Page 96 of The Voicemail

The freight office. That’s the kind of place Bianchi likes. Forgotten, quiet, and close enough to the water to make problems disappear.

I look at Marco. He’s already moving, phone to his ear, calling in a team as he heads for the door.

An hour later, my phone buzzes. Marco found Claire alive, in a freight office near the river, exactly like Bellamy said. She’s bruised, dehydrated, and her wrists are tied badly enough that the skin is torn, but she’s alive.

I slide the picture my men sent over to Bellamy. He tries not to look.

“Look at her,” I command him.

“I am.”

His eyes shine with unshed tears. I don’t care.

“Will she live?” he asks quietly.

“Yes,” I say after Marco’s next message comes through. “Doctor is on the way. She’s talking.”

Bellamy exhales like that should absolve him. It doesn’t. My phone buzzes with another text from Marco.

She says she heard Bianchi’s men mention Whitmore.

I read it twice. Then I look at Luca. He’s already pulling up the calendar.

“The Whitmore Children’s Trust gala is tonight,” he says. “Bellamy Fine Art has a community arts table.”

Bellamy flinches again.

I look at him.

“You’re going, I presume.”

“It’s an important event.”

“You were going to stand there and drink champagne after two of your employees were taken?”

He has no good answer, so he reaches for the only one weak men have.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

I pick up the gun. He stops breathing.

“You had choices,” I say. “You kept making the wrong ones.”

I spend the rest of the day tying up loose ends. We have Claire moved to a secure location to recover. Then I start anonymously feeding the information from the file to the Feds. It takes so little for Bianchi’s world to start crumbling around him. All they need is to find him, and thankfully he gives me exactly that opportunity.

Early in the afternoon, my phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number. I know it’s Bianchi. He sends a photo of the Whitmore gala program. Bellamy Fine Art’s table is circled. Elena’s name sits between Claire Bell and Julian Bellamy.

The message beneath it is short.

She comes, or I start spilling your secrets.

Luca reads it over my shoulder.

“He’s cornered,” he says.

“He’s desperate.”

Behind us, a soft sound comes from the hallway. I turn. Elena stands outside the bedroom, pale and bruised, with one hand braced on the wall and the other wrapped carefully around her ribs.