New York City in January doesn’t have a color. It is a spectrum of grays: the charcoal of the slush churned up by taxi tires, the slate of the overcast sky, the steel of the skyscrapers that seem to scrape the belly of the heavens. It is a cold that doesn’t just sit on the skin but burrows into the bone, a damp, aggressive chill that makes billionaires and beggars alike hunch their shoulders and hurry toward warmth.
Julian Ashcroft sat in the back of his extended Maybach, a climate-controlled capsule of silence and cream-colored leather, insulated from the city that had made him a king. At forty-five, Julian possessed the kind of wealth that rendered the price of milk abstract. He owned a logistics empire that moved goods across oceans with the precision of a Swiss watch. He had the ear of senators, the respect of Wall Street, and a penthouse overlooking Central Park that was higher than the birds flew.
He also had nothing.
For the last six years, Julian had been a ghost haunting his own life. His existence was a series of meetings he didn’t care about, meals he couldn’t taste, and nights spent staring at the ceiling of a master bedroom that was far too quiet.
His wife, Elena, had been the first to succumb to the silence. She had died three years ago, officially of a cardiac event, but Julian knew the truth. She had died of a broken heart, her spirit eroded day by day, hour by hour, by the absence of their daughter.
Liora.
Even thinking her name felt like swallowing broken glass. Liora had been ten years old—a bright, chaotic burst of energy with unruly curls and a laugh that could crack the sternest face. She had vanished on a Tuesday, much like this one. No witnesses. No ransom demands. Just a backpack found in an alleyway and a police investigation that went from “active” to “cold” to “archived.”
“Traffic is heavy on 57th, sir,” Banion, his driver of twelve years, said, his voice filtering through the intercom. “Protest near Columbus Circle. I’m going to cut over to 8th.”
“Fine,” Julian murmured, not looking up from his tablet. He was looking at a spreadsheet, but the numbers were just dancing ants. He hadn’t truly worked in years; he just went through the motions to keep the madness at bay.
The car turned, the heavy chassis rocking smoothly. They hit a red light at the intersection of a street lined with shuttered storefronts and scaffolding.
Julian sighed and looked out the tinted window. He didn’t expect to see anything. He never did. He was just looking for a break in the gray.
And then, time stopped.
It didn’t slow down; it ceased. The sounds of the engine, the hum of the heater, the rustle of his own suit jacket—everything vanished.
On the sidewalk, huddled in the recess of a closed-down bookstore, sat a boy. He was small, frail, a bundle of dirty layers trying to make himself invisible. He looked to be about eleven or twelve, his face smeared with the kind of grime that doesn’t wash off with a splash of water—it was the patina of the streets. He was hugging a white plastic bodega bag to his chest as if it contained the Crown Jewels.
But it wasn’t the boy’s poverty that seized Julian’s heart. He was a New Yorker; he had trained himself to look past the homeless, a survival mechanism of the wealthy.
It was the flash of gold.
The boy’s oversized, matted fleece jacket was unzipped slightly at the top, revealing a dirty grey sweatshirt underneath. And hanging over the sweatshirt, catching the dull winter light, was a necklace.
It was an eight-pointed star, heavy gold, with a single, radiant Colombian emerald embedded in the center.
Julian’s breath hitched in his throat, a strangling sound that made him drop the tablet. It clattered to the floor.
He knew that star. He knew the weight of it. He knew the specific inclusions in that emerald. He had spent months designing it with an eccentric jeweler in the Diamond District, a man named Sol who refused to use CAD software and carved his wax molds by hand.
Julian had commissioned three. One for Elena. One for himself. And one for Liora.
“Stop the car,” Julian whispered.
Banion didn’t hear him. The light turned green. The car began to roll forward.
“Stop the car!” Julian roared, his voice tearing from his throat with a violence that shook the frame of the vehicle.
Banion slammed on the brakes. Tires screeched. A taxi behind them blared its horn, a long, angry note.
“Sir?” Banion’s eyes were wide in the rearview mirror. “Is it a medical emergency?”
Julian didn’t answer. He fumbled for the door handle, his fingers numb, his fine motor skills obliterated by a surge of adrenaline so potent it felt like poison. He threw the heavy door open and stumbled out into the slush.
The cold hit him like a physical blow, biting through his suit, but he didn’t feel it. He was focused entirely on the boy.
The child had flinched at the sound of the screeching tires. He was scrambling backward now, pushing himself deeper into the doorway, his eyes darting left and right like a trapped animal.
Julian took a step toward him, then another. He realized, vaguely, that he must look insane. A man in a five-thousand-dollar suit, panting, eyes wild, approaching a homeless child in the middle of midtown traffic.
“Hey,” Julian choked out. He raised a hand, trying to signal peace, but his hand was shaking uncontrollably. “Wait. Please.”
