Everyone Feared the Mafia Boss Who Never Let Anyone Touch Him Until His New Assistant Silently Fixed His Tie

Ten minutes passed.

The silence inside the SUV was absolute. The only sound was the steady tick-tick-tick of the cooling exhaust pipe beneath the floorboards and the rhythmic slap of sleet against the roof.

Miller sat in the driver’s seat, his hand resting on the grip of a short-barreled shotgun tucked between his seat and the console. His eyes never left the side mirror.

Paige sat on the rear bench, staring at the silver key on the leather strap.

It lay on the dark grey leather, small, cold, and gleaming under the faint red light of the dashboard clock.

An envelope with your name on it.

He had checked her background. Of course he had. A man who didn't let anyone touch his collar wouldn't hire a secretary without knowing the size of her bank account and the name of her mother’s primary physician.

He had known she was desperate. He had known about the ninety-two thousand dollars, the eight-hundred-dollar pharmacy bills, the memory unit with the window facing the garden.

And he had used it.

He had used it to buy a woman who wouldn't flinch when he came into the office with blood on his sleeves.

"Miss Bennett," Miller said quietly from the front seat.

"Yes?"

"If things go loud out there... you get down on the floor. Don't look out the window. Just stay down."

"Does this happen often?" Paige asked.

Miller let out a short, dry snort. "With Mr. Gallagher? No. Usually he lets Frankie handle the yard work. But when it’s family... or someone who used to be family... he likes to do the inventory himself."

Family.

Callahan had been with Gallagher Freight for twelve years. His father had worked the docks with Patrick Doyle in the seventies. He was one of the men who had stood in the hospital hallway when Arthur was nineteen years old, holding a blood-soaked shirt while the surgeons sewed up Arthur’s ribs.

To Arthur, Callahan wasn't just an employee selling manifests.

He was another Patrick Doyle. Another man who had sat at his table, drunk his whiskey, and then looked for a way to sell his skin to the highest bidder.

A sharp crack echoed through the fog.

It was not a gunshot. It was the sound of heavy timber splintering under an iron boot.

Then came a voice—high, thin, and terrified—screaming something that was cut off by a low, heavy dull thud.

Miller didn't move. He reached down and clicked his seatbelt open.

"Stay here," he said.

He stepped out into the rain, pulling his shotgun from the console, and vanished toward the rear pump house.

Paige was left alone.

She looked at the silver key again. Her hand reached out, her fingers hovering an inch above the cold metal.

If Arthur died out there in the marsh, she could take the key. She could walk away. She could go to the forty-second floor, open the safe behind the portrait, take the envelope, and never set foot in Gallagher Freight & Harbor again. Her mother would be safe. Her life would be quiet. She could go back to being an administrative assistant for an insurance firm or a flour mill.

She touched the key.

It was freezing cold.

Through the front windshield, she saw a shadow move through the blue fog near the tractor shed.

It was not Arthur.

It was a tall, thin man in a yellow rain slicker, running toward the pump house with a short iron pry-bar in his hand. He was coming around the side of the SUV, keeping low to the ground, his eyes fixed on the open driver’s door that Miller had left ajar.

He was going to take the car.

Or he was going to kill whoever was inside it.

Paige didn't think. She didn't calculate the ninety-four invoices or the twenty percent raise or the cost of the cognitive modifiers.

She grabbed the silver key, shoved it into her cardigan pocket, and reached for Miller’s abandoned radio on the dashboard.