184 When Manhattan’s Most Feared Crime Boss Found His Traumatized Daughter Asleep in My Waitress Apron, He Thought I Was a Stranger—Until He Discovered My Secret Past Was the Only Key to Saving His Missing Wife

Marcus’s hand shot out and gripped Eleanor’s throat before she could draw another breath. He lifted her half out of the wing chair, slamming her against the carved wooden frame.

"You lost her?" Marcus snarled, his eyes blazing. "You arrogant old snake! You brought an eight-year-old child into this city as a pawn, and you lost her to the Boston crews before you even finished your tea?"

"Marcus! Put her down!" I shouted, grabbing his forearm. "Killing her doesn't get Chloe back! Eleanor, who is leading the Boston team?"

Eleanor gasped for air as Marcus released her, coughing violently and clutching her throat. "Liam... Liam O’Hara," she wheezed. "He was Cole’s silent partner. He’s had his eye on the Brooklyn terminals for ten years."

"Liam O’Hara is a butcher," Marcus said, turning toward the door, every second ticking away like a death sentence. "If he has Chloe at the Sutton Place townhouse, he’s not holding her for ransom. He’s liquidating the line."

"The townhouse is fortified," Eleanor said, rising unsteadily to her feet, her composure shattered. "Reinforced steel shutters on the ground level. Bulletproof glass facing the East River. If you go in through the front, they will kill her before you breach the foyer."

"I don't need the foyer," Marcus barked, pulling two spare magazines from his coat pocket and slapping them onto the dining table. "I built the security systems for every Mercer property on the East River twenty years ago when Julian still trusted me. There’s a coal chute leading from the river seawall into the basement boiler room."

He looked at me. "Elena, you take the car. Drive to the 59th Street Bridge access ramp. Monitor the river traffic. If you see a Boston boat pull up to the dock behind Sutton Place, you ram the gates."

"No," I said firmly, racking the slide of the pistol Marcus had given me. "I'm not sitting in a car while you storm a fortified house alone. Frankie is compromised. You have no backup. I’m going into the coal chute with you."

Eleanor watched us, her expression unreadable. "You are both fools. You are walking into a slaughterhouse."

"You stay right here," I told Eleanor, pointing the barrel straight at her chest. "If we aren't back in forty minutes with Chloe, Marcus’s second-in-command has orders to deliver Julian’s original ledger to the FBI. Your Swiss accounts won't be worth the paper they're printed on."

Eleanor’s lips parted, but for the first time tonight, she had no retort.