Chapter 4 - The Secret of Locker 214 and the Deadly Confrontation
Grace looked at Luca.
“I’m going.”
“No.”
“My mother is there.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You just told me I get to decide.”
“That was before my cousin took your mother.”
Grace stepped close enough that he could see she was no longer frightened of him.
“Then don’t tell me my choices matter only when they’re convenient for you.”
Luca stared at her.
Aaron pretended to study the tablet.
Finally Luca exhaled.
“All right.”
Grace blinked.
“What?”
“We do it your way.”
Mrs. Callahan suddenly spoke.
“There may be another way.”
She opened the small purse hanging from her shoulder.
Inside was a brass key tied to a faded green ribbon.
Grace’s knees almost gave way.
“My father used ribbon like that on every birthday present.”
“He gave me this two weeks before he died.”
“Why?”
“He said if anyone ever came looking for the notebook, I should give this to you.”
Grace took the key.
The number 214 was engraved into it.
She stared.
“Locker 214.”
“Where?”
“Penn Station.”
Luca turned to Aaron.
But Grace shook her head.
“No team.”
Luca frowned.
“If Nicholas is watching your people, sending security will tell him we found something.”
Luca considered it.
Then nodded.
“You and me.”
Aaron objected.
“Luca—”
“You follow at a distance.”
Thirty-five minutes later, Grace and Luca entered the mostly empty lower concourse of Penn Station.
Locker 214 no longer existed.
The old section had been renovated years earlier.
Grace stared at the key.
“Of course.”
Luca stood beside her.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“My father died for this, and now the locker doesn’t even exist.”
She almost threw the key.
Then she noticed two tiny initials engraved beneath the number.
G.B.
Her initials.
A childhood memory surfaced.
Her father kneeling beside her during a scavenger hunt.
When the number doesn’t answer, Gracie, look behind it.
She turned the key over.
A thin metal plate slid sideways.
Inside was a strip of paper.
An address.
Pier 17.
And another sentence.
THE SECOND COPY IS WHERE WATER CAN’T TOUCH IT.
Luca read over her shoulder.
“Your father knew.”
Grace swallowed.
“He knew someone would come eventually.”
At 4:10 a.m., rain began falling over the East River.
Luca’s team remained several blocks away.
Grace and Luca approached an abandoned warehouse near the pier.
Before entering, Luca caught her arm gently.
“If something happens—”
“Don’t.”
“Grace.”
“No goodbye speeches.”
A faint smile appeared.
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
“Yes, it was.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
“If something happens, your mother comes first.”
“And if something happens to you?”
His expression softened.
“That isn’t your responsibility.”
Grace hated how much that answer hurt.
Inside the warehouse, Nicholas Romano waited beneath a hanging industrial light.
Helen sat nearby.
Alive.
Grace nearly collapsed with relief.
Beside Nicholas stood Victoria Hale.
And in her hands was the green notebook.
“You really are terrible at choosing friends,” Grace whispered to Luca.
Victoria flinched.
Nicholas smiled.
“You brought her.”
“Let Helen go,” Luca said.
Nicholas laughed.
“You still think you’re giving orders.”
Grace ignored him.
“Mom?”
“I’m okay, sweetheart.”
Nicholas held up the notebook.
“Your father made life difficult for powerful people.”
“My father was a restaurant owner.”
“He was an accountant who found the wrong numbers.”
Luca stepped forward.
“Who killed him?”
Nicholas looked at his cousin.
“My father arranged Bennett’s accident.”
Luca stopped breathing.
“And yours?”
A bitter smile.
“When Uncle Anthony learned the truth, my father knew he would never survive the consequences.”
Grace stared.
“Your father killed Luca’s father too?”
Nicholas didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
Victoria began crying.
“My father only moved money. He never agreed to murder anyone.”
Grace looked at her.
“But you agreed to threaten my mother.”
“I was trying to protect my family.”
“So was my father.”
Nicholas extended his hand.
“The key.”
Grace held it up.
“This?”
“The notebook contained references to a storage location. Give me the key.”
Grace smiled sadly.
“You don’t understand my father at all.”
Nicholas’s expression tightened.
“The notebook was bait.”
Luca looked at her.
Grace continued.
“My father spent his life around men who ignored ordinary things. Receipts. Grocery lists. Recipes. Working people.”
She looked directly at Nicholas.
“He knew someone like you would steal the book and think you’d won.”
Nicholas went pale.
“Where is the evidence?”
Grace looked toward the warehouse walls.
“Somewhere you’ve probably walked past a hundred times.”
Luca’s phone vibrated.
Aaron.
One sentence appeared.
FOUND IT.
The address contained an old sealed utility box behind the warehouse’s original flood-control panel.
Inside were copies of financial ledgers, payment records and letters linking Nicholas’s father, senior executives at Hale Capital and several shell companies to decades of theft and two murders.
Aaron had already transmitted copies to federal investigators and attorneys outside Romano influence.
Luca looked at his cousin.
“It’s over.”
Nicholas’s face twisted.
Then everything happened at once.
He grabbed Helen.
Victoria screamed.
Nicholas pulled something from inside his coat.
Luca moved.
Grace heard a deafening crack.
Luca staggered.
For one frozen second, nobody understood.
Then he fell.
“Luca!”
Grace dropped beside him.
A dark stain spread beneath his ribs.
His hand found hers.
“Get your mother out.”
Grace pressed both hands against the wound.
“No.”
“Grace.”
“No.”
Across the warehouse, Helen slammed her heel against Nicholas’s foot and pulled away.
Aaron and two security officers rushed through the side entrance.
Nicholas turned.
He had nowhere to go.
The weapon fell from his hand as Aaron forced him to the floor.
Victoria sank against a crate, sobbing.
Grace barely noticed.
All she could see was Luca.
His face had gone frighteningly pale.
“Stay with me.”
He tried to smile.
“You finally started giving me orders.”
“Shut up.”
“That sounded like an order too.”
Tears blurred her vision.
“You do not get to stand at those gates and tell me I matter and then die six hours later.”
His eyes remained on hers.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
May you like
She squeezed his hand.
“Then don’t.”
