Chapter 2 - The Man She Ran From
“Who was that?”
Roman’s voice remained controlled, but Sadie knew him well enough to recognize the danger beneath it.
She lowered the phone.
“I don’t know.”
“You recognized the voice.”
“No.”
“You’re pressing your tongue against your cheek.”
Sadie glared at him.
“Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Knowing when I’m lying.”
Roman’s expression softened almost imperceptibly.
“I had three years to forget. It didn’t work.”
Sadie looked away.
Tommy returned from the entrance.
“Sedan’s gone.”
“Plate?”
“Covered.”
“Camera?”
“Arthur says there’s one outside.”
Roman nodded.
“Get the footage.”
Tommy disappeared.
Sadie immediately stepped toward the employee corridor.
Roman blocked neither her path nor the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“That’s a bad idea.”
“Everything involving you is a bad idea.”
“I agree.”
She stopped.
Roman’s willingness to concede every accusation was becoming unsettling.
The Roman she remembered would have argued.
Controlled.
Negotiated.
Won.
This man seemed more interested in keeping her alive than winning.
“I’ve been safe for three years,” she said.
Roman looked toward the window where the sedan had vanished.
“No. You thought you were safe.”
Sadie folded her arms.
“And somehow I’m supposed to believe you’re the solution?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I’m part of the problem.”
That answer hurt because it was true.
Roman pulled out a chair.
He did not ask her to sit.
He sat himself.
It was another deliberate gesture.
Making himself physically lower.
Less threatening.
Sadie remained standing.
“Tell me about 9C,” he said.
“You know what happened.”
“I know what I found afterward. I don’t know what you saw.”
She stared at him.
Three years of silence suddenly stood between them.
“You told me never to enter that apartment.”
“Yes.”
“So naturally, when I found the door unlocked, I went inside.”
Roman almost smiled.
“You always hated instructions.”
“I hated yours.”
“That too.”
Sadie hated that the tiny exchange felt familiar.
She forced herself back into the memory.
“There was a laptop on the desk.”
Roman nodded.
“A ledger beside it.”
His expression changed.
“What ledger?”
Sadie frowned.
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
She described it.
Black leather.
Names.
Dates.
Dollar amounts.
Roman listened without interruption.
Then she described the photographs.
Men entering buildings.
License plates.
Government officials.
Businessmen.
A judge.
A police captain.
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“And then?”
“The recording.”
His eyes sharpened.
“What recording?”
Sadie stared at him.
“The one where you ordered Michael Bennett killed.”
Roman went completely still.
Michael Bennett.
Sadie’s older brother.
The only family she had left at the time.
His death had been ruled an accident.
Three weeks before Sadie disappeared, his car had gone through a guardrail outside Albany.
Roman spoke carefully.
“What exactly did you hear?”
“Your voice.”
“What did it say?”
Her throat tightened.
She could still hear it.
“‘Bennett knows too much. Handle it tonight.’”
Roman stared at her.
“And you believed it.”
Sadie laughed once, bitterly.
“I was living with a man everyone in the city feared. My brother died the same night you supposedly said to handle him. What exactly was I supposed to believe?”
Roman looked down.
“That explains everything.”
“No, Roman. It explains why I left.”
He raised his eyes.
“I never gave that order.”
Sadie’s face hardened.
“I heard you.”
“You heard my voice.”
“That’s generally how voices work.”
“Nora.”
She flinched at the name.
Roman continued.
“The words were mine.”
Her stomach tightened.
“But not together.”
She frowned.
Roman leaned forward.
“Years ago, we recorded every strategy meeting because I didn’t trust minutes written by other people. Hundreds of hours of my voice existed on internal servers.”
Sadie slowly understood.
“You’re saying somebody edited it.”
“Yes.”
“Convenient.”
“Very.”
She turned away.
“I’m leaving.”
“Michael called me the night he died.”
Sadie stopped.
Roman reached into his jacket again.
This time he produced an old phone.
He placed it on the table.
“I kept this for three years.”
Sadie stared at it.
“Why?”
“Because it was the last thing connecting me to you.”