The boy froze. He looked at Julian with eyes that were ancient. They were guarded, assessing, devoid of childhood innocence. And they were hazel. A specific, gray-green hazel.
Julian felt his knees weaken. Elena’s eyes.
“I’m not the cops,” the boy said. His voice was rough, like he had spent too much time screaming or too much time silent. “I ain’t moving. This is public property.”
Julian stopped five feet away. He dropped to his knees, heedless of the freezing slush soaking instantly into his trousers. He needed to be on the boy’s level. He needed to not be a giant.
“I don’t care about the spot,” Julian said, his voice trembling. “I… I’m not the police.”
The boy clutched the plastic bag tighter. “Then what do you want? You a pervert? ‘Cause I scream loud. I got a whistle.”
“No, no,” Julian said quickly. He took a deep breath, trying to steady his racing heart. “The necklace. The one around your neck.”
The boy’s hand flew to his chest, covering the star instantly. “It’s mine. I didn’t steal it.”
“I know,” Julian said. “I believe you. I just… I need to see it. Please.”
“Why?” The boy’s suspicion was a physical wall. “You want to buy it? It’s not for sale. It’s magic.”
The word hit Julian like a hammer. Magic.
“I don’t want to buy it,” Julian whispered. “I think… I think I know the person who gave it to you.”
The boy narrowed his eyes. He looked at the massive car idling in the street, at Banion who had stepped out and was standing by the hood, looking concerned. Then he looked back at Julian’s tear-filled eyes.
“Nobody gave it to me,” the boy said defensively. “I mean… my sister did. Sort of.”
“Your sister?” Julian asked. The timeline in his head was fracturing. If this boy was twelve, and Liora had been gone six years…
“Not my real sister,” the boy clarified, shifting his weight. “My star sister. In the Below.”
The world tilted on its axis. The Below.
“What’s your name?” Julian asked.
“Toby.”
“Toby,” Julian repeated. “My name is Julian. Toby, look at me. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to take your necklace. But I am very, very hungry. And you look like you might be hungry too.”
Julian gestured to a diner across the street. It was a classic New York greasy spoon, the kind with neon signs and steam fogging up the glass. “They have burgers there. Milkshakes. Fries. As much as you want. We can sit by the window. You can watch the door. If you want to leave, you leave. No questions asked.”
Toby’s gaze shifted to the diner. He licked his chapped lips. The survival instinct—the need for calories—was warring with the fear of the stranger.
“I keep my bag,” Toby said. “And I sit on the outside of the booth.”
“Deal,” Julian said. “You keep the bag. You sit wherever you want.”
Julian stood up, his knees popping, the wet fabric clinging to his legs. He offered a hand to help Toby up, but the boy ignored it, scrambling to his feet on his own, keeping a safe distance.
“Banion,” Julian called out without looking back. “Wait here.”
“Sir, Mr. Ashcroft, you can’t just—”
“Wait here, Banion!” Julian snapped, the command echoing off the buildings.
He walked toward the diner, Toby trailing a few feet behind him, a small, dirty shadow that held the answer to the only question that mattered.
Part 2: The Diner at the End of the World
The diner smelled of stale coffee, bacon grease, and lemon cleaner—a sensory triad that felt more grounding to Julian than the lavender-scented air of his penthouse. It was warm, aggressively so, the heat blasting from vents above the door.
They took a booth in the back, but as promised, right next to a window. Toby slid in first, jamming his plastic bag into the corner against the wall, positioning himself so he could bolt if necessary. Julian sat opposite him, removing his ruined coat and placing it on the seat.
A waitress named Barb, according to her nametag, wandered over with a pot of coffee. She looked at Julian’s suit, then at Toby’s filth, and raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Everything okay here, hon?” she asked, directing the question to Toby.
Toby nodded mutely, eyeing the pot of coffee.
“We’re fine, Barb,” Julian said, flashing a smile he didn’t feel. “My nephew has had a rough day at… scout camp. We need fuel. Give us three double cheeseburgers, a basket of fries—the big one—onion rings, and… what kind of shake do you want, Toby?”
Toby’s eyes widened. “Strawberry?”
“Two strawberry shakes,” Julian ordered. “And keep the coffee coming for me.”
Barb shrugged, wrote it down, and walked away.
As soon as she was gone, the silence stretched between them. Toby was vibrating with nervous energy, his eyes darting around the room, checking the other patrons. A construction worker eating eggs. An old woman reading a newspaper. Safe.
“So,” Julian started, keeping his voice low. “You mentioned ‘The Below.’ And a ‘Star Sister.'”
Toby pulled the sleeves of his oversized jacket down over his hands. “I ain’t supposed to talk about it. The Bad Man has ears everywhere. He says the birds are his spies.”
Julian felt a chill that had nothing to do with the winter outside. Psychological conditioning. Fear tactics used to control children.
