Chapter 15 - Into the Black Water
Lucia fell first.
Adrian’s arm ripped away from her throat as the loading platform collapsed.
Giovanni lunged and caught his daughter’s wrist.
His shoulder slammed into the edge of the remaining floor.
Lucia swung over twenty feet of dark water.
“Dad!”
“I have you.”
Adrian crashed onto a lower beam, his gun spinning away into the river.
Emilio dropped beside Giovanni and grabbed Lucia’s other arm.
“Pull!”
Together they dragged her back onto solid concrete.
Lucia rolled onto her back, sobbing and laughing at the same time.
Giovanni pressed his forehead to hers.
“You are never allowed near rotten industrial architecture again.”
She laughed through tears. “Deal.”
Below them, Adrian climbed onto the broken beam.
Marco aimed down.
“Don’t.” Agent Sloan’s voice echoed from the entrance.
Federal agents flooded the cannery.
Adrian looked toward the river.
There was nowhere to go except down.
He jumped.
The black water swallowed him.
Agents ran to the dock edge.
No one saw him surface.
Clarissa was on her knees beside Rafael.
Blood soaked his white shirt.
He looked at her with one good eye.
“Still choosing them?”
She pressed both hands against his wound. “Stop talking.”
“You always were your mother’s daughter.”
Clarissa froze. “You never talk about her.”
Rafael coughed.
“I loved her.”
“Then why did you destroy her life?”
“Because I loved winning more.”
Clarissa began to cry.
Rafael looked toward Emilio.
“You. Beach boy.”
Emilio knelt beside him. “That nickname needs work.”
Rafael almost smiled.
Then his face tightened.
“Do not make my mistake.”
Emilio’s expression changed.
Rafael looked at Clarissa.
“Do not love winning more than her.”
His eyes closed.
Clarissa screamed for the medics.
They arrived seconds later and rushed Rafael out alive but barely conscious.
Teresa sat against a wall wrapped in Marco’s coat.
Sloan walked toward Giovanni.
“Adrian may have escaped through the river.”
Giovanni looked down at the water. “He did.”
“You sound certain.”
“He planned this location. He knew the river was an exit.”
Sloan’s jaw tightened. “Then we find him.”
Lucia suddenly looked toward the conveyor. “The card.”
An agent opened the machinery panel.
The memory card was gone.
Emilio stared. “It fell in there.”
Sloan searched the gears with a flashlight.
Nothing.
Then Teresa spoke from the floor.
“Adrian didn’t need it.”
Everyone turned.
“He only needed you to think he did.”
Giovanni crouched beside her. “Explain.”
Teresa swallowed. “Helena discovered the card was a copy. The original archive is somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“Helena never told me.”
Lucia remembered the blue key.
“The bank?”
“No.” Teresa shook her head. “She said, ‘The safest place in the family is the place nobody respects.’”
Emilio frowned. “What does that mean?”
Lucia looked at him.
Then at his suitcase.
Then at the tropical tag still attached to the handle.
Her eyes widened.
“The luggage.”
Emilio stared.
“What?”
Lucia grabbed the suitcase and ripped open the inner lining.
Behind the fabric was a second memory card taped to the frame.
Helena had planted it before Emilio left New York.
Emilio sank onto a chair.
His mother had known he would run away.
And she had used the one thing everyone mocked—the vacation suitcase—to carry the evidence out of reach.
Sloan took the card carefully.
Then her phone rang.
She listened for ten seconds.
Her face changed.
“Rafael’s ambulance was hit.”
Clarissa stood.
“What?”
“Two SUVs forced it off the expressway.”
“Is he alive?”
Sloan looked at her.
“The medics are alive.”
“And my father?”
Sloan’s silence answered.
Rafael Sanz had been taken.
The next chapters are on the left side of your screen.
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