Chapter 3: Five Minutes

Nine a.m., private room.

Fourteen people at the table.

Me at the wall, with a coffee pot and a stack of napkins, because Bianca made sure everyone saw exactly what I was for.

"That's Russo," she'd said on the way in, loud, warm, cruel. "She does our dishes. Don't mind her."

One of the captains had actually laughed.

Nico's proof-of-life photo went up on the screen and my whole body reacted before my brain did — that old animal lean toward the picture, that itch behind my teeth.

I made myself look at the carpet.

Bianca presented beautifully. She's good at this part. Voice like a courtroom. Timeline clean as a knife.

Then Enzo Castellano started asking questions.

"You've listed the exchange at midnight. Salt yard. Full four million."

"Correct."

"Six men in this family told me these brokers can't be trusted. You're telling me one drop."

"Six men were cautious."

"Or six men were honest." He tapped the table once. "Explain the photo."

Bianca didn't blink. "Proof of life. Yesterday's paper. He's alive."

"Where is he?"

"With the men we're paying."

"You're sure."

"Yes."

"Then whose shadow is that." He didn't point. He didn't need to. "Left edge. Second man. Standing in a doorway that isn't theirs."

Silence.

Three seconds. Four.

I have watched people lose everything in four seconds. It doesn't sound like anything. It's just a person breathing wrong.

"A guard," Bianca said.

"In a doorway with tile the brokers' warehouse doesn't have?"

"...Possibly a second location."

"Possibly." Enzo's voice never rose. That was the worst part. "My brother is not possibly important to me."

Sal jumped in. "Enzo, Bianca's talked to these people six times—"

"Sal, I've read the Atlantic City numbers this quarter. You need me calm more than you need your opinion, so stop talking."

Sal stopped talking.

Enzo looked back at Bianca. "I'll ask once. If the men on the phone don't have him, and I pay them, what happens to Nico?"

"We would... renegotiate."

"With who?"

"With — that would depend on who calls."

"You don't have a name." He said it flatly. "You have a clean timeline and no plan for the only thing that's actually going to happen tonight."

He stood and buttoned his coat.

"We're done. No drop. Sal, your crew hits the salt yard at eleven and we take somebody alive who can tell me where my brother is."

Sal stood too fast, knocked his water over. "Enzo—"

"You go in loud, that boy's dead before you reach the door," Benny said quietly from the speaker. "Nobody's ever pulled a kid out of a two-crew grab with guns. Not once."

And that sentence went through me like a blade.

Nobody's ever brought one out.

I know exactly what it looks like when time runs out at 4:39 in the morning while a phone is still warm against your ear.

Two voices in my head.

Not your business. You're the sponge. You have a small quiet life and it doesn't hurt anymore.

It always hurt. You just stopped calling it that.

Enzo was three steps from the door.

The coffee pot was still in my hand.

"Mr. Castellano."

My voice came out steady. It surprised me more than anyone.

Fourteen heads turned.

Bianca's face went white, then red. "Russo—"

"Give me five minutes," I said.

The room made a sound. Someone laughed. Sal said, "Get her out of here—"

"She's holding a coffee pot," Bianca hissed. "Enzo, I apologize—"

Enzo Castellano didn't look at Bianca.

He turned around fully, and looked at me, and something in his face was not surprise.

It was recognition. Like a man confirming a suspicion he'd been carrying since two nights ago at 8:59 p.m., when he watched a woman in a stained apron read a ransom file in nine seconds and go pale.