“The Bad Man isn’t here, Toby,” Julian said firmly. “Look at me. I have money. I have power. I can keep the Bad Man away. But you have to tell me about the necklace.”
Toby reached into his shirt and pulled the star out again. He rubbed the emerald with a dirty thumb. It was a self-soothing gesture, one he had clearly performed thousands of times.
“She gave it to me the night I got graduated,” Toby whispered.
“Graduated?”
“Yeah. When you get too big for the little beds, you get graduated. Some kids go to the Farm. Some kids just… go away. I was supposed to go to the Farm.”
“But you didn’t?”
“I bit the driver,” Toby said, a flicker of pride crossing his face. “When he stopped to take a leak. I bit his hand and I ran into the woods. I ran until my feet bled.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know. A week ago? Maybe two? I hopped a freight train. Then a bus. I just wanted to get to the city. She said the city is where the Wizard lives.”
Julian leaned forward. “Who is the Wizard, Toby?”
“Star’s dad,” Toby said matter-of-factly. “She told me stories every night. We slept in the same room. Room 4. She said her dad was a Wizard who built castles in the sky. She said he could fix anything. She said if I ever got out, I had to find him and show him the star. Then he would know to come get her.”
Julian felt the tears spill over. He couldn’t stop them this time. He covered his mouth with his hand, his shoulders shaking. Liora. She had created a mythology to survive. She had turned him into a mythical hero to keep hope alive in the dark.
“She called you Star?” Julian asked, his voice thick.
“Yeah. She said names were dangerous. But she was Star. I was Bear. There was a little kid named Mouse.”
“Is she… is Star still there? In the Below?”
Toby’s face fell. He looked down at the table. “She got graduated too. Before me. A long time ago. Maybe a year?”
Julian felt as if the floor had dropped out of the diner. “She’s gone?”
“She didn’t go to the Farm though,” Toby said quickly, seeing the devastation on Julian’s face. “The Bad Man kept her. He moved her to the Tower. He said she was ‘special inventory.’ He said she was worth more than all of us combined.”
Special inventory. The phrase made Julian want to burn the world down.
“Where is this place, Toby?” Julian pleaded. “Where is The Below?”
“I don’t know the address,” Toby said, frustration creeping into his voice. “It was underground. No windows. But… it smelled like burnt sugar. Always. It made my stomach hurt. And at night, you could hear the planes. Really loud. Like they were landing on the roof.”
Burnt sugar. Low-flying planes.
Julian’s mind raced. He knew logistics. He knew industrial zones. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. Where was there a sugar refinery near a major flight path?
The food arrived. Barb set down the platters of grease and glory. Toby attacked the burger with a feral intensity, abandoning conversation for survival.
Julian watched him eat, his mind working furiously. He needed to call Marcus. Marcus would know. Marcus was the head of his security, a former CIA operative who had led the hunt for Liora for six years. Marcus had turned over every stone.
Julian pulled out his phone. He had three missed calls from Marcus.
He dialed.
“Julian!” Marcus’s voice barked through the phone, sharp and panicked. “Banion says you’re in a diner with a street kid. He says you’re having a breakdown. I’m two minutes out. Stay put.”
“I’m not having a breakdown, Marcus,” Julian said, his voice deadly calm. “I found a lead. A real one.”
“Julian, stop,” Marcus sighed, his tone shifting to one of tired condescension. “We’ve been through this. The psychics. The false sightings. You need to come home. You need your meds.”
“The kid has her necklace, Marcus. The emerald star. The one Sol made.”
There was a silence on the other end. A silence that lasted a heartbeat too long.
“That’s impossible,” Marcus said. “That necklace was lost. You know that.”
“He’s wearing it. He says he was with her. He says they were held in a place that smells of burnt sugar, near an airport. ‘The Below.'”
“Burnt sugar?” Marcus repeated. His voice was flat now. Strange.
“Yeah. Does that ring a bell? You scouted all the industrial sites in the tri-state area.”
“No,” Marcus said quickly. Too quickly. “It doesn’t. Julian, listen to me. This kid is likely a plant. Someone trying to extort you. Do not tell him anything. Do not go anywhere with him. I am pulling up now.”
Julian looked out the window. A black SUV—one of his own security fleet—screeched to a halt behind his Maybach.
But Marcus didn’t get out. Two men did. Two men Julian didn’t recognize. They were big, tactical gear under trench coats, moving with a precision that wasn’t police and wasn’t private security. It was military.
“Who are those men, Marcus?” Julian asked.
“My new team. They’re going to secure the boy.”
“Secure him?” Julian asked. “He’s a child, Marcus. Not a suspect.”
“He’s evidence, Julian. Now put the phone down and hands on the table.”
A memory flashed in Julian’s mind. Seven years ago. A real estate tour. Red Hook, Brooklyn. The old Domino Sugar storage facility. They hadn’t bought it because the noise from the cargo planes into JFK was too loud.
