Chapter 1 - The Road to Boston
The midnight asphalt stretched out under the torrential downpour as Raphael’s dark sleek sedan sliced through the storm on Interstate 95 North. The speedometer hovered well past eighty miles per hour, the engine purring with a quiet, lethal efficiency.
Beside him in the passenger seat, Josephine sat so still she looked carved from ice. She had refused to take off her apron until Raphael practically ordered her to, tossing it onto the back seat. Her small hands were clasped in her lap, fingers twisting around her phone, her gaze fixed entirely on the rain-streaked windshield.
"He's eight," Josephine whispered into the dark cabin, her voice barely louder than the hum of the tires against the wet pavement. "Wyatt was born with a defective aortic valve. When our parents died in the crash two years ago, the doctors told me he’d need surgery eventually. But they said we had time. They said he was stable."
Raphael kept his eyes on the road, his hands steady on the leather steering wheel. "Stable doesn't mean healed. You know that."
"I was trying to save enough," she said, a dry sob choking her throat. "The estate pays well, Raphael. Mrs. Ros let me work extra shifts. I kept every dollar in a high-yield account. I calculated that by next winter, I would have thirty thousand dollars saved for his copays and the specialist down in New York."
Raphael glanced at her. Calculated. Always calculating, because for Josephine Hartley, the world had never offered a safety net.
"Why didn't you come to me?" Raphael asked quietly. "Two years under my roof, Josephine. You knew who I was. You knew what I could do."
"That's exactly why I didn't," she replied, turning her face toward him. Her swollen hazel eyes reflected the ambient glow of the dashboard lights. "Everyone knows who Raphael Orsini is. The man who controls the northern shipping docks. The man whose name makes politicians lower their voices. If I asked you for money, I would have belonged to you. I couldn't risk putting Wyatt in the middle of... your world."
Raphael felt a familiar, cold sting behind his ribs. She wasn't wrong. The Orsini name was a curse wrapped in velvet and money. But as he looked at her pale, resolute face, he realized something that made his pulse quicken: she had come to his third-floor door at 12:43 A.M. anyway. When everything fell apart, her feet had carried her to him.
His phone buzzed on the center console. Raphael hit the speaker button.
"Raphael," Gideon Marsh’s rough voice echoed through the car. "I just checked the traffic cameras along your route. You’ve got two black SUVs riding four miles behind you. They picked you up two miles after you cleared the estate gates."
Josephine’s breath caught. She looked back toward the dark highway behind them.
"Is it Valenti's men?" Raphael asked calmly, shifting his gear into manual drive.
"It’s not Valenti. It’s worse," Gideon replied grimly. "It’s the Moretti crew. Word got out that you sent the shipping ledgers to the federal prosecutor’s office yesterday. Dominic Moretti knows he’s facing a life sentence if those documents hit the grand jury on Monday. He wants you dead before sunrise, Raphael."
Josephine pressed her back into the leather seat, terror wide in her eyes. "Oh God... Raphael, I brought you out into the open. If I hadn't knocked on your door—"
"Silence, Josephine," Raphael commanded, his voice utterly devoid of fear. He looked at the rear-view mirror. Two sets of high beams had just broken through the curtain of rain behind them, closing the distance fast.
"Gideon," Raphael said into the phone. "Call Dr. Vance at Harbor Children's Hospital. Tell him Wyatt Hartley is entering operating room three tonight under my personal care. Tell him if anyone tries to delay that surgery, I will burn the hospital's board of directors to the ground."
"Consider it done," Gideon said. "What about the tail?"
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"I'm taking the exit for Route 1A," Raphael said, his knuckles tightening on the wheel. "Tell the boys in Boston to clear the loading docks near the harbor. We're going to have a brief conversation before I visit the hospital."
Raphael slammed his foot on the accelerator. The engine roared, and the sedan shot forward into the blinding storm.
