Chapter 3 - The Night Shift
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That evening, Emily politely but firmly refused the offer of the Ferrara private car.
The uniformed driver stood at the massive iron gate, holding the rear door of the black sedan open while she thanked him and walked past. She headed toward the dark road in borrowed, slightly oversized clothes and her ruined, waterlogged nineteen-dollar shoes.
She needed the distance. She needed the cold air to clear her head.
The first city bus crossed the bridge toward Providence without stopping.
The second arrived twenty-three minutes late, groaning to a halt in the damp night air.
Emily waited beneath a shattered glass shelter with her arms folded tightly against the biting wind.
Her cheap shoes squished uncomfortably whenever she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.
Replacement pair: probably twenty-five dollars.
She calculated the math in her head. She could stuff them with newspaper, dry them by the radiator, and make the old ones survive another month.
That was exactly how Emily did money.
Not budgets.
Triage.
At eleven o'clock, she clocked into a dilapidated twenty-four-hour laundromat off Atwells Avenue.
Marisol, the exhausted night manager, glanced at her damp, messy hair and the unfamiliar clothes.
“Bad day?” Marisol asked, tossing a load of towels into a dryer.
“Long one,” Emily replied, forcing a tired smile.
Marisol nodded sympathetically.
Good enough. Nobody asked too many questions on the night shift.
Emily tied a faded blue apron around her waist and spent the next five hours folding other people’s clothes beneath the harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights.
As she matched socks and folded endless shirts, her mind raced back to the mansion. She was in. She had finally breached the walls of Santino Ferrara's fortress.
When she was certain Marisol was busy in the back office, Emily reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, worn photograph.
It showed a smiling young man with unruly brown hair and eyes that matched her own.
Tommy. Her older brother.
Three years ago, Tommy had taken a job driving a delivery truck for a company owned by the Ferrara syndicate. He had called her one night, terrified, whispering about ledgers and missing money.
He promised he would explain everything the next day.
Tommy never came home. The police dismissed it as a run-away case, citing his past gambling debts. But Emily knew better.
She rubbed her thumb over Tommy's smiling face.
May you like
She was now the personal secretary to the man who controlled the city's underworld. If anyone knew where Tommy was buried, or who had pulled the trigger, it was Santino Ferrara.
And she was going to tear his life apart from the inside until she found out.
