Chapter 2 - FOUR MEN CAME FOR ROMAN
Sadie knew immediately that something was wrong.
The four men who entered Harbor Logistics did not look around like customers.
They looked around like owners.
Rainwater ran from their coats onto the concrete floor as they spread out beneath the warehouse lights. None wore uniforms. None carried paperwork.
The oldest was perhaps fifty, with silver at his temples and a narrow scar running from his ear to his jaw.
He looked up toward Sadie’s glass office.
Then he smiled.
“Roman Costa!”
His voice echoed through the warehouse.
Sadie slowly stood.
Roman appeared from behind a stack of pallets.
He had been checking a damaged shipment ten minutes earlier. Now his shoulders stiffened.
The silver-haired man opened his arms.
“There he is.”
Roman said nothing.
Sadie had spent three weeks watching him become irritated by broken forklifts, late drivers, incorrect invoices, and once an empty coffee container.
This was different.
Roman wasn’t angry.
He was afraid.
And somehow that frightened her more.
“Who are they?” she called from the stairs.
Roman looked up sharply.
“Stay upstairs.”
That was all Sadie needed to hear.
She started down.
Roman’s expression darkened.
“Sadie.”
“No.”
“Go back upstairs.”
“You hired me to manage this building.”
“I didn’t hire you.”
“Technically your father did, but you signed my payroll authorization, so legally—”
“Sadie!”
The four strangers laughed.
The silver-haired man studied her.
“So this is her.”
Roman’s face changed.
Sadie stopped.
The stranger knew about her.
Roman moved between them.
“Don’t look at her.”
“Touchy.”
The man took another step.
“My name is Victor Marzano,” he told Sadie. “Roman and I have some unfinished business.”
“I don’t care what your name is,” Roman said. “Get out.”
Victor smiled.
“Your brother used to say the same thing.”
Silence.
Sadie saw Roman’s hands close into fists.
Victor had deliberately found the wound.
And pushed his thumb into it.
Roman’s older brother, Luca, had died the previous year. Carmine had mentioned it only once.
Sadie had never asked Roman.
Victor continued.
“Luca understood business. He understood loyalty. You?”
He looked around the warehouse.
“You play with trucks.”
Roman lunged.
Sadie grabbed his arm.
“Roman.”
He could easily have dragged her across the floor.
Instead, impossibly, he stopped.
Victor’s smile disappeared.
He had just learned something.
Something dangerous.
Roman Costa could be stopped.
By her.
Victor looked from Sadie’s hand to Roman’s face.
“Well.”
Roman slowly pulled free.
“You have ten seconds.”
Victor removed an envelope from inside his coat and tossed it onto a pallet.
“Your father has been lying to you.”
Roman did not move.
“About what?”
“Luca.”
Roman’s face went white.
Victor turned toward the exit.
“Ask Carmine why your brother was at Pier Nine the night he died.”
Roman stared at him.
Victor stopped beside the door.
“And ask him who called Luca there.”
Then the four men left.
Rain blew briefly into the warehouse before the door slammed shut.
For several seconds, neither Roman nor Sadie moved.
Then Roman grabbed the envelope.
Inside were photographs.
Sadie saw only one before Roman turned them away.
Luca Costa standing beside a black SUV.
A timestamp showed the photograph had been taken forty-three minutes before his death.
Roman flipped through the others.
His breathing changed.
“Roman?”
He dropped the photographs.
Then punched the steel support column.
The sound was horrifying.
Sadie flinched.
Roman struck it again.
“Stop!”
Again.
Blood appeared instantly across his knuckles.
Sadie grabbed his wrist.
“Roman!”
“LET GO!”
“No.”
He turned toward her.
For one terrible second, she saw the man everyone else saw.
Violent.
Broken.
Unreachable.
Then she saw something else underneath.
A younger brother who had never received an answer.
Roman pulled away and paced.
“He told me Luca was alone.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
Roman laughed bitterly.
“He said Luca went to the pier alone. Said nobody knew why.”
Sadie picked up one photograph.
“Pictures can be manipulated.”
“The jacket.”
“What?”
Roman pointed.
“Luca borrowed that jacket from me that night. Nobody knew.”
Sadie looked again.
Roman sank onto a wooden pallet.
For the first time since she had met him, he looked small.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
Like the anger had finally burned through everything holding him upright.
“I was supposed to go with him.”
Sadie sat beside him.
Roman stared at the floor.
“We fought that afternoon. I told him I was tired of being his shadow.”
His voice cracked slightly.
“He told me someday I’d understand what he was trying to protect me from.”
Sadie remained silent.
“I told him to go to hell.”
Roman swallowed.
“Six hours later, he was dead.”
Sadie understood now.
The chairs.
The fights.
The broken walls.
Roman wasn’t destroying everything because he enjoyed violence.
He was punishing himself.
“You think it should’ve been you,” she said.
Roman looked at her.
Sadie did not look away.
“You’ve spent a year trying to make that happen.”
Something moved in his eyes.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you reopen your hands every time they start healing.”
Roman looked down at his bloody knuckles.
“I know you sit in your truck for hours instead of going home. I know you work until everyone leaves because silence bothers you.”
“Stop.”
“And I know you keep trying to prove everyone right about you.”
Roman stood.
“I said stop.”
Sadie stood too.
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“You’re not your brother, Roman.”
“You never knew him.”
“No. But I know you.”
He laughed without humor.
“You know payroll.”
“I know you paid a driver two weeks early because his daughter needed surgery.”
Roman froze.
“I know you repaired Luis’s truck yourself because he couldn’t afford the mechanic. And I know you pretend you don’t care about anybody because caring about Luca almost destroyed you.”
Roman stared at her.
Sadie stepped closer.
“You want the truth about your brother?”
“Yes.”
“Then find it.”
She pointed at his bleeding hand.
“But stop destroying yourself before you do.”
The warehouse became quiet.
Roman looked at her for a long time.
Then, slowly, he sat down again.
Sadie retrieved the first-aid kit.
This time, he did not resist when she cleaned his knuckles.
“You always carry bandages?” he asked.
“Since I met you.”
A sound escaped him.
Not quite laughter.
But close.
Sadie smiled.
It was the first time she had ever seen him try.
Then Roman noticed something behind her.
His expression changed.
A tiny red light blinked beneath the loading dock camera.
Roman stood.
“That camera hasn’t worked in months.”
Sadie turned.
The red light blinked again.
Roman walked toward it.
He pulled the camera from its mount.
Behind it was a second device.
Small.
Black.
Wireless.
Someone had been listening.
Roman stared at it.
Victor Marzano had not come to deliver information.
He had come to see what Roman would do with it.
And now Victor knew exactly who could control him.
Roman turned toward Sadie.
“Pack your things.”
She frowned.
“Why?”
His voice was suddenly calm.
Too calm.
“Because they know you matter to me.”
Sadie stopped breathing.
Roman seemed to realize what he had said.
Neither spoke.
Outside, thunder rolled over the harbor.
Then Roman corrected himself.
“They think you matter.”
May you like
Sadie held his gaze.
But they both knew the correction had come too late.
