Chapter 11 - Every Door
Federal agents arrived before sunset.
Massimo handed them lists that could damage him.
Old properties.
Former associates.
Cash businesses no longer used.
Names he had protected out of habit long after loyalty stopped deserving protection.
Dante pulled him aside.
“You understand what you’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“They’ll crawl through everything.”
“Then let them.”
“You could lose the company.”
Massimo looked at Isabella sitting beneath a police blanket, staring at Noah’s empty car seat.
“I can build another company.”
Dante had no answer.
The Amber Alert produced dozens of bad tips.
A gas-station camera finally caught Grant’s SUV heading east.
Then it disappeared.
Torres asked Isabella to think like Grant.
“Where would he believe you wouldn’t look?”
“The river warehouse.”
“We searched it.”
“He knows that.”
Massimo looked at the map.
“No. He’d use somewhere connected to it.”
Bellandi Freight once operated four river sites.
Three had been sold.
One remained on a forgotten lease under an old subsidiary.
Red Hook Pier Nine.
Dante swore.
“Carlo handled that lease.”
Police moved.
Massimo was ordered to stay behind.
He obeyed for eleven minutes.
Then Isabella grabbed her coat.
“I’m going.”
Torres blocked the door. “No.”
“My son is there.”
“And if Grant sees you, he can use you.”
Massimo stepped beside his daughter.
“We wait where you tell us.”
Isabella looked at him sharply.
He repeated, “We wait.”
Torres nodded once.
At 11:36 p.m., tactical officers entered Pier Nine.
No Grant.
No Noah.
But they found a laptop still warm.
A video call had ended seven minutes earlier.
The last incoming account belonged to Evelyn Mercer.
Then a technician recovered a voice message Grant had not deleted.
Evelyn’s voice filled the command van.
“Stop improvising. Take the boy to the cabin and wait for Carlo.”
Isabella gripped the table.
Massimo knew the cabin.
Everyone in the family did.
May you like
A hunting property in the Catskills.
It had belonged to Carlo Rizzi for thirty years.