Marcus had been there. Marcus had said, “These basements are incredible. Soundproof. Nobody would hear a thing down here.”
And something else Toby had said. The Bad Man.
“Toby,” Julian whispered, lowering the phone but not hanging up. “The Bad Man. Did he have any marks? Scars? Tattoos?”
Toby paused, a french fry halfway to his mouth. “He wore gloves mostly. But once, I saw his wrist. He had a scorpion. A black scorpion tattoo.”
Julian felt the blood drain from his face.
Marcus didn’t have a scorpion tattoo.
But Marcus’s son, Derrick, did. Derrick, the troubled kid who had been obsessed with Liora. Derrick, who Marcus swore had been in rehab in Arizona for the last five years.
“Julian?” Marcus’s voice crackled in his ear. “Are you there?”
“It was you,” Julian breathed.
“What?”
“The sugar factory in Red Hook. You knew. It’s Derrick, isn’t it? You’ve been hiding him. You’ve been hiding her.”
The silence on the line was profound. It was the silence of a man who realizes the charade is over.
“Julian,” Marcus said, his voice dropping to a menacing whisper. “Don’t do anything stupid. If you run, you die. If you stay, we can talk.”
“Go to hell.”
Julian hung up. He looked at Toby. The boy had stopped eating. He saw the terror in Julian’s eyes.
“Toby,” Julian said, standing up. “We have to go. Now.”
“My burger—”
“Leave it. I’ll buy you a steak. We have to run.”
“Is it the Bad Man?” Toby asked, sliding out of the booth, clutching his bag.
“Worse,” Julian said. “It’s his father.”
Julian didn’t head for the front door. The two men were already reaching for the handle. Julian grabbed Toby by the collar of his jacket and shoved him toward the kitchen.
“Hey! You can’t go back there!” Barb yelled, dropping a coffee pot. It shattered, hot liquid spraying everywhere.
“Fire inspection!” Julian shouted, throwing a wad of hundred-dollar bills into the air like confetti. The distraction worked. Patrons scrambled for the money. Barb froze.
Julian kicked open the swinging metal doors of the kitchen. “Move! Move!” he screamed at the startled cooks. He dragged Toby past the sizzling griddles, out the back delivery door, and into the alleyway.
The cold air slapped them again. The alley was narrow, filled with trash bags.
“They’ll be coming around the back,” Julian said, scanning the area. He saw a fence at the end of the alley. “Can you climb?”
“I’m a squirrel,” Toby said.
“Good. Over the fence. Then we run. We don’t stop running until we find a place with no cameras.”
“Where are we going?” Toby asked, sprinting alongside the billionaire.
Julian helped hoist the boy up the chain-link fence. As Toby straddled the top, Julian looked back. The kitchen door burst open. The two men in trench coats spilled out, guns drawn.
Julian scrambled up the fence, adrenaline giving him the strength of a man half his age. A bullet pinged off the metal post inches from his hand.
He vaulted over, landing hard on the asphalt on the other side.
“We’re going to Red Hook,” Julian gasped, grabbing Toby’s hand. “We’re going to get the Star.”
Part 3: The Ghost in the Machine
The alleyway spit them out onto a busy avenue, the transition from the claustrophobic shadows to the blinding neon of 8th Avenue jarring enough to induce vertigo. Julian Ashcroft, a man whose picture had graced the cover of Forbes three times, stood panting on the sidewalk, his Italian suit torn at the knee, his six-thousand-dollar shoes scuffed beyond repair, clutching the hand of a homeless boy who looked like he was vibrating with terror.
“Keep walking,” Julian hissed, pulling Toby into the flow of pedestrians. “Don’t run. Running draws the eye. Just walk. We’re late for an appointment. That’s the story. We’re just late.”
Toby looked up at him, his face pale beneath the dirt. “They have guns, Julian. Real guns. Like the guards at the School.”
“I know,” Julian said, his mind racing at a velocity that made his logistics algorithms look like simple addition. He was checking variables, calculating risks.
Problem 1: Tracking. His phone. His watch. His wallet.
Julian stopped abruptly in front of a overflowing trash can near a halal food cart. The smell of spiced lamb and diesel fumes was overwhelming.
“What are you doing?” Toby asked, eyeing the cart hungrily.
Julian didn’t answer. He stripped off his Patek Philippe watch—a limited edition worth more than the average American home—and dropped it into the trash. It landed with a dull thud on a pile of wet coffee grounds.
Next, he pulled out his smartphone. He smashed the screen against the metal rim of the can, then dropped it in. Finally, he took out his wallet. He pulled out the wad of cash—maybe two thousand dollars in hundreds—shoved it into his sock, and tossed the leather wallet with all his credit cards and ID into the garbage.
“You just threw away the magic plastic,” Toby whispered, eyes wide.
