Luca woke before the sun, the Glock still on the coffee table like an uninvited guest who refused to leave. Capote glared at him from the armchair, tail flicking in judgment. The fog outside had thinned to a sour milk haze, but the chill had settled in his bones and wouldn't shake loose.
He showered fast, cold water slapping the nightmares off his skin, then dressed in the uniform of a man who wanted to disappear: dark jeans, black hoodie, scuffed boots. Downstairs he opened the shop an hour early, just to have something to do with his hands that didn't involve chambering a round.
First thing: research.
He locked the door again, flipped the sign to CLOSED, and fired up the ancient Mac under the counter. The Wi-Fi in Harbor's End was slower than a confession, but it was encrypted six ways to Sunday—old habits. He started with the obvious.
"Elena Voss.
Elena Voss journalist.
Elena Voss Rossi family.
Elena Voss + "remember when to forget"
Nothing.
Not a single hit that matched the woman who had walked in yesterday. A few LinkedIn profiles for accountants in Zurich, a dermatologist in Lisbon, an Instagram model with 400k followers who definitely wasn't her. No bylines, no mugshots, no passport leaks on the usual dark corners. The woman was a ghost in a cashmere coat.
Luca leaned back, rubbing the scar that tugged when he was angry. Ghosts didn't just appear. Someone had sent her. Question was who—and this was the part that made his stomach knot—did they send her to confirm he was dead, or to finish the job?
He cleared his history, shut the laptop, and opened the store properly at nine. The morning crowd trickled in: the mailman looking for a crossword book, a teenage girl hunting manga, old Mr. Pike complaining about Kindle prices. Luca moved through them on autopilot, smiling the small, tired smile that kept people from asking real questions.
At 10:17 a.m. he saw it.
A black sedan—newer model Mercedes, tinted windows, no plates he could read from this angle—pulled up across the street and killed the engine. It just sat there, exhaust curling in the cold like cigarette smoke. Luca's pulse did a slow, familiar roll. He pretended to rearrange the front display while watching the reflection in the window glass.
Two occupants. Driver never got out. Passenger side window cracked two inches—enough for binoculars or a rifle scope. He couldn't tell from here.
He forced himself to breathe. Eight years and no one had come. Why now?
Mrs. Danvers chose that moment to bustle in, cheeks pink from the wind. "Luca, darling, you're white as cod. Catch a chill?"
"Bad coffee," he lied, steering her toward the romance section so her back was to the street. "New Nora Roberts just came in."
While she cooed over covers, Luca slipped to the back room and pulled the compact binoculars he kept in the safe (next to the go-bag and the spare mags). One look confirmed it: New York plates, stolen or cloned, and the silhouette in the passenger seat was definitely holding glass to his face.
He felt the old calm settle over him—the ice-water calm that used to come right before someone stopped breathing. He closed the safe, walked back out, and flipped the sign to CLOSED again.
"Everything okay, handsome?" Mrs. Danvers asked.
"Plumbing issue. Sorry—have to shut early. Take the Nora on me." He pressed the book into her hands and gently ushered her out the back door with apologies and a twenty for coffee.
Then he killed every light in the shop except the one over the register, grabbed the Glock from upstairs, and waited.
The sedan didn't move for forty-three minutes. Long enough for Luca to map three escape routes, two ambush points, and one very stupid frontal assault he immediately discarded. Finally the Mercedes pulled away, slow, no hurry, like a message all its own: We know where you are. We'll be back when we feel like it.
He exhaled through his teeth. "Game on, assholes."
He needed air, food, and information—in that order. He locked up, slung a messenger bag over his shoulder (burner phone, cash, knife, pistol), and walked the three blocks to Harbor's End Diner like a man who wasn't calculating sightlines the entire way.
The diner smelled of bacon grease and burnt coffee, same as it had every day since 1973. Red vinyl booths, cracked linoleum, waitress named Darla who called everyone "hon" and meant it. Luca slid into his usual corner booth—back to the wall, eyes on the door—and ordered black coffee and eggs he probably wouldn't eat.
He was halfway through the first cup when the bell over the door chimed and the temperature in the room changed.
Elena Voss walked in wearing the same black coat, hair down today in a dark waterfall that made her look like a 1940s film noir heroine who'd wandered into the wrong century. Heads turned. Darla's eyebrows shot up. Luca's hand slid under the table to the grip of the Glock tucked in his waistband.
She didn't scan the room. She already knew exactly where he was. She walked straight to his booth and slid in opposite him like they'd arranged it weeks ago.
"Morning," she said, voice low enough that only he could hear. "You look like you didn't sleep."
"Because I didn't." He kept his hand on the gun. "Start talking or start running. Your choice."
Darla appeared, coffeepot in hand. "Refill, hon? And for the lady?"
Elena smiled—warm, genuine, lethal. "Tea, please. Earl Grey if you have it."
Darla poured Luca more coffee and retreated, sensing the static between them.
Elena folded her gloved hands on the Formica. "I'm going to say some things. You're going to want to shoot me. Please don't. Darla seems nice."
Luca's voice was flatlined. "Name."
"Elena Sofia Voss. Thirty-two. Born in Lugano, raised between Switzerland and New York. Freelance investigative journalist for the last ten years. I specialize in organized crime, money laundering, and powerful men who think they're untouchable."
