Chapter 3 - A BROTHER’S WARNING
Anna demanded to see the video again. The guard hesitated until Degan took the phone and handed it to her himself.
Tommy’s face was swollen, but he was conscious. The room behind him had a metal door, a single fluorescent light, and a strip of blue paint peeling near the floor. Anna recognized none of it. She replayed the last seconds until the words blurred.
“Don’t trust Victor.”
Victor stood near the window, his expression unreadable. “Your brother has been in trouble with dangerous people for years. He may be saying whatever they tell him to say.”
“He was terrified.”
“He usually is when a bill comes due.”
Anna turned on him. “You signed the contract that put me here. You knew Tommy was vulnerable.”
“I gave you a way to pay his debt.”
“You gave me no choice.”
Degan raised a hand, silencing the room. “Victor, find where the video came from. Quietly. No retaliation until we know who has him.”
Victor looked startled. “You want to wait?”
“I want facts.”
After Victor left, Degan ordered the security team to search the estate’s communications for evidence of a leak. Anna objected when he suggested she stay under guard.
“I’m not a prisoner.”
“No,” he said. “You’re the person they used to reach me.”
“And I’m the person who can recognize my brother’s habits. He taps his thumb twice when he’s trying not to panic. Watch the video.”
They watched again. At the very end, Tommy’s right hand tapped twice against the chair. Anna’s breath caught. It was a signal from their childhood, used when their father’s drinking made the apartment unsafe. Tommy was telling her he was frightened—but still thinking.
“Look at the wall,” she said. “There’s a shadow moving across the blue stripe. It’s not from the overhead light. There must be a window or an open door to the left.”
Degan called his surveillance chief. Within an hour, they had a possible location: an abandoned storage building near the East River, formerly leased by a shell company connected to the docks.
Degan insisted on going with the team. Anna insisted on going too, not because she wanted to play hero but because she knew Tommy’s panic could make him lash out. Degan refused at first. Then he asked her what she would do if she were treating a frightened patient who had been restrained.
“I’d tell him what was happening before I touched him. I’d keep my hands visible. I’d give him a choice whenever I could.”
Degan nodded once. “Then stay behind the entry team, and do exactly that.”
The building smelled of mildew and old oil. The team found the room empty except for a chair, a torn strip of blue tape, and a phone still recording. On the wall someone had painted a black wolf—the mark used by Volkov’s crew.
Tommy was gone.
Anna’s hope collapsed. She pressed a hand to her mouth, forcing herself to breathe. Degan stopped several feet away, close enough to help but not close enough to crowd her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She looked at him sharply. “Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I mean it.”
For the first time, she believed he might.
A security officer found a folded paper beneath the chair. It contained a time, an address, and a demand: Degan was to appear at a closed freight depot at midnight, alone, with the original dock ledger. If he failed, Tommy would be killed.
Degan read it twice. “There is no original ledger.”
“Then why ask for it?” Anna said.
“To see what I’ll sacrifice.”
“Or to make you retaliate before you think.”
His eyes met hers. “You’re learning.”
“I wish I didn’t have to.”
Back at the estate, Anna called the clinic. Her supervisor told her that two sealed crates had been delivered the previous week under her employee number. She had never signed for them. The signature on the receipt looked close to hers, but the handwriting was too careful, like someone copying a form.
She sent a photograph of the receipt to Degan.
He stared at it for a long time. “Someone is building a case against you.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re close enough to me to make the story believable and ordinary enough that no one would suspect you’re being used.”
“Then help me clear my name.”
“I will.”
“Not by killing everyone involved.”
Degan’s jaw tightened. “You’re asking me to be patient while they hold your brother.”
“I’m asking you not to become the reason another sister gets a video like that.”
He looked away, and for a moment she saw the effort it cost him.
At midnight, the freight depot lights came on one by one. A figure stepped into the open loading bay, hands raised.
It was Tommy.
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He was alone, bleeding from the mouth, holding a black ledger against his chest.
Then he looked past the cameras and shouted, “Anna, get out! Victor set this up!”