“It’s not magic,” Julian said, straightening up. “It’s a leash. Marcus can track those cards. He can track the GPS in the phone. Now, we’re ghosts.”
They descended into the subway station at 50th Street. The air down here was thick, smelling of ozone and old electricity. Julian hadn’t ridden the subway in twenty years. It felt like entering the underworld—a chaotic, screeching ecosystem of steel and humanity.
He bought two MetroCards with cash from a machine, his hands shaking slightly. They pushed through the turnstiles just as a train rumbled into the station, a silver worm shrieking its arrival.
They squeezed into a car packed with commuters. Julian maneuvered Toby into a corner, standing in front of him to create a shield with his body. The train lurched forward, and Julian watched the tunnel lights flicker past the windows.
He closed his eyes and tried to think like Marcus.
Marcus was a predator. He was methodical. He wouldn’t just chase them; he would net them. He would be monitoring the credit cards (silent now). He would be pinging the phone (dead now). He would likely have tapped into the NYPD’s citywide surveillance grid, using a favor or a fabrication about a “kidnapping in progress” to get facial recognition access.
“We need to get off Manhattan,” Julian murmured. “Manhattan is a cage with a million cameras.”
“Where do we go?” Toby asked, his voice barely audible over the rattle of the train. “The Bronx? I heard bad things about the Bronx.”
“Queens,” Julian said. “Astoria. I know a guy. A guy who hates Marcus almost as much as I do right now.”
They rode the train for forty minutes, the tension in Julian’s chest tightening with every stop. Every time the doors hissed open, he expected to see men in trench coats. Every police officer on the platform looked like an executioner.
When they finally emerged in Astoria, the sky had turned a bruised purple, the sun dipping below the horizon. The neighborhood was different here—lower buildings, more sky, the sound of Greek and Arabic mixing with English.
They walked for six blocks, zigzagging through residential streets to avoid main thoroughfares. Julian’s adrenaline was fading, replaced by a crushing exhaustion and the biting cold. He looked at Toby. The boy was shivering violently, his teeth chattering.
“We need to get you warm,” Julian said.
They ducked into a Salvation Army that was about to close. Julian grabbed a thick wool coat, a beanie, and a scarf for Toby. For himself, he grabbed a nondescript work jacket to cover his torn suit. He paid with a hundred-dollar bill and told the clerk to keep the change.
Back on the street, bundled up, they looked less like fugitives and more like just another pair of struggling New Yorkers.
“Who is this guy we’re seeing?” Toby asked, his voice muffled by the scarf.
“His name is Frankie Russo,” Julian said. “He used to be my father’s ‘Fixer.’ That’s what they called men who solved problems that lawyers couldn’t touch.”
“Is he a bad guy?”
Julian paused. “He’s a dangerous guy. But he has a code. Marcus… Marcus has no code.”
They reached a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Beyond it lay a scrapyard, a graveyard of rusted metal and crushed cars stacked like totem poles. In the center sat a small, illuminated trailer with smoke curling from a chimney.
Julian picked up a rock and banged it rhythmically against the metal gate. Clang. Clang-clang. Clang.
A minute passed. Then, a floodlight snapped on, blinding them.
A voice, amplified by a loudspeaker, crackled through the air. “Get lost. We’re closed. Dogs come out in ten seconds.”
“Frankie!” Julian shouted, shielding his eyes. “It’s Ashcroft! Julian Ashcroft!”
Silence. The kind of silence that suggests a gun is being loaded.
“Julian Ashcroft is in a boardroom in midtown,” the voice growled. “Or he’s dead. I saw the news. They say you snapped.”
“I didn’t snap, Frankie! I woke up! Marcus betrayed me! He has Liora!”
The floodlight didn’t waver. “Liora is dead, kid. Don’t play with ghosts.”
“She’s alive! I have a boy with me! He escaped the facility! He has the necklace, Frankie! The emerald star!”
There was a long pause. Then, the electronic buzz of a heavy lock disengaging. The gate slowly rolled open.
“Come to the trailer,” the voice commanded. “Keep your hands where I can see them. If you make a sudden move, my boys will turn you into scrap.”
Part 4: The Scrapyard King
The inside of the trailer smelled of cigar smoke, garlic, and old paper. It was cluttered but clean, the walls lined with monitors showing various camera angles of the yard and the street outside.
Frankie Russo sat behind a metal desk that looked like it had been salvaged from a battleship. He was a mountain of a man, even in his sixties—bald head, white goatee, and forearms the size of Christmas hams. He wore a grease-stained mechanic’s jumpsuit, but on the desk lay a very modern, very lethal-looking semi-automatic pistol.
He looked at Julian, taking in the torn suit and the desperation. Then he looked at Toby, shrinking into his new wool coat.
“You look like hell, Prince,” Frankie grunted. He didn’t rise.
“It’s been a long day,” Julian said, keeping his hands visible.
