“From what?”

Nicholas Ferraro had asked the question quietly.

That frightened Audrey more than if he had shouted.

She sat on the velvet sofa, one hand pressed against the small cardiac monitor beneath her dress, while her husband stared at the bruises on her arm.

Outside, rain struck the windows of their Philadelphia penthouse.

“Nicholas,” she whispered, “there was a little boy.”

He blinked.

“What?”

“At the market. Before I collapsed.”

Nicholas remained motionless.

Audrey swallowed.

“He was standing near the emergency exit. Maybe eight years old. His clothes were dirty, and he looked terrified. He kept staring at the men following him.”

“What men?”

“Two. One wore a gray coat. The other had a scar across his eyebrow.”

Nicholas felt the blood drain from his face.

A scar across the eyebrow.

He knew that man.

Victor Raines.

Gideon Shaw’s most trusted enforcer.

“What happened to the boy?”

Audrey’s fingers tightened around his wrist.

“He ran toward me. He grabbed my hand and said something.”

“What did he say?”

Her eyes filled.

“He said, ‘Please don’t let them take me back to the river.’”

Nicholas stopped breathing.

The river.

His warehouses.

The territory he had spent twenty years protecting.

Audrey continued.

“I tried to help him. The man in the gray coat caught my arm. I pulled away, and then my chest started hurting.”

She looked down.

“When I woke up, the boy was gone.”

Nicholas stood.

For the first time in six years of marriage, Audrey watched her husband become completely unfamiliar.

He was no longer the man who brought her coffee in bed.

He was no longer the husband who kissed her forehead before leaving for work.

He was Nicholas Ferraro.

And somebody had made a terrible mistake.

He took out his phone.

“Caleb. Find Victor Raines.”

A pause.

“Alive.”

Audrey reached for him.

“Nicholas, please.”

He ended the call.

“Where is the boy now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he give you a name?”

She hesitated.

“Eli.”

Nicholas looked at her.

“Eli what?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

Something about the name troubled him.

Then Audrey reached beneath the cushion.

“I found this in my purse after the hospital.”

She handed him a small brass key.

A number was engraved into its surface.

317.

Nicholas stared at it.

He had seen that number before.

Not on a door.

Not on a vehicle.

On an old shipping manifest from Pier Nine.

A warehouse supposedly destroyed in a fire eleven years earlier.

The same fire that had killed his younger brother, Daniel.

Nicholas closed his fist around the key.

“Where did you get this?”

“The boy pushed it into my hand.”

“Did he say anything else?”

Audrey nodded.

“He said his mother told him to find Nicholas Ferraro.”

The room seemed to tilt.

Nicholas looked at her.

“His mother?”

“Yes.”

“What was her name?”

Audrey’s voice broke.

“Isabel.”

Nicholas staggered backward.

Isabel Ferraro.

His brother’s wife.

The woman buried beside Daniel eleven years ago.

For several seconds, neither spoke.

Then Nicholas’s phone rang.

Caleb.

He answered.

“Talk.”

Caleb’s voice was strained.

“Boss, we found Raines.”

“Where?”

“South warehouse.”

“Bring him in.”

“We can’t.”

Nicholas’s eyes narrowed.

“Why not?”

“Because somebody got there first.”

Silence.

Then Caleb added something Nicholas would remember for the rest of his life.

“Boss, there’s a child here. He’s locked inside an office, and he keeps saying he’s your nephew.”

Nicholas slowly turned toward Audrey.

She was staring at him.

And then Caleb whispered:

“He says Daniel Ferraro is still alive.”