The first thing Ivy Callahan ever bought with her own money was a rescue.
It cost five dollars.
She was seven years old, hungry enough that the smell of garlic and warm bread drifting from the restaurant made her stomach hurt, and scared enough that she had spent six nights sleeping in places no child should ever have known how to find.
But the crumpled five-dollar bill stayed inside her pink coat pocket.
She had been saving it for someone dangerous.
“My mommy needs you.”
Andrew Mercer stopped beside the black Mercedes waiting at the curb.
Rain had turned the Brooklyn sidewalk into a sheet of reflected headlights. Two men in dark coats stopped behind him.
Ivy nearly lost her nerve.
Andrew Mercer looked even more frightening than Mrs. Elellanar had described.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, dressed entirely in black, with dark hair pushed back from a face that seemed carved to show as little emotion as possible. A faint tattoo disappeared beneath his collar. His eyes moved over Ivy, the sidewalk, the parked cars, the restaurant entrance.
The two men behind him reached beneath their jackets.
Ivy flinched.
Andrew lifted two fingers.
They stopped.
He looked down at the little girl standing in the rain.
Her light-brown hair had been twisted into two messy buns sometime that morning. Her pink coat was stained at one sleeve. A tiny stuffed rabbit hung from her wrist by a loop of ribbon.
And in her hand was five dollars.
“Please save my mommy,” Ivy said again.
Andrew stared at the bill.
Then he crouched.
“What happened to your mother?”
Ivy swallowed.
“Three men took her.”
Something changed in his eyes.
“When?”
“Six sleeps ago.”
“Where’s your father?”
“I don’t have one.”
Andrew glanced at one of his men.
“Marco.”
The man immediately stepped aside and made a phone call.
Andrew returned his attention to Ivy.
“What’s your name?”
“Ivy Callahan.”
“And your mother?”
“Grace.”
“Tell me exactly what happened to Grace.”
Ivy hugged her rabbit.
“They came to our apartment. Mommy told me to hide.”
“Where?”
“The cabinet under the bathroom sink.”
Andrew’s jaw tightened.
“They were yelling,” Ivy continued. “One man said Mommy had to sign papers. He said she was going to marry somebody.”
Andrew went still.
“Marry whom?”
“I don’t know. Mommy said no.”
“What happened then?”
“They told her if she didn’t, they’d hurt me.”
The rain tapped against the awning above them.
Andrew’s voice became quieter.
“How did you get out?”
“Mommy started screaming at them. They took her downstairs. I waited until I couldn’t hear anybody.”
“You’ve been alone for six days?”
Ivy nodded.
For the first time, Andrew looked away.
The second man beside him, a hard-faced man named Luca, muttered something under his breath.
Andrew’s attention returned to Ivy.
“Why did they want your mother?”
“I think because of the sleeping man.”
Andrew’s eyes narrowed.
“What sleeping man?”
“At Mommy’s work.”
Grace Callahan was a nurse at Ashwood Nursing Home.
She worked nights because the pay was slightly better and because it allowed her to walk Ivy to school most mornings.
Several weeks earlier, Grace had been assigned medication rounds on the fourth floor.
There was one patient whose room was kept locked.
The chart identified him as David Moore.
No visitors.
No family.
No physical therapy.
No attempt at rehabilitation.
Grace noticed something stranger.
His medication dosages were enormous.
“He was always sleeping,” Ivy explained. “Mommy said they were giving him too much medicine.”
“How do you know this?”
“She told Miss Rachel on the phone.”
Andrew’s expression sharpened.
“What else did she say?”
Ivy concentrated.
“Mommy started giving him less.”
Andrew said nothing.
“Then he woke up.”
Ivy remembered Grace pacing through their little kitchen while speaking quietly on the phone.
She remembered her mother sounding frightened.
The patient had opened his eyes during Grace’s shift.
He had grabbed her wrist.
He had barely been able to speak.
But he had managed a few words.
Ivy repeated them.
“My name is Daniel. I have a brother. They’re killing me slowly.”
Andrew stopped breathing.
Luca looked sharply toward him.
Even Marco lowered his phone.
Andrew’s face seemed to empty of everything.
“What name?”
Ivy blinked.
“Daniel.”
“Last name.”
“Mercer.”
The world around Andrew Mercer seemed to disappear.
Nine years.
Nine years since the warehouse fire.
Nine years since investigators had found blood, burned clothing, and Daniel’s watch.
Nine years since Andrew had buried an empty coffin because there had been no body left to bury.
Daniel had been twenty-three.
Andrew had been twenty-eight.
They had argued that morning.
It was the last conversation Andrew believed they had ever had.
Daniel had wanted out of the family business.
Andrew had accused him of being naïve.
Daniel had accused Andrew of becoming exactly like their father.
Then Daniel had walked out.
Hours later, he was supposedly dead.
Andrew had carried those final words for nine years.
Now a seven-year-old girl was standing in front of him telling him his brother had been alive.
Drugged.
Imprisoned.
Slowly dying in a nursing home less than an hour away.
“Boss?” Luca said quietly.
Andrew stood.
His face had changed.
Ivy noticed it immediately.
The frightening man suddenly did not look frightening.
He looked hurt.
Deeply hurt.
Like somebody had opened an old wound inside him.
Andrew turned toward Marco.
“Get everyone.”
Marco nodded.
“Everyone?”
“Everyone.”
Luca was already reaching for his phone.
“Ashwood?”
Andrew nodded.
