Chapter 4 - The Ransom Note
Sadi stared at the glowing screen of the burner phone as if it were a venomous snake about to strike.
She didn't hear Victor step closer. She didn't feel the air shift around him until a large, warm, impossibly heavy hand reached down, snatched the cheap plastic phone right out of her trembling fingers, and lifted it away from her.
“No—!” Sadi gasped, lunging forward instinctively to grab it back. “Please, give it back! You don't understand!”
Victor easily evaded her desperate reach, holding the phone up with two fingers. His pale slate-gray eyes scanned the illuminated screen, reading the text message from Mick in less than two seconds.
The temperature in the hallway dropped twenty degrees.
Victor’s jaw tightened, the muscles ticking along his chiseled jawline like the escape mechanism of a loaded bomb. He lowered his hand, his gaze snapping back to Sadi with an intensity that made her skin crawl.
“Who is Mick?” Victor asked. His voice was dangerously quiet, stripped of all human warmth, sounding like stones grinding together in a deep trench.
Sadi pressed her back harder against the wall, shaking her head so violently her hair whipped across her face. “N-no one. Just... a personal matter. Please, Mr. Costello, I’ll clean it up, I’ll get back to work—!”
“I asked you a question, girl,” Victor interrupted, stepping closer until he towered directly over her. He didn't shout. He didn't raise his voice an octave. But the absolute, crushing authority radiating from his frame made it impossible to breathe. “Who is Mick, and why is he texting threats to a girl working night shifts in my house?”
At that moment, Marcus stepped out of the office, his hand instinctively resting near the holster concealed beneath his jacket. “Boss? What’s going on?”
“Find out who owns the phone number on this screen,” Victor commanded, handing the burner phone to Marcus without taking his eyes off Sadi. “Run a trace. I want a name, an address, a bank account, and his exact GPS coordinates within three minutes.”
Marcus blinked, surprised by the sudden, lethal pivot, but he nodded crisply. “On it, Boss.”
Marcus ducked back into the office, the door clicking shut behind him.
Sadi felt a fresh wave of panic cresting over her, hot and blinding. If Victor intervened, if the Castello syndicate got involved with Mick O’Shea, Mick would panic. And if Mick panicked, he would follow through on his threat. He would cut off Sam’s oxygen. He would pull the plugs on the IVs in room 412.
“You can’t!” Sadi cried out, scrambling forward and grabbing the hem of Victor’s white dress shirt with her bleeding, chemical-ravaged fingers.
She didn't care about the rules anymore. She didn't care that she was touching the most feared man in the state.
“If you go after him, Sam dies!” she sobbed, looking straight up into his terrifying slate-gray eyes, her face stained with tears and soot. “He’s at St. Jude’s! He has leukemia! Mick is there—he’s watching him! If he thinks I’ve called the police or mob muscle, he’ll kill my brother!”
Victor looked down at her hands.
His eyes lingered on her fingers—the raw, cracked knuckles, the weeping chemical burns, the skin torn apart by harsh lye and bleach just so she could earn enough to keep her family alive. For eight months, she had scrubbed his floors without uttering a single complaint, hiding a tragedy twice her size behind a mask of invisible servitude.
A muscle twitched in Victor’s cheek. He slowly reached down, his large, calloused hand wrapping gently around her wrist, and uncurled her fingers from his shirt with surprising care.
“Who said anything about calling the police?” Victor murmured, his voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly calm register.
Before Sadi could process the words, Marcus threw the office door open, holding a printed tablet.
“Got him, Boss,” Marcus reported sharply. “Mick O’Shea. Low-level sports book runner out of a pool hall on Fourth Street. But right now... our cell tower ping puts his burner phone active in the parking structure of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.”
Victor’s eyes flashed with a cold, blinding light.
“Marcus,” Victor said, turning his head slightly toward his lieutenant.
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“Boss?”
“Get the cars. Wake up the enforcers.” Victor looked back down at Sadi, his jaw set like iron. “We’re going to the hospital.”
