Chapter 3 - The Sanctuary
I stared at Vincent through a haze of tears, my body trembling so violently I couldn't speak.
Vincent didn't get out of the car. He didn't offer a dramatic hand or a comforting word. He simply gestured toward the open door with his cigarette.
“Get in,” he said. “It’s twenty-eight degrees outside.”
Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to run. In my neighborhood, getting into a car with Vincent Rossi was a sentence you didn't walk back from. He wasn't a good Samaritan; he was a shark who owned half the gambling dens, illegal docks, and protection rackets from 14th Street to the river.
But as I looked back toward the street where Tommy might appear at any second, and then looked at the cold, wet pavement beneath my feet, I realized I had already drowned.
I stood up, picked up my canvas duffel bag, and pulled open the heavy leather door of the Cadillac.
The interior was warm, smelling of rich leather, expensive tobacco, and cedarwood. I slid onto the wide back seat, pulling my wet coat tightly around myself, trying not to drip water onto the immaculate carpet.
The driver—a thick-set man named Sal whom I recognized from the diner—didn't say a word. He put the car in gear and smoothly pulled out of the alley.
Vincent didn't look at me right away. He took a final drag from his cigarette, flicked the butt out his window, and rolled the glass up, restoring the total, vacuum-like silence of the luxury cabin.
“Frank fired you,” Vincent stated calmly. It wasn't a question.
“Yes,” I whispered, staring at my hands in my lap. “Tommy told him I stole from him.”
“Did you?”
“No! It was the money you left on the table last night! Tommy took it from my coat before I could leave!”
Vincent’s dark eyes flicked over to me, examining my swollen lip and the dark shadows beneath my eyes. “And where were you going when you left?”
“Nowhere,” I confessed, my voice cracking. “I sat at the bus station all night. I didn't have enough money for a ticket.”
Vincent remained silent for a long moment as the car navigated through the morning traffic, heading south toward Lower Manhattan. We passed familiar streets, leaving the cramped, dirty tenements of Hell's Kitchen behind, entering the quiet, historic cobblestone streets of Tribeca.
The car stopped in front of a six-story brick building with dark iron fire escapes and a plain black awning. There were no signs, no names, no doormen.
“This is my building,” Vincent said, reaching for his coat handle. “My personal residence is on the top floor. The third floor is an empty guest apartment used for visiting associates.”
He looked directly into my eyes, his gaze heavy and unyielding.
“You will stay there for three days. You will shower, you will eat, and you will let your face heal.”
“Mr. Rossi... I can't afford to pay you rent—”
“I didn't ask for rent,” he cut in smoothly. “I don't like seeing my routine ruined by sloppy men who beat women for thirty dollars. You will stay inside. You will not call anyone. You will not leave the building until I tell you it is safe.”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked again, desperate to understand what price he would eventually demand from me.
Vincent leaned back against his leather seat, his face shadowed.
“Because three years ago, my daughter died in an emergency room in Queens,” he said, his voice dropping into a tone so cold it made my spine freeze. “Her husband hit her, she fell down a flight of stairs, and she bled to death before the paramedics arrived. I killed that man two days later.”
He looked at me, his dark eyes revealing a depth of old, unyielding agony that stripped away any remaining doubt in my mind.
“I couldn't save my daughter, Amelia,” he murmured softly. “But I can keep you from dying in an alley behind a cheap diner.”
He pulled a small brass key from his pocket and dropped it into my cold palm.
May you like
“Go upstairs. Sal will bring you food and clean clothes.”
I held the brass key, feeling its heavy weight against my skin, realizing that for the first time in six years, I was safe—and terrified of the man who had made me so.