Frankie gestured to the chairs—two mismatched car seats welded onto metal frames. “Sit. Talk. And make it fast. I got a poker game at nine.”
Julian sat. He told him everything. The stoplight. The necklace. The diner. The chase. The revelation about the burnt sugar and the airport. The tattoo on the wrist.
When Julian mentioned the scorpion tattoo, Frankie’s eyes narrowed. He picked up his cigar, lit it, and took a long drag.
“Derrick,” Frankie muttered, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke. “That kid was always wrong. I told your old man, rest his soul. I said, ‘That boy ain’t right in the head. He enjoys hurting things.'”
“Marcus covered it up,” Julian said, leaning forward. “He built a facility, Frankie. A prison. He’s kept my daughter in a basement for six years while I paid his salary. While I cried on his shoulder.”
Frankie looked at Toby. “Hey, kid. You like Oreos?”
Toby blinked. “Yeah.”
Frankie opened a drawer and tossed a package of Oreos to the boy. “Eat. And tell me. The place. Did it have a weird noise? Like a hum?”
“Yeah,” Toby said, struggling to open the package. “Like a giant bee. All the time.”
“Industrial ventilation,” Frankie nodded. “And the planes?”
“Low. Loud. They shook the water in the glass.”
Frankie turned back to Julian. “Red Hook. The old Domino sugar storage. It’s got four levels of sub-basement. Cold War bomb shelters. Thick concrete. You could scream your lungs out down there, and a guy standing on the sidewalk wouldn’t hear a whisper.”
“You know it?”
“I know every bolt in this city, Julian. I stored some… sensitive materials there back in the nineties.” Frankie leaned back, the chair groaning. “So, Marcus the Paladin turns out to be Marcus the Jailer. That’s a Greek tragedy right there.”
“I need to get in,” Julian said. “Tonight.”
Frankie laughed. A dry, hacking sound. “Tonight? You can’t just knock on the door, kid. Marcus will have that place locked down tight. He knows you made him. He’s probably moving the ‘inventory’ right now.”
Julian’s heart stopped. “Moving them? Where?”
“If I were him? A shipping container. Onto a boat. Into international waters. Once she’s on the ocean, she’s gone, Julian. Forever.”
Julian stood up, knocking the car seat over. “Then we have to go now! I need weapons. I need a car. I need a team.”
“You don’t have a team,” Frankie said calmly. “You have a mechanic and a street urchin. And you.”
“I have money. I’ll pay you. Ten million. Twenty. Whatever you want.”
Frankie looked at him with disdain. “You think this is about money? You think I’m gonna go to war with Marcus—who has ex-Spec Ops on his payroll—for paper?”
“Then for what?” Julian pleaded. “For my father? For loyalty?”
Frankie stood up. He walked around the desk and stood toe-to-toe with Julian. He was shorter, but he felt denser, heavier.
“I held you when you were a baby, Julian,” Frankie said softly. “I drove you to your first day of school. I was there when you buried your wife. I never liked Marcus. He was too clean. Too perfect.”
Frankie sighed and rubbed his bald head.
“I ain’t doing it for money. I’m doing it because nobody hurts kids in my town. It’s a rule.”
Frankie walked to a metal locker against the wall and threw it open. Inside was an arsenal. Rifles, handguns, tactical vests, night-vision goggles.
“Toby,” Frankie called out. “You ever shot a gun?”
“No,” Toby said, mouth full of Oreo.
“Good. You ain’t starting now. You stay here. My nephews, Dom and Sal, will watch you. They look scary, but they watch cartoons and eat pasta.”
“No,” Julian said. “Toby comes with us.”
“Are you crazy?” Frankie snapped. “It’s a war zone.”
“He’s the only one who knows the layout inside,” Julian argued. “He knows which room is hers. He knows the ventilation shafts. We can’t navigate the sub-levels without a guide.”
Frankie looked at Toby. The boy stopped chewing. He looked at the guns, then at Julian.
“I want to help Star,” Toby said, his voice small but firm. “I promised.”
Frankie grunted. “Brave kid. Stupid, but brave.” He tossed a Kevlar vest at Julian. “Put this on. It stops bullets, mostly. Don’t test it.”
He tossed a smaller vest to Toby. “Strap that tight, kid. If you get shot, I’m gonna be very pissed off.”
“What about the car?” Julian asked, struggling with the velcro straps of the vest.
Frankie grinned, a wolfish expression that showed gold teeth. “You said you wanted to get into a fortress, right? You don’t knock on the door of a fortress.”
“So how do we get in?”
“We use a Trojan Horse,” Frankie said. “Come outside.”
They followed Frankie out into the yard. He led them past the rows of crushed sedans to a massive, looming shape covered by a tarp.
Frankie yanked the tarp down.
