Chapter 4: The Wrong Side of the Door
They went at midnight.
Dante, Leo, and a man named Caruso who had worked for Dante for eleven years and never once asked a question he wasn't supposed to ask.
They took one car.
No phones except Dante's.
No conversation on the drive over.
The Garfield Street property was a converted warehouse — two floors, loading bay at the back, a side entrance with a keypad lock that Leo had memorized on his first visit.
Dante stood back while Leo punched in the code.
The door opened without a sound.
Inside, the air smelled like cardboard and something chemical underneath it.
Caruso swept a flashlight low across the floor.
The crates were still there.
"Same ones?" Dante asked.
"Same ones," Leo said.
"But there were ten before.
Now I count seven."
Dante looked at the three empty spaces on the floor.
Fresh drag marks in the dust.
"He's already moving them," Caruso said.
"Not all of them." Dante crossed to the nearest crate and lifted the lid.
Files.
Photographs.
Exactly as Leo had described.
Dante picked up the first folder and angled it toward Caruso's flashlight.
His own name.
His own signature — or something that looked very much like it — on a transfer document dated fourteen months ago.
A property he had never purchased.
An account he had never opened.
He set the folder down carefully.
"He's been building a case," Dante said.
"Not against himself.
Against me."
---
Leo moved to the next crate.
"There's more here.
These look like — " He stopped.
"What?"
Leo held up a photograph.
Dante took it.
It was a photograph of Dante.
Taken from a distance, through what looked like a restaurant window.
He was sitting across from a man named Reyes — a meeting that had happened two years ago, a meeting about a legitimate property dispute that had been settled legally and cleanly.
But in the photograph, the angle made it look like something else entirely.
And someone had written a date and a location on the back in red ink.
"He's been documenting you," Leo said.
"Framing the meetings.
Making them look like — "
"I see what they look like."
Mia's voice came from the doorway.
Both men turned.
She was standing just inside the side entrance, still in the clothes she'd worn to the barbecue.
"I told you to stay home," Dante said.
"I know." She walked toward them.
"I also know that Javier called the house phone twenty minutes after you left.
He asked for you.
When I said you weren't there, he said — " She stopped in front of her father.
"He said to tell you that the meeting with the port authority has already been confirmed.
And that it would be a shame if certain documents reached them before you had a chance to explain yourself."
The flashlight beam held steady on the folder in Dante's hand.
"He knows we're here," Leo said.
"He knew before we arrived," Dante said.
---
Caruso moved first, back toward the side entrance.
He checked the alley.
Came back.
"Clear.
For now."
Dante looked at the remaining crates.
He looked at the files.
He made a calculation that took about four seconds.
"We take the photographs.
We take the transfer documents.
Everything with my name on it." He handed the folder to Leo.
"Leave the rest.
If he comes back and finds it disturbed, I want him to know we were here.
I want him thinking about what we took."
"Why?" Mia asked.
"Because a man who's worried about what you know makes mistakes." Dante picked up a second folder.
"And Javier has been very careful for a very long time.
I need him to stop being careful."
They worked quickly and without speaking.
Twelve minutes from entry to exit.
In the car on the way back, Mia sat in the rear seat with the folders on her lap.
She didn't open them again.
She looked out the window at the empty streets.
"Dad," she said.
"Who is the port authority contact?
The one Javier mentioned?"
Dante didn't answer immediately.
"Someone I trusted," he said finally.
Mia turned from the window.
"Someone other than Javier?"
"Yes."
She looked at the folders in her lap.
"Then this is bigger than one man."
May you like
"It always was," Dante said.
"I just didn't want to see it."
