The Woman at the Docks (Grassi Framily)

This was stupid.

I knew that.

Even as I walked up to the docks with the sun still beating down on me, making my shirt stick to my back, my hair stick to my neck, everything about the entire situation was miserable and frustrating.

Getting there earlier was no better an idea than showing up at night when they would be expecting me.

But I couldn't stay in the relative safety of my new hotel room when the container I needed might show up at any moment.

The pier was a crowded place in the daytime, full of employees and people from various companies milling around.

I threw on a baggy black tee, slapped a baseball cap on my head, and hoped I would not stand out too much.

If security was looking for me at night, then I had a small advantage creeping around in the daytime.

Even if it was disgusting, the humidity so thick it made my chest feel tight when I tried to take a deep breath, even if I was wishing for a dark sky and a slight evening breeze off the water.

It was okay, though.

It would be worth it if I found what I needed, if all of this could end right now.

But three hours later, my entire back slick with sweat, I couldn't find a single container that had been brought in from South America.

Not one.

When there should have been dozens of new ones. On a busy day, even hundreds.

What the hell was going on?

Heartbeat skittering, I rushed back out the way I had come. Or I thought it was the way I had come. But then there was a turn I didn't remember. Then a cluster of containers I wasn't sure I had seen before.

Panic swelling, I turned back, sure I made a wrong turn somewhere, and got turned around, not being used to being in the area in the steadily decreasing daylight.

But turning back seemed wrong too, sending me further into oddly stacked containers, not in the neat, parallel rows they were typically in.

I generally thought of myself as a pretty calm, reasonable person, not one prone to panicking, to overreacting to any situation.

But whereas a calm, rational person would have stopped, taken a few deep breaths, then slowly gone back the way they came from, I lost my ever-loving mind and charged forward, heartbeat hammering, sweat pouring, stomach twisting into painful knots.

That said, I wasn't sure anyone could be calm and rational when illegally trespassing on private property owned by the local Cosa Nostra. After having already been threatened by them. When they were actively looking for me.

"Shit. Shit shit shit," I hissed, gulping in air as I shot around a corner, finding myself in a larger than usual open space with a narrower exit.

Praying it was finally a way out, feeling like I was choking on unfamiliar claustrophobia, I bolted down that narrow row.

I realized it all three seconds too late.

The movement of the containers from South America, the new arrangement of the stacks, the way I couldn't seem to find my way out.

They'd created a maze. And I was the mouse inside of it, completely clueless, being driven toward a dead end.

Where I wasn't alone.

"I hope whatever you are after is going to be worth all of this," Luca Grassi's voice called, sounding resigned, making my head whip toward the corner to find him leaning there, watching me, seemingly completely unaffected by the heat even in his three-piece suit while sweat dripped off my jaw and fell to the concrete at my feet.

Even as I turned to run, I could hear footsteps closing in behind me, unhurried, knowing they had me trapped.

I turned fully anyway, wanting to see the face of the other man who might take my life.