It was an armored truck. Not just any armored truck—an old Brinks vehicle that had been modified. It had a reinforced battering ram welded to the front bumper and thick steel plating over the windows.
“I built this for a bank robbery movie,” Frankie said proudly. “Then the studio went bust. I kept it. The engine is a V8 big block. It can push through a brick wall.”
Julian looked at the beast of a machine. It was ugly. It was loud. It was perfect.
“We drive this into the loading dock?” Julian asked.
“We drive this through the loading dock door,” Frankie corrected. “Marcus will have guards at the perimeter. We aren’t sneaking past them. We are going to hit them so hard and so fast they won’t know what year it is.”
Frankie opened the back doors of the truck. “Load up. I’m driving. Julian, you’re on the passenger side. There’s a shotgun mounted under the dash. Don’t shoot your foot off.”
“I’ve never fired a gun,” Julian admitted.
Frankie paused. He looked at the billionaire, then reached into his belt and pulled out his own pistol. He racked the slide and handed it to Julian, handle first.
“Point the noisy end at the bad guys,” Frankie said. “Squeeze, don’t pull. And remember: they stole your daughter. Imagine what they did to her every day for six years. Channel that. The rage will aim for you.”
Julian gripped the cold steel. It felt heavy, alien. But as he closed his fingers around the grip, he felt a shift inside him. The businessman was dying. The father was waking up.
“Let’s go get her,” Julian said.
Part 5: The Red Hook Requiem
The drive to Brooklyn was a blur of silence and tension. Frankie drove the armored truck with a terrifying competence, weaving the heavy beast through traffic, running red lights with impunity.
Toby sat in the back, strapped into a jump seat, his legs swinging, clutching his plastic bag. He looked tiny in the cavernous steel box.
“We’re crossing the bridge,” Frankie announced over the roar of the engine. “Five minutes out.”
Julian stared out the reinforced slit of the windshield. The Manhattan skyline was receding behind them, a glittering oz of indifference. Ahead lay Brooklyn, dark and sprawling.
“Okay, listen up,” Frankie shouted. “Here’s the play. The facility has a main gate and a loading dock. The gate will be manned. I’m going to ram the gate. That will trigger the alarm. They’ll focus fire on the cab.”
“That sounds like a bad plan for us,” Julian noted, his knuckles white on the dashboard.
“That’s why we have the smoke,” Frankie said, flipping a toggle switch on the dash. “I rigged canister launchers on the roof. As soon as we hit, I pop smoke. We bail out the back. In the confusion, we find the service entrance that Toby talked about.”
“The vent,” Toby piped up from the back. “Near the big fans. That’s where I got out.”
“Right. The vent,” Frankie said. “We go in low. We move fast. No hesitating. If you see someone with a gun who isn’t me or Julian, you hide, Toby. Julian, you shoot.”
“Got it,” Julian said.
They turned off the highway, rumbling down the cobblestone streets of Red Hook. The warehouses here were old, civil war era ghosts converted into studios and storage.
At the end of the street, looming like a fortress against the black water of the harbor, was the Domino storage facility. It was massive, bricked up, with barbed wire spiraling along the top of the fence.
“I see movement,” Frankie said, squinting. “Two tangos at the gate. Rifles.”
“Do they see us?”
“We’re a five-ton truck, Julian. Hard to miss.”
Suddenly, a spotlight from the gate swung onto them.
Crack.
A bullet sparked off the windshield, leaving a spiderweb fracture in the bulletproof glass.
“Here we go!” Frankie yelled. He slammed the accelerator to the floor.
The V8 roared like a dragon. The truck surged forward, eating up the pavement.
“Hold on!”
CRASH.
The impact was bone-jarring. The reinforced bumper tore through the chain-link gate like it was made of paper. The truck slewed sideways, tires screaming, then corrected.
Gunfire erupted from the guard shack. Bullets hammered against the side of the truck, sounding like hail on a tin roof.
“Popping smoke!” Frankie hit the switch.
With a thump-thump-thump, canisters launched from the roof, exploding into thick clouds of white, acrid smoke that instantly enveloped the courtyard.
“Go! Go! Go!” Frankie shouted.
He kicked his door open and rolled out, his rifle already up. Julian scrambled to the back, grabbed Toby, and shoved the rear doors open.
They spilled out into the white fog. It was disorienting, blinding.
“This way!” Frankie’s voice cut through the chaos.
They ran blindly, guided only by Frankie’s silhouette. Gunfire flashed in the mist, orange blooms of violence. Julian heard shouting—commands, confusion.
“Intruders in the courtyard! Sector 4!”
“They’re flanking! Suppressing fire!”
Frankie led them to the side of the building, into the shadow of a massive industrial air intake unit. The roar of the fans masked the sound of the battle behind them.
“Where’s the hole, kid?” Frankie hissed, scanning the darkness.
