Ellie's POV
Buzz.
The sound was a wasp in the quiet dark. Ellie stared at the glowing screen of her phone, the image searing itself into her mind. Her father's shop. The faded, peeling sign that read "WELLS & SON AUTO." The boards on the windows. And that word, screamed in red paint: SOON.
The cold from the room seeped into her bones, but this chill was deeper. This was a thread from her past, pulled taut and connected directly to her present terror. They knew about her dad. They knew where her heart was most vulnerable.
All the exhaustion vanished. She was on her feet, shoving the phone into Nicholas's face as she burst out of the bedroom. He and Marco were studying a map on the coffee table. They looked up, alert.
"What is this?" Nicholas asked, his voice low, taking the phone.
"My dad's old shop. I got this just now. From a number I don't know."
Marco snatched the phone, his tech expert's eyes scanning. "Burner. Untraceable. Sent through a relay. A ghost."
Nicholas's gaze moved from the spray-painted threat to Ellie's face. "What was your father's name?"
"Frank. Frank Wells. He was a mechanic. He died five years ago. Cancer." Her voice hitched. "He had nothing to do with any of this. He fixed cars for cash. He was a good man."
"Frank Wells," Nicholas repeated slowly. A shadow passed behind his eyes. A memory, dark and unwelcome, clicking into place. He looked at Marco. "The mechanic from Bay Ridge. The one who… talked to the Feds about the chop-shop ring. The one who disappeared."
"He didn't disappear! He died!" Ellie insisted, a hot fury rising in her chest.
"Ellie," Nicholas said, his voice suddenly gentle in a way that scared her more than his anger. "The chop-shop ring was a Costa operation. Small-time for them, but profitable. Your father saw something he shouldn't have. He agreed to testify. Then he got sick. Very fast. And he… withdrew his statement before he passed."
The room tilted. Ellie gripped the back of the worn couch. The memories of those last months flooded back—the sudden, aggressive diagnosis. The mysterious "financial help" that came from a "charity" to cover some treatments. Her father's desperate, fearful eyes in the hospital bed, clutching her hand. "Forget what I said, Ellie-girl. I was confused. I never saw anything. Promise me you'll forget."
She had thought it was the painkillers talking. The ramblings of a dying man.
"They killed him," she whispered, the truth a poison in her mouth. "The Costas gave him the cancer."
"We can't prove that," Marco said grimly. "But it's their style. Slow. Plausible. A warning to others who might speak."
Ellie felt the ground of her life crack open. Her father wasn't just a victim of illness. He was a casualty of the same war she was now trapped in. His death wasn't a random tragedy. It was murder.
The grief that followed was old. The rage was new. It was a white-hot coal in her stomach.
"They think he told me something," she said, her voice trembling but clear. "That's what you said before. They think he left me evidence. That's why they're after me. Not just because of you. Because of him."
Nicholas nodded. "It seems your act of saving me simply brought you to their attention faster. You were always on the periphery of their radar. Now you're at the center."
The victim was gone. In her place stood a daughter with a score to settle. The fear was still there, but it was now fuel for the fire of her anger.
"What did he see?" she demanded. "What could he have told me?"
"Serial numbers," Marco said. "On engines from high-end stolen cars that were being rebirthed. He wrote down VINs. He had a list. It was enough to sink the operation and put a few mid-level Costa guys away for a long time. The list never made it to the trial. It vanished."
"A list," Ellie repeated. Her mind raced through the boxes of her father's things still stored in her apartment's crawl space. His old toolboxes. His ledgers. "He had notebooks. Hundreds of them. Job quotes, parts numbers…"
Nicholas and Marco exchanged a look. "Where are these notebooks?" Nicholas asked.
"In my apartment," she said, a new dread forming. If they knew about the shop, they knew about her apartment.
"We need to get there. Now," Marco said, standing.
"It's a trap," Ellie said, the certainty cold and sharp in her gut. "The text, the photo… It's bait. They're watching my apartment. They're waiting for me or for someone to go looking."
Nicholas looked at her with a newfound respect. She was thinking like them. "You're right. Which is why we won't go. Not you, and not us." He picked up his own secure phone. "I have someone else. Someone they won't be watching for."
He made a call, speaking in code-like sentences. "The blue door. Third floor. Look for the mechanic's tools. All paper. Yes. Priority." He hung up. "A cleaner. He'll be in and out within three minutes. If the notebooks are there, he'll find them."
The wait was agony. Ellie paced the small safe house, her father's face in her mind. His laugh. His grease-stained hands. His fear. Had she lived the last five years in a lie? Had her entire life as an orphan been a deliberate creation of the Costas?
Thirty minutes later, Nicholas's phone buzzed. He listened, his expression unchanging. "Understood. Bring it to the fallback." He looked at Ellie. "He found a metal lockbox. Hidden under a floorboard in the bedroom closet. It's on its way."
A lockbox. Her father had hidden something. The reality of it made her legs weak.
"We move to the next location," Nicholas said. "We can't stay here."
They drove again, in silence, to a third location, a modest, forgettable hotel near the river. They took the stairs to the fourth floor. The room was already occupied by a nondescript man in a delivery uniform who handed Nicholas a small, dusty lockbox without a word, then left.
The box sat on the cheap hotel desk. It had a simple key lock.
"Do you have a key?" Marco asked.
Ellie shook her head. Her father had never mentioned a lockbox.
Nicholas took a small tool from his pocket. With a few deft twists, the lock snapped open. He lifted the lid. Inside, there were no stacks of cash, no jewels. Just a single, well-worn black notebook, and lying on top of it, a faded Polaroid photograph. Ellie reached for the photo first. It showed her father, young and smiling, his arm around the shoulders of another man in a mechanic's jumpsuit. Her blood ran cold. The other man was a younger, happier version of Victor Costa. Scribbled on the white border of the photo were the words: "Me and Vito. Partners. 1998." Her father hadn't just worked for the Costas. He had been friends with the devil.