Chapter 1 - The Bumblebee and the Pumpkin|
The fire didn't roar at first. It hissed.
Nico Valenti watched the orange light bloom across the windshield before Dante could even hit the brakes. Barefoot. Soot to her elbows. The girl came out of the smoke with a bumblebee on one hip and a pumpkin on the other.
Behind her, the stone mansion breathed flame through every lower window.
"Boss," Dante said, his voice dropping an octave. "That’s the Brandt place."
Nico was already out of the Escalade before the tires stopped rolling.
The girl didn't slow down when she saw him. She ran straight into his chest, the two toddlers jolting between them. The moment her cardigan brushed his coat, he smelled it.
Gasoline. Sweet, sharp, and soaked deep into her wool sleeves.
"Kids first!" she screamed, her lungs raspy from smoke. "Get them away from the house!"
Nico caught her wrist. "Who lit it?"
"Take them!"
"I asked you a question."
"And I'm telling you they're two years old!" Her voice split down the middle. "Kids first. Please!"
The girl in the yellow bee costume was wailing against her shoulder. The boy in the padded pumpkin costume made no sound at all—which was ten times worse. A single felt wing dangled by a thread from the little girl's back.
Nico’s left forearm began to ache beneath the old scar tissue, the way it always did every October.
He reached out and took the pumpkin out of her arms.
Ten minutes earlier, he had been trailing two cars behind Paulie Rizzo's silver Buick, climbing the winding lakeshore road with his headlights killed. Paulie had kept Valenti Freight's books for nine years. Paulie had eaten Sunday dinner at Nico's father's table. And for six months, Paulie had been writing checks to a ghost company named Lakeshore Marine Services.
Tonight, Nico was going to ask him why. Once.
Instead, the Buick had swung onto Linden Lane and vanished—and five minutes later, the sky had burst open in flames.
His burner phone had buzzed twice against his thigh on the drive up. Two missed calls. He hadn't pulled it out to check.
Now he stood on Walter Brandt's front lawn, holding a stranger's child, while his thumb reflexively sought the empty pocket inside his overcoat. Eleven days ago, his father's silver St. Christopher medal had vanished from that pocket. He kept checking anyway.
"Dante. Take the bee."
Dante lifted the little girl from the nanny's arms without a word. The girl let go as if every muscle in her body had surrendered.
"Who are you?" Nico asked.
"Josie Hart. I'm their nanny."
"Whose nanny?"
"Eleanor Brandt's." She was already spinning around toward the burning porch. "She's still inside—"
Nico caught her waist. A heavy leather diaper bag hung across her shoulder. He ripped it off her arm and thumbed the zipper back.
No diapers. No baby wipes.
Bricks of hundred-dollar bills bound in fresh bank straps. Two small blue passports.
"That isn't mine," she said, her eyes wide with shock.
"It's in your hands."
"She told me to grab the green bag from the closet! I didn't open it!"
"Fifty thousand in cash," Nico said, flipping a passport open to reveal a child's chubby face. "Gasoline soaked into your clothes. Two kids who aren't yours. You want me to believe you're just the nanny?"
"I want you to move!"
Behind them, a second-story window shattered from the internal heat, showering the gravel driveway in glass. The pumpkin in Nico's arms finally broke his silence and began to cry.
Nico tucked the cash bag under his arm and ran the math the way his father had taught him. A raging fire. Neighbors pulling out phones. Brandt enforcers arriving within thirty minutes. And a Valenti standing over Walter Brandt's burning home holding Walter Brandt's grandchildren.
Nothing about this situation was clean.
He carried the pumpkin to the Escalade and set him on the leather seat. Dante buckled the bee in right beside him.
Josie sprinted for the burning front porch.
Nico caught her around the waist, hauling her off her feet before she could reach the door. She drove her bare heel hard into his shin. He didn't even flinch.
"She's in the study! The door's jammed—"
"Dante."
Dante was already pulling his heavy jacket over his head. He took the porch steps in three massive strides and disappeared into the thick black smoke.
Josie stopped kicking. She went limp against Nico's arm, gasping in short, wet pulls of air, turning her face to look at him for the first time.
"You're sending him in," she whispered. "After you thought I—"
"Be quiet."
Seconds dragged like hours. Upstairs, floorboards groaned and cracked. The heat radiated across the lawn, scorching the grass. Far down the valley, a siren started, cut out, and started again.
Then the front doors burst outward, and Dante staggered through the smoke carrying a woman in his arms.
He laid her on the frozen lawn. Her silk blouse was soaked dark at the shoulder and chest.
Josie tore away from Nico and dropped to her knees beside her. "Ellie. Ellie, look at me!"
Nico knelt across from her and pressed two fingers against the woman's neck. He held them there. Counted to five.
Nothing.
"She's gone, boss," Dante said, his voice raspy from smoke.
Josie made a sound Nico knew he would never forget. Not a scream. Something deep and hollow, like a wooden beam snapping under weight.
Nico's eyes shifted from Eleanor Brandt's pale face down to her hand. Her fingers were curled tightly around a cracked smartphone. The screen was still glowing through the spiderweb fractures.
He reached down and pried it free.
The last outgoing call had been placed at 7:08 p.m. It had lasted forty-one seconds.
Nico stared at the screen. He knew the number by heart.
May you like
It belonged to the burner phone sitting in his own pocket.
Only seven living people had that number. Eleanor Brandt had never been one of them.