He waited.
She leaned forward. "Eight years ago, Alessandro Rossi, only son of Don Salvatore Rossi, died in a car bomb on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The body was burned beyond recognition, but dental records matched. The family held a closed-casket funeral. Very tragic."
His jaw flexed. "Never heard of him."
"Of course not." Her gray eyes didn't blink. "Because Alessandro Rossi didn't die. He crawled out of the wreckage with third-degree burns, a collapsed lung, and enough plastic surgery to give himself a new face. Then he bought a bookstore in Maine and started selling paperbacks to little old ladies."
The diner noise faded to a dull roar in his ears. She knew. Every detail. Even the lung—he'd never told a soul about the lung.
He kept his voice conversational, the kind he used right before he put two in a man's heart. "You're making a mistake."
"No," she said softly. "You did. When you let one person live who saw you climb out of that car."
The memory flashed—rain, sirens, a junkie medic named Carlo who owed him a favor. Luca had paid him in cash and broken fingers to forget the night. Apparently Carlo's memory had improved.
Elena continued, relentless. "I have hospital records from a burn unit in Queens. Photos of a patient with your blood type, your height, your old tattoos removed by laser. I have the police report that lists the VIN of the car—registered to a shell company owned by Vittorio Rossi. And I have this."
She slid a photograph across the table.
Luca didn't want to look. He looked anyway.
It was grainy, taken from a rooftop with a telephoto lens. A man in a hospital gown, bandages over half his face, limping down a fire escape in the rain. The profile, the way he held his left arm—cradling broken ribs—was unmistakable.
Him. Eight years ago. The night he stopped being Alessandro.
His throat closed. "Where did you get that?"
"Carlo talks when he's sober. And when he's broke." She let that land. "I'm not here to expose you, Luca. I'm here to warn you."
He laughed once, short and ugly. "Warn me. Right. That why there's a black Mercedes doing surveillance on my store this morning?"
Her pupils flared—the first real crack in the composure. "That isn't mine."
"Funny. Showed up right after you did."
"I noticed it too. That's why I came here instead of your apartment." She reached into her coat and Luca's finger tightened on the trigger under the table. She pulled out not a gun but a flash drive, sliding it next to the photo. "Everything I have. Hospital records, dental X-rays before and after, the shell-company trail. Insurance claim on the car—paid out to a widow who never existed. All of it."
He stared at the drive like it was radioactive.
She kept talking, voice steady. "Three months ago I published a piece on Vittorio Rossi's biotech investments. Someone very high up in the family didn't like it. My sources started dying. Car accidents. Overdoses. One jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge with his hands zip-tied behind his back. Classic Rossi housekeeping."
Luca's coffee had gone cold. "So you thought you'd poke the bear in person."
"I thought I'd find the one man who got away." She met his eyes, and for the first time he saw something other than calculation—grief, raw and exhausted. "I need your help, Alessandro."
"Don't call me that."
"Your real name is Alessandro Salvatore Rossi. Born March 14, 1991. Your mother's name was Isabella. She died when you were five. Officially suicide. Unofficially—" She stopped, watching his face.
He felt the memory trying to surface—small hands clutching a woman's skirt, the smell of gardenias, a scream cut short. He shoved it down so hard his vision grayed at the edges.
Elena's voice softened. "You were there the night your father was killed. You saw who pulled the trigger. And then someone made you forget."
The diner spun. He gripped the edge of the table to stay upright.
"I don't remember," he said through his teeth.
"You will," she said. "Because they're getting ready to sell the technology that erased you to the highest bidder. Governments, cartels, tech billionaires who want to rewrite their enemies' memories. And when that happens, no one gets to stay buried anymore. Not even you."
Outside, tires crunched on gravel. Luca's head snapped toward the window. The black Mercedes again, parking across the street this time, engine idling.
Elena followed his gaze. "We have maybe ninety seconds."
He looked back at her—really looked. The faint scar under her ear. The way she held herself like someone who'd learned early that hesitation got you killed. The exhaustion behind the storm-gray eyes.
"Why should I trust you?" he asked.
"Because I'm the only one who knows you're still breathing," she said simply. "And because if you don't help me stop them, the next car that parks outside your store won't leave without you in the trunk."
The bell chimed. Two men in long coats, faces he didn't recognize but postures he did: shoulders square, hands inside pockets, eyes scanning like they owned the air itself walked in and took a booth near the door.
Elena didn't flinch, but her voice dropped to a thread. "We need to leave. Separately. There's a gray Jeep two blocks east. Keys under the driver's wheel well. I'll be there in ten minutes. Come or don't. But decide fast."
She stood, left a twenty on the table, and walked out the side exit without looking back.
Luca sat frozen, heart hammering against his ribs.
The men at the door watched him now, openly. One smiled the small, polite smile of a man who enjoyed his work.
Luca dropped a ten, stood, and headed for the restroom like he had all the time in the world. In the narrow hallway he slipped out the delivery door into the alley, fog swallowing him whole.
He didn't go to the Jeep.
He went home instead, to get his go-bag, his real gun, and the one thing he swore he'd never touch again.
Because Elena Voss, whoever she really was, had just done the one thing no one else ever had.
She made him remember.
And memory, Luca Moretti knew better than anyone, was the most dangerous weapon of all.