Chapter 21 - The Key with No Lock
The air off Lake Michigan suddenly felt thin, stripped of all oxygen. The yellow lined paper fluttered in my fingers, its creases stiff and brittle beneath my thumb.
Julian.
My brother was dead. I had stood beside my father on the rain-soaked grass of Calvary Cemetery six months ago, staring down at a cherrywood casket while the longshoremen of Slip Nine took off their flat caps and bowed their heads. We had smelled the white carnations rotting under the drizzle. We had buried him.
"Maya?" Gabriel’s voice broke through the static ringing in my ears. He took half a step toward me, his tailored coat parting slightly where his sidearm rested against his ribs. His dark eyes flicked from my face down to the trembling paper in my grip. "What’s on that dispatch? Who was it from?"
My instincts—sharpened by weeks of navigating the dangerous crosscurrents between the Rossi family and the Chicago port authority—locked my jaw shut. I instinctively pressed the yellow oilcloth against my stomach, shielding the handwriting from his sight.
"It’s... it’s an overseas inventory manifest," I lied, though my voice cracked right down the center. "From an old supplier Julian used in Europe. Unsettled port fees."
Gabriel didn't move, but the temperature around him dropped. He had run the Rossi syndicate's northern operations since he was twenty-four. He could tell the difference between a bureaucratic annoyance and a woman staring at a ghost.
"Julian never handled foreign cargo without my family knowing," Gabriel said, his tone low, measured, and dangerously patient. "And longshoremen don’t wrap billing invoices in water-resistant wax cloth. Let me see it."
"No," I said, stepping backward toward the concrete apron of Slip Nine.
Behind us, the diesel engines of the container loaders hummed their steady, mechanical drone. My father, Arthur Vance, was twenty yards away inside the security hut, signing off on the transition manifests that gave Vance & Sons fifty-one percent control of the port. He had just gotten his life back. His hands were finally clean of Reyes and Sterling. If he saw this letter—if he even heard Julian’s name spoken in the present tense—it would destroy the fragile peace keeping his heart beating.
Gabriel looked down at my hand. The brass key stamped *404* slipped between my fingers, clinking softly against the concrete before rolling against the polished leather of his oxford shoe.
He looked down at it. Then he looked up at me, his gaze narrowing until it felt like a spotlight pinning me against a brick wall.
"That’s a dry-dock locker key from the Maasvlakte harbor," Gabriel murmured, recognizing the distinct triangular head of the brass. "Rotterdam. My family hasn't used those slips since 2014."
"It's nothing, Gabriel," I whispered, kneeling quickly to snatch it back, but he didn't reach for it. He let me scoop the cold metal into my palm, watching my every movement with terrifying precision.
"My father bought four deep-water berths in Rotterdam ten years ago, Maya," Gabriel said, his voice dropping so low the wind off the lake almost swallowed it. "Right before he had his stroke. Right before the family announced his heart had stopped in his sleep at St. Jude’s Memorial."
The breath caught in my throat. *Meet me at the dry dock in Rotterdam before Gabriel's father finds out I'm still breathing.*
"Your father died in Chicago," I whispered, the words tasting like copper. "I remember the funeral procession. Half the aldermen in Cook County carried the casket."
Gabriel stared out across the gray chop of the water, a muscle working rhythmically in his jaw. "The casket was lead-lined and sealed before it left the chapel. My mother refused to enter the room. She stayed in her greenhouse for three days, signing nothing, looking at no one."
The image of Signora Rossi—deaf, sharp-eyed, and carrying decades of family blood behind her silent, elegant hands—flashed in my mind. She had saved my life at Il Canto by warning Gabriel of Reyes’s betrayal through silent sign language across the dinner table. She knew every lie the Rossi family had ever told.
"I need to go," I said, backing away toward my car.
"Maya, wait," Gabriel demanded, taking a quick step forward, his authority snapping back into place. "If that letter mentions Julian, you can’t walk away from this. Julian was tied to the ledger Navarro pulled from the river. If Julian didn't drown in that car..."
"Navarro confirmed the dental records, Gabriel!" I shouted, the fury and terror finally erupting. "The city coroner signed the death certificate! We buried a body!"
"In this city, three thousand dollars buys any dental record you want," Gabriel replied coldly. "Show me the letter."
"No."
I turned on my heel and ran toward my sedan. Behind me, Gabriel didn't chase me, which frightened me more than if he had grabbed my wrist. When a Rossi didn't chase you, it meant they already knew where you were going.
I slammed the car door, threw the transmission into reverse, and tore out of the terminal gates. My phone buzzed on the passenger seat once, twice, three times. I ignored it, speeding south toward the only person who had known Julian’s true freight routes before the night he disappeared.
Twenty minutes later, I slammed the brakes outside an old brick rowhouse near Bridgeport.
I bolted up the wooden steps and banged on the screen door. Inside, a floorboard creaked, and a shadow crossed the blinds.
"Frankie!" I yelled, pounding the wood frame until my knuckles stung. "Frankie, open the damn door!"
The latch clicked. Frankie Deluca, my brother’s oldest friend and the former night dispatcher for Slip Nine, stood in the dim hallway. He was holding an unlit cigarette, his shirt untucked, his eyes bloodshot from the long shifts.
"Maya? What the hell are you doing here? Gabriel’s guys are still sweeping the docks. You shouldn't be seen near my place."
I pushed past him into the cramped living room, the smell of stale coffee and damp carpet filling my nose. I pulled the yellow paper from my pocket and flattened it violently against his kitchen table.
"Look at it," I commanded.
Frankie blinked, squinting at the black ink under the yellow ceiling bulb. As his eyes tracked the cursive, the color drained from his face with sickening speed. The cigarette slipped from his fingers and tumbled onto the linoleum.
"Where did you get this?" he whispered, his hands trembling so violently he had to grip the edge of the table to steady himself.
"A maritime courier brought it to Slip Nine twenty minutes ago," I said, stepping into his space, refusing to let him look away. "You were the one who identified Julian's watch on the body. You were the one who told the police you saw him get into the car with Reyes’s runners. Frankie, who the hell did we put in that ground?"
Frankie didn't answer. He turned his head toward the window, looking out into the alleyway as if he expected black SUVs to pull up at any second.
"Frankie!" I grabbed his collar, twisting the fabric. "Julian is my brother! Who did we bury?"
"You don't understand, Maya," Frankie choked out, tears of genuine terror welling in the corners of his eyes. "Julian didn't run from Reyes. Reyes was small time. Reyes was just the hired muscle."
"Then who was he running from?"
Frankie pulled my hands off his shirt and backed away until his shoulders hit the kitchen refrigerator.
May you like
"The letter didn't lie to you, Maya," Frankie said, his voice breaking into a terrified whisper. "Gabriel's father isn't dead. He never died. He's been running the offshore pipeline from Rotterdam for ten straight years—and Julian took fifty million dollars of his money before he faked his crash."
***