“Quietly. I want building plans, ownership records, staff rosters, security, every vehicle registered to management, and every property connected to whoever owns it.”
“Got it.”
“And find Grace Callahan.”
Ivy tugged Andrew’s coat.
He looked down.
“You forgot.”
She held up the five dollars.
Andrew stared at it.
“Ivy, keep your money.”
Her little face became serious.
“No.”
“No?”
“Mrs. Elellanar says when you pay someone, they have to do the job.”
One corner of Luca’s mouth almost moved.
Andrew looked at Ivy for several seconds.
Then he extended his hand.
She carefully placed the bill in his palm.
“So we have a contract?” she asked.
Andrew closed his fingers around it.
“Yes, Ivy.”
“Promise?”
Andrew had made promises worth millions.
Promises involving businesses, alliances, debts and consequences.
None had ever felt heavier.
“I promise.”
Ivy smiled.
Then Andrew turned the bill over.
His expression changed.
There were words written across the back in shaky red ink.
Not many.
He unfolded the wrinkled corner and brought the bill closer.
D—
Ivy suddenly grabbed his hand.
Hard.
“That’s them.”
Andrew looked up.
Across the street sat a black SUV.
Its headlights went dark.
Luca immediately stepped in front of Ivy.
Marco moved toward the Mercedes.
Andrew stared at the SUV.
“How sure are you?” he asked.
Ivy’s voice trembled.
“That’s the car that took Mommy.”
The rear door opened.
A man stepped out.
He wore a charcoal coat and leather gloves.
Andrew recognized him.
Peter Voss.
For nearly fifteen years, Voss had worked for the Moretti organization, one of the few groups in New York powerful enough to create problems even Andrew Mercer preferred to avoid.
Peter smiled across the wet street.
“Andrew.”
Traffic passed between them.
Andrew positioned himself in front of Ivy.
“What do you want, Peter?”
“The child.”
Ivy grabbed Andrew’s coat.
Peter looked at her.
“Come on, sweetheart. Your mother is waiting.”
Ivy whispered, “He was there.”
Andrew’s eyes hardened.
Peter spread his hands.
“This has nothing to do with you.”
Andrew reached into his pocket and pulled out the five-dollar bill.
“I’m afraid it does.”
Peter frowned.
Andrew held it up.
“I’m under contract.”
Luca almost smiled again.
Peter did not.
“You have no idea what you’re stepping into.”
Andrew folded the bill carefully and returned it to his pocket.
“I know enough.”
“You don’t.”
Peter glanced at Ivy.
“That woman should have minded her own business.”
Andrew took one step toward the street.
“And Daniel Mercer?”
Peter’s face betrayed him.
Barely.
But Andrew saw it.
That was enough.
“Where is my brother?”
Peter’s expression recovered.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Andrew’s voice dropped.
“Wrong answer.”
Another SUV appeared at the end of the block.
Then another.
Peter glanced toward them.
Mercer vehicles.
Andrew’s people.
Peter stepped backward.
“This isn’t finished.”
“No,” Andrew said. “It just started.”
Peter returned to the SUV.
It accelerated away.
Andrew watched until it disappeared.
Then he crouched beside Ivy again.
“You’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“What about Mommy?”
“I’m going to find her.”
“You promised.”
“I know.”
Ivy studied him suspiciously.
“Do Mafia Bosses break promises?”
Andrew almost asked where she had learned that phrase.
Instead he said, “This one doesn’t.”
Twenty minutes later, Ivy sat inside Andrew’s armored Mercedes wrapped in Luca’s coat, eating the first hot meal she had eaten in days from a takeout container balanced on her knees.
Andrew sat across from her.
He finally unfolded the five-dollar bill again.
The writing on the back had been partly hidden by the fold.
Four words.
Written in red ink.
DANIEL IS UNDER THE CHAPEL.
Andrew stared at them.
“Ivy.”
She looked up with a forkful of pasta halfway to her mouth.
“Where did you get this bill?”
“Mommy gave it to me.”
“When?”
“The night they came.”
Andrew leaned forward.
“Exactly when?”
“She opened the bathroom cabinet while they were banging on the door. She put it in my pocket.”
“Did she tell you anything?”
Ivy thought.
“She said, ‘Don’t spend this unless you find somebody brave.’”
Andrew looked down at the message.
Daniel is under the chapel.
Ashwood Nursing Home had a chapel.
According to the building plan Marco had just pulled onto his tablet, it was on the first floor.
There was no basement shown beneath it.
Andrew’s phone rang.
Marco answered before Andrew could ask.
“We found something.”
“What?”
“Ashwood changed ownership nine years ago.”
Andrew felt cold.
“Who owns it?”
“On paper? Three shell companies.”
“And behind them?”
Marco hesitated.
“Moretti Holdings.”
Andrew looked out the rain-streaked window.
Nine years.
Exactly nine years.
Ivy hugged her stuffed rabbit and watched him.
“Mr. Andrew?”
“Yes?”
“Are you going to save your brother too?”
Andrew looked at the little girl who had carried the first real evidence of Daniel’s survival directly into his hands.
“Yes.”
She nodded as though that settled everything.
Then she asked the question Andrew was afraid to answer.
“What if my mommy is under the chapel too?”
Andrew closed his hand around the five-dollar bill.
Outside, Brooklyn disappeared behind rain.
“Then,” he said, “we bring them both home.”
And for the first time in nine years, Andrew Mercer allowed himself to believe his brother might still be alive.