134. 🍼 The Ultrasound Hidden Inside the Mafia Boss’s Private Safe

Chapter 02 - The SUV That Wasn’t His

Mina did not move toward the SUV.

That small refusal cost her more courage than she had expected.

The rear door opened from the inside. Rain ran down the dark paint in long silver lines. Lev turned in the front seat, his face expressionless through the gap in the window.

“Ms. Vale,” he said. “Get in.”

Alfred was still on the phone.

“Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Then get in the car.”

She looked at the station again.

It was only one block away.

All those years keeping books had trained her to count differences: dates that didn’t match, vendor names spelled almost correctly, recurring payments just small enough to avoid attention. One block was not far. One block was everything.

“I’m not your prisoner,” she said.

“No.” Alfred’s answer came at once. “You’re not.”

“Then tell Lev to leave.”

The silence that followed told her he would not.

Mina’s eyes burned. Not from the rain. Rain was honest. Rain fell where gravity took it and pretended nothing else.

“You found the ultrasound and decided the next step was to send men after me.”

“I sent Lev because there is another SUV half a block behind you that is not mine.”

The words stopped her breath.

She turned slowly.

At the far end of the street, beneath a parking sign, a second black SUV waited with its lights off.

It looked no different from every rich man’s vehicle in Boston. Tinted windows. Clean body. Patient engine.

But Mina knew what patience looked like when it was watching.

“Who is it?” she whispered.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

The door beside her remained open.

Lev stepped out into the rain.

He did not grab her. That almost made it worse. Mina had prepared herself for force, and gentleness made decisions less simple.

“Ms. Vale,” he said quietly, “there are two men in that car. The passenger has photographed you three times since we pulled up.”

Mina’s hand moved to her stomach.

Lev saw it.

Something shifted in his severe face.

The second SUV’s headlights blinked once.

Not on.

Just a flash.

A signal.

Lev’s right hand moved inside his coat.

Mina backed away from him. “Don’t.”

“I won’t start anything on a public street.”

“People like you always say that as if public streets have ever stopped anyone.”

For one second, Lev looked almost sad.

Alfred’s voice came through the phone, lower now.

“Mina, listen to me. I will not touch you. I will not lock you in the penthouse. I will not take your documents. But if you stay on that sidewalk another thirty seconds, you may not get to choose who finds you first.”

She hated that he sounded reasonable.

She hated more that he might be right.

The second SUV pulled out.

Slowly.

A half block became less.

Lev opened the rear door wider.

“Please.”

It was the first time Mina had ever heard him use the word.

She got in.

Lev closed the door and moved around the car with surprising speed for a man built like a door. The driver pulled into traffic before Mina had fully fastened her seat belt.

The second SUV followed.

Mina kept the phone pressed to her ear.

Alfred remained silent for almost a minute.

Then he said, “Are you hurt?”

The question nearly undid her.

“No.”

“Have you eaten today?”

She let out a laugh that sounded too close to a sob.

“Really?”

“Answer me.”

“Half a granola bar.”

A pause.

“I’m going to be angry about that later.”

“You don’t get to be anything later.”

“Mina—”

“No.” She pressed one cold palm over her stomach. “You don’t get to find out I’m pregnant, send security, mention some mysterious SUV, and then speak to me like we’re having dinner at eight.”

Lev glanced at her in the rearview mirror.

She looked away.

“I was leaving because I have learned what happens to people who become leverage in your world,” she said. “I was leaving because I heard your mother say a Costello child belongs to the Costello family before it belongs to its mother. I was leaving because I found the name of a clinic in one of Carlo’s side accounts and then somebody broke into my apartment the same week I missed my period.”

Alfred said nothing.

That silence frightened her more than questions.

The car turned hard onto a narrower street.

Behind them, tires hissed over wet pavement.

Lev spoke for the first time. “They’re still with us.”

Mina’s heartbeat climbed.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“Somewhere they won’t follow.”

“That sounds exactly like the beginning of a terrible decision.”

“It’s an old chapel,” Lev said. “Mrs. Costello doesn’t know about it. Carlo doesn’t know about it. Most of our people think it burned down.”

Mina looked at him sharply.

“Carlo?”

Lev’s eyes returned to the mirror.

“You mentioned him first.”

Alfred heard.

His voice changed.

“What did you find in Carlo’s accounts?”

The sedan cut left, slipping between a delivery truck and a taxi. Mina braced herself against the seat.

“Payments to a company that doesn’t exist,” she said. “Harbor Vale Consulting. Small enough to miss. Regular enough to matter. Then a transfer to a clinic in New Hampshire under a physician’s name that retired eight years ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because the authorization code was yours.”

This time, Alfred’s silence was absolute.

Even the rain seemed to go quiet against the windows.

Then Lev cursed softly.

The second SUV had turned with them.

It was closer now.

Much closer.

Mina gripped the phone.

Alfred’s voice came through, stripped of every softness.

“Lev.”

“I see it.”

“Lose them without hurting her.”

Lev looked at Mina in the mirror.

For the first time, his calm cracked enough for her to glimpse the man underneath.

“Hold on, Ms. Vale.”

The sedan surged forward into the rain-soaked Boston traffic, and Mina understood that running from Alfred Costello had only carried her straight into the part of his world she had feared most.