She didn’t respond.
Roman opened an audio file.
A man’s voice filled the empty restaurant.
Michael.
Sadie grabbed the edge of a chair.
She had not heard her brother’s voice in three years.
“Roman, it’s Michael. Don’t call me back. Somebody inside your organization is moving money through the Bennett Foundation. I found accounts. I think they know I found them. If anything happens to me, don’t trust—”
The recording ended.
Sadie stared at the phone.
“Don’t trust who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why does it stop?”
“Because Michael stopped recording.”
Sadie’s eyes filled despite every effort to prevent it.
“You had this?”
“Yes.”
“For three years?”
“Yes.”
“And you never gave it to the police?”
Roman’s silence answered.
Sadie slapped him.
The sound cracked through the empty restaurant.
Tommy appeared from the hallway.
Roman raised one hand.
Tommy stopped.
Sadie’s palm burned.
“You don’t get to decide what evidence matters.”
“I know.”
“You could have helped solve his death.”
“I was trying to find who killed him.”
“That wasn’t your decision!”
“No.”
She hit his chest with both hands.
Roman absorbed it.
“You ruin everything!”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that!”
Her voice broke.
Roman caught her wrists only when she tried to strike him again, and even then his grip was gentle.
“Nora.”
Tears finally escaped.
“You should have told me.”
“Yes.”
“You should have trusted me.”
“Yes.”
“You should have been somebody I could trust.”
Roman released her.
His voice was almost inaudible.
“Yes.”
Sadie stepped away.
For the first time in three years, her fear of Roman collided with something else.
Grief.
Because the man standing before her was not claiming innocence from everything.
He was admitting guilt for enough.
He had built a world where secrecy was normal.
Where violence existed around the edges.
Where trust was weakness.
Someone had used that world against them.
And against Michael.
Tommy returned carrying a tablet.
“We have the sedan.”
Roman looked at the screen.
Sadie did too.
The security camera showed the black car parked across from Lombardi’s.
A man stepped from the passenger side approximately twenty minutes before Roman arrived.
His face appeared for barely two seconds.
Sadie’s blood ran cold.
Roman saw her reaction.
“You know him.”
Sadie whispered the name.
“Elias.”
Elias Ward.
Roman’s former attorney.
The man who had helped Sadie disappear.
The man in the photograph outside Apartment 9C.
The man who had spent three years convincing her Roman was hunting her.
Roman looked at Tommy.
“Find him.”
Sadie shook her head.
“He’ll be gone.”
Tommy’s expression suggested agreement.
Roman looked toward Sadie.
“Then we find out what he wants.”
Her phone vibrated.
A text message.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
Sadie opened it.
There were only six words.
ASK ROMAN WHO REALLY KILLED MICHAEL.
Beneath the message was an address.
Sadie recognized it.
Her apartment.
Then another message arrived.
A photograph.
Taken through her bedroom window.
Tonight.
Roman read it over her shoulder.
His expression changed completely.
Not rage.
Fear.
“Tommy.”
“I’m on it.”
Roman turned toward Sadie.
“You’re not going home.”
She stared at the photograph.
Someone had been inside her apartment.
Someone knew where she slept.
Her anonymous life had vanished in less than an hour.
“What happens now?” she whispered.
Roman looked at her.
“For tonight, you come somewhere secure.”
“With you?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Nora—”
“I spent three years escaping your world.”
Roman nodded.
“And tonight, that world followed you anyway.”
She hated him for being right.
But when she looked again at the photograph of her bedroom, she noticed something on the nightstand.
Something that had not been there when she left for work.
A small silver key.
Sadie enlarged the photograph.
Roman leaned closer.
His face went pale.
“You recognize it?”
Roman stared at the key.
“Yes.”
“What does it open?”
He looked at her.
“A safe Michael hid from everyone.”
Sadie’s heart slammed against her ribs.
“Where?”
Roman answered quietly.
“Inside the apartment where you used to live with me.”
May you like
And after three years of running from Roman Vale, Nora Bennett realized she might have to return to the one place she had sworn never to enter again.
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