripped the edge of the sink. Her heart thudded violently.
*Five hundred dollars.* In this neighborhood, that was rent for a month. But more importantly, why was the manager hunting access cards at three in the morning right after Sofia disappeared?
“I didn't take anything,” Elena said loudly. “I clocked out at two-fifteen. Talk to me tomorrow.”
Through the frosted glass panel above the door frame, Elena saw Tommy’s silhouette linger. He stood there for ten long seconds, completely still. Finally, his shadow turned and moved slowly up the concrete stairs, his boots scuffing on the grit.
Elena let out a shaky breath. She looked down at the gold card in her palm.
The card didn’t belong to a thief who stole it from a desk. It was an executive pass, registered with permanent clearance. The man who lived in Suite 812 was Viktor Cole, Lorenzo Moretti’s chief of operations and the man responsible for the family’s outer security perimeter.
If Sofia was dumped in the alley directly below Suite 812’s emergency stairwell, and Viktor’s keycard was inside the baby’s swaddling... Viktor was either dead, or he was the one who threw Lorenzo’s child out into the freezing cold.
Sofia let out another weak, wheezing sob. Her skin was flaming.
Elena looked around her tiny, barren room. No medicine. No heat. No protection. If she stayed here, Sofia would develop pneumonia and die before morning. If she ran to the police, she would walk into an ambush.
She needed someone who had the power to protect this child, but she couldn’t just knock on the front doors of Moretti Tower. If Viktor Cole’s men intercepted her on the perimeter, neither she nor Sofia would make it across the marble lobby alive.
Elena pulled her old, oversized hooded sweatshirt over her frame, zipped the baby safely inside against her chest, and grabbed her subway card.
She had to reach Marco DeLuca.
Six months ago, Marco had escorted an injured busboy out of the hotel kitchen after a violent customer dispute, personally ensuring the kid’s hospital bills were paid without calling the tabloids. Elena had seen the way Marco looked at ordinary workers—not with cruelty, but with disciplined restraint.
Twenty minutes later, Elena stood shivering in the shadows across the street from the Moretti private garage on 54th Street. Two black SUVs were idling at the exit ramp.
May you like
Just as the metal security gate began to roll upward, a figure stepped out into the crisp streetlight to light a cigarette.
It was Marco DeLuca.
