Chapter 4
1041 Words
The name Silas Vane didn't just vibrate through the phone; it seemed to physically darken the room.
Roxanne felt the air leave her lungs as if she’d been struck in the solar plexus. She stood up so abruptly that her chair skidded backward, the metal wheels screeching against the hardwood floor. Every instinct she had developed—every lesson David had taught her about staying calm under pressure—vanished, replaced by a cold, primal terror for the girl who had just been laughing about biology grades ten minutes ago.
"You must be joking," Roxanne hissed.
Her voice was a jagged edge, trembling with a mixture of disbelief and a desperate hope that this was just another one of Leo’s pathetic, drunken ploys for attention. "Leo, if this is some sick stunt to get me to pay off your bookie, I will personally come over there and finish what they started. Do you hear me? Put Mia on the phone. Right now."
"I’m afraid Leo isn't the one making the decisions anymore, Roxanne."
The voice that answered wasn't her father’s frantic, high-pitched whine. It was a low, smooth baritone—a sound like velvet wrapped around a blade. It was calm. Too calm. It was the voice of a man who had never had to raise his volume to be heard, because the world simply stopped to listen.
Roxanne’s hand tightened on the receiver until her knuckles turned a ghostly white. "Who is this?"
"You're a Private Investigator. A profiler. A hunter of truths," the voice mused, ignoring her question. "Surely you can recognize the sound of a man who doesn't have time for jokes. Your father has been very... talkative. He told me you were the smart one. He told me you were the one who escaped."
A soft, chilling chuckle came through the line. "I’ve always had a soft spot for escape artists. They usually have the most interesting stories."
"Silas Vane," Roxanne breathed the name, her mind racing at a hundred miles an hour. She was already grabbing her leather jacket, shoving her laptop into her bag with one hand while the other held the phone to her ear. "If you so much as breathe the same air as my sister, I will find every offshore account, every hidden grave, and every dirty secret the Vanes have buried since the Prohibition. I will dismantle your empire brick by brick."
"I don't doubt it," Silas replied, his tone almost complimentary. "In fact, that’s exactly why I’m sitting in your father’s armchair. You have a reputation for being thorough, Roxanne. I find myself in need of someone... thorough."
"I don't work for monsters," she spat, kicking her office door open and sprinting toward the stairs.
"You don't work for me yet," Silas corrected gently. "But you do work for Mia. And right now, Mia’s future depends on how fast you can drive. I’m looking at her graduation photo, Roxanne. She has your eyes. It would be a shame for those eyes to see what happens to people who don't settle their debts with me."
"Don't you touch her," Roxanne roared, her voice echoing in the empty stairwell of her building. "She has nothing to do with this! She doesn't even know who you are!"
"Then let’s keep it that way," Silas said. The warmth in his voice was gone now, replaced by the clinical coldness of a surgeon. "Your father owes me five million dollars. He doesn't have it. But he told me he has something better. He has a daughter who can find anything. And I have lost something, Roxanne. Something very important."
"I don't care about your lost toys, Vane."
"You will. Because the contract I’m about to offer you is the only thing standing between your sister and the Vane collection of 'missing persons.' You have ten minutes to get to this house. If you’re late, I’ll assume you’ve declined the offer. And I’m sure Jules—my associate—would love to go meet Mia at her study group."
"Wait—"
"Nine minutes and fifty seconds, Roxanne. Don't be late. I hate it when people are late."
The line went dead.
Roxanne stood in the middle of the dark alley behind her office, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. The silence of the city felt like a trap. She looked at her phone, the screen still glowing with the call log.
She didn't think. She didn't call the police—she knew the Vanes owned half the precinct, and the other half was too scared to answer the phone. She didn't call David. This was her blood. Her debt. Her sister.
She threw herself into her battered black sedan, the engine screaming as she floored it out of the alley. Her mind was a whirlwind of calculations. Silas Vane wasn't just a mobster; he was a ghost. He didn't make house calls. If he was personally at her father’s house, it meant the $5 million was the least of his concerns. He was hunting something. Or someone.
And he had decided she was the only one who could find it.
"Hang on, Mia," she whispered, her eyes burning with a fierce, protective fire as she wove through the late-night traffic. "I’m coming. And God help Silas Vane if he thinks he can own me."
As she rounded the corner toward the suburb where she grew up, she saw the black SUVs parked like predatory sharks along the curb of her father’s street. The house—the crumbling Victorian she had spent years trying to forget—was lit up like a stage.
Roxanne slammed the car into park and leaped out before the engine had even stopped rattling. She didn't look at the armed men standing on the lawn. She didn't look at the neighbors peering through their blinds.
She stormed up the porch steps, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was going to save her sister. Even if she had to sign her soul over to the devil himself to do it.
- Writer