Toby pointed to a section of the grate that was loose, held on by a single rusted bolt. “There! I pushed it out!”
Frankie grabbed the grate with one hand and ripped it free, his muscles straining. “In! Julian first, then the kid, I’m rear guard.”
Julian dove into the dark, greasy tunnel. It was tight, smelling of dust and, unmistakably, burnt sugar.
He crawled, his knees scraping against the metal. He heard Toby scuffling behind him, then Frankie grunting as he squeezed his bulk into the shaft.
“Move, move,” Frankie whispered. “They’ll gas the vents if they figure out we’re in here.”
They crawled for what felt like an eternity. Julian’s breath came in ragged gasps. He was a billionaire. He did cardio on a Peloton. This was primal. This was survival.
“Stop!” Toby whispered. “Here. This is the grate to the hallway.”
Julian froze. He looked through the slats of a vent beneath him.
Below was a corridor. White linoleum. Fluorescent lights. It looked sterile, like a hospital, totally at odds with the decaying exterior of the factory.
And standing right below them, guarding a heavy steel door, was a young man.
He was pacing, agitated. He had a shaved head and a scorpion tattoo on his wrist.
Derrick.
Julian felt a surge of rage so pure it nearly blinded him. This was the boy who had stalked Liora. The boy who had stolen her childhood.
“That’s him,” Julian mouthed to Frankie.
Frankie nodded. He pulled a knife from his boot. “Can you get the grate off quietly?”
Julian examined the latches. They were internal. “Yes.”
“On three,” Frankie signaled. “You drop the grate. I drop the boy.”
“You’re going to drop on him?”
“Gravity is a weapon. One… two… three.”
Julian unlatched the grate. It swung down with a squeak.
Derrick looked up, startled. “What the—”
Frankie didn’t wait. He launched himself out of the vent, a two-hundred-pound missile.
He landed squarely on Derrick. There was a sickening crunch of bone meeting floor. Derrick didn’t even scream; the air was driven from his lungs instantly.
Frankie was on him in a second, a fist connecting with Derrick’s temple. The young man went limp.
Julian dropped down next, landing awkwardly but keeping his feet. He helped Toby down.
They stood over the unconscious body of the kidnapper.
“Is he dead?” Toby asked, trembling.
“He’s wishing he was,” Frankie spat. He zip-tied Derrick’s hands and feet with plastic cuffs he pulled from his vest.
Julian turned to the steel door. It had a heavy electronic lock.
“Room 4,” Toby whispered. “But that’s not it. This is the playroom. Her room is at the end. Room 1.”
They moved down the hall. It was terrifyingly quiet. The sound of the gunfight outside was muffled here, distant.
They reached Room 1. A heavy steel door with a small viewing slot.
Julian peered through the slot.
Inside, sitting on a bed, hugging her knees, was a girl.
She was sixteen now. Her hair was matted, her clothes were too small. She was rocking back and forth, staring at the wall.
But it was her. It was Liora.
Julian felt his legs give out. He leaned against the door, sobbing silently.
“Open it,” Frankie said, watching the hallway. “We don’t have time for a reunion. We have to move.”
“It’s coded,” Julian said, looking at the keypad.
He looked at Toby. “Do you know the code?”
Toby shook his head. “Only the Bad Man knows.”
Julian looked at the keypad. Four digits.
He thought of Marcus. Marcus, who was obsessed with control. Marcus, who mocked Julian’s grief.
“I gave you a motive to work harder,” Marcus had said in his imagination.
Marcus had used Julian’s life to build this.
Julian typed in his own birthday. 0-4-1-2.
Beep. Click.
The light turned green.
Julian pushed the handle. The door swung open.
Liora looked up. Her eyes—those gray-green eyes—widened in terror. She scrambled back against the headboard.
“No! I didn’t make noise! I was quiet!” she screamed.
Julian stepped into the room, lowering his mask, lowering the gun.
“Liora,” he choked out. “Star.”
The girl froze. She tilted her head. “Daddy?”
It was a question, fragile as glass.
“I’m here, baby,” Julian wept, falling to his knees by the bed. “I’m here.”
She launched herself at him. It wasn’t a hug; it was a collision. She buried her face in his neck, screaming a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.
Julian wrapped his arms around her, shielding her, holding her so tight he thought he might break her ribs.
“I knew you’d come!” she cried. “I told them! I told them the Wizard would come!”
“We have to go!” Frankie shouted from the doorway. “Company coming!”
Julian stood up, pulling Liora with him. She was thin, so thin. But she was alive.
They stepped into the hallway.
At the far end, the elevator doors pinged open.
Marcus stepped out. He was wearing a tactical vest, flanked by three heavily armed mercenaries.
He saw Julian. He saw Liora.
He didn’t look angry. He looked resigned.
“Well,” Marcus said, his voice echoing in the corridor. “This is inconvenient.”
TO BE CONTINUED…..
