Chapter 6 - Bloodhounds on a Cold Trail
For five months, Boston felt like a cage ready to combust.
Matteo Rossi sat at his desk, but the ruthless architect of the Northeast underworld had grown into a ghost of himself. His cheekbones were sharper, hollowed out by sleepless nights and a diet consisting entirely of black espresso and pure adrenaline. Across the city, whispers spread like poison through the ranks: The Boss has lost his grip.
Rival syndicates smelled the blood. Don Carmine Lucchese had already hijacked two cargo ships in international waters off Rhode Island, testing Matteo’s borders. Six months earlier, Matteo would have responded by turning Brooklyn into a slaughterhouse. Now, he merely delegated the reprisals to his underbosses. His mind, his soul, and every private ledger he controlled were locked on a single target: finding the woman who had walked away with his heart and his bloodline.
Arthur entered the study without knocking, his boots clicking heavily against the oak floorboards. In his hand was a thick manila folder.
"We have something," Arthur said, his voice taut with suppressed excitement.
Matteo shot to his feet, knocking his chair back against the mahogany wall. "Speak."
"You were right about Vincenzo’s old shell trusts," Arthur said, slapping the dossier onto the blotter. "Norah didn’t touch the twelve million dollars directly. She was too smart for that. The funds sat dormant in nine blind Panamanian LLCs. But last week, one micro-transaction triggered a sweep protocol we slipped into regional utility systems."
Matteo leaned over the desk, his hands splayed across the paperwork. "Where?"
"A tiny public utility district in Clatsop County, Oregon. A private account paid an electrical installation deposit for a water filtration pump on an unlisted rural parcel outside Cannon Beach." Arthur pulled out a satellite printout, circling a secluded patch of dense pine woods two miles from the coastline. "The payment was made via an old cashier's check originating from a legacy trust under the name 'Vance.' It matches the serial numbers Vincenzo registered in Montreal thirty years ago."
Matteo’s chest contracted violently. Oregon. Three thousand miles across the continent, buried in rain, cedar, and ocean mist.
"Is she alone?" Matteo asked, his voice shaking with a terrifying blend of possessiveness and raw terror. "Is she... did the baby...?"
Arthur pulled out a grainy long-range photograph taken forty-eight hours prior by a local private investigator hired off-grid.
Matteo’s breath caught in his throat.
The photo showed Norah walking along a quiet, gravel path fringed with sea grass. She looked lean and strong, her hair tied back in a messy braid, wearing a heavy cable-knit sweater. Strapped securely to her chest in a soft linen sling was a sleeping infant, bundled in a pale yellow knit hat.
A tiny hand, no larger than a coin, rested against Norah’s collarbone.
Matteo stared at the image, tears burning the backs of his eyes for the first time in his adult life. It was a girl. His child was born, breathing, and living in an exile he had forced upon them with his own arrogant infidelity.
"Do we mobilize the strike team?" Arthur asked quietly. "I can have twenty men on the tarmac within the hour."
"No," Matteo snarled, tearing his gaze from the photograph. "No soldiers. No cars. No guns. If she sees an army, she runs again—or she releases the digital ledgers to the federal prosecutor, and we all burn. I go alone."
May you like
"Matteo, Lucchese’s spotters are watching Logan Airport," Arthur warned, stepping forward. "If you vanish to the West Coast, Carmine will know something is wrong. He’s already got scouts tracking our transport planes."
Matteo grabbed his heavy overcoat from the chair. "Let Carmine watch the sky. Charter a private King Air out of a dirt strip in New Hampshire. I don’t care if New York burns Boston to the ground while I’m gone. My family is in those woods."
