Finally, the car stopped by an abandoned warehouse in Hyde Park. Its gray walls were marred by unimaginative graffiti and dirt. The door had been white once, but was now covered in brown rust, its color cracked and peeling. Steve got out of the car, and waited for me to get out as well. He did not hurry me, did not seem to care if I got out of the car or not. He simply waited.
Following the script, I got out of the car. I walked behind him to the door, which he unlocked with a key from his pocket. Then he motioned me inside.
To say my chest thudded would be an understatement. It boomed. It shook. It seemed as if my entire body was one pulsing, panicky heart as I stepped into the dark warehouse.
The warehouse seemed to be half-full of long forgotten building supplies. Discarded timber logs, some long iron scaffolding, rusty cans of oil paint. Three men waited inside. One was a huge man I didn’t know, though something about him was familiar. He leaned against a small door at the far end of the empty space. The other two men stood by the table—Breadknife and his cruel right-hand goon, Matteo “Ear” Ricci.
Steve closed the door behind me and locked it. Then he crossed the room to stand by Breadknife and Matteo. I was surrounded and outnumbered. All the men in the room had guns strapped to their waist, except for the large man in the corner.
That rang a bell in my mind. I had seen him before. He was one of the four assholes who had robbed me, the night before Breadknife had showed up in my store asking for his money. He was Hardy! And he was one of Breadknife’s goons.
Breadknife had orchestrated that robbery, probably knowing in advance that I was returning with a lot of cash in my bag. Enough to make his monthly payment. But he had wanted me to miss my payment. To know I was indebted to him. To make sure I would break into the dragon’s vault for him.
His smile widened when he saw the realization on my face. He had wanted me to know. That’s why he’d told this goon to be here tonight. Another chess move. He wanted me to feel outmaneuvered, weak, foolish. And it worked.
“Where’s my daughter?” I asked, trying to keep my voice natural.
“She’s over there,” he motioned to the door that Hardy leaned against. “I didn’t want to wake her up. She was exhausted, poor thing, constantly crying for her mommy. The wrong mommy, of course.”
“Did you tell her?” My tone was cold.
He shrugged. “I didn’t exchange one word with her, Lou. Why would I bother?”
I raised the pouch. “I have your damn crystal here.”
Breadknife nodded at Matteo. The man strutted over to me, a cruel glint in his eye, gun in hand.
“Frisk her,” Breadknife said. “Take everything. Lou is a cunning woman. She could turn a pin into a deadly weapon.”
“You really overestimate me,” I said.
“Take any jewelry, too. She owns a bracelet that can do some quite deadly tricks.”
Matteo began running his hands over me. He didn’t suffer from Steve’s aversion to touching me. In fact, he relished it, groping my body thoroughly. I kept my face neutral, knowing that showing any disgust or outrage at his prodding would only delight him.
“What’s this?” he asked, feeling a slight bump in my sleeve. His fingers investigated, finding the secret pocket, and he retrieved a small vial of purple liquid.
I let a small flicker of despair show on my face, then quickly masked it. “Open it and find out.”
He laughed, and kept searching me, the vial in his palm.
The truth was, the vial contained water and a drop of artificial food coloring. Breadknife would never have believed I didn’t have a plan of some sort when I walked inside, so I hid the vial as a red herring. Make him think that the vial was part of my foiled plan to outsmart him.
Breadknife’s strategy was to fill me with doubt. My strategy was to fill him with false confidence.
He located a cigarette packet in my back pocket and retrieved it, smirking. “Marlboro Light, huh? This brings back memories.” Matteo used to take those from me whenever he found them, when I was a teen, delighting in smoking them in front of me while I trembled in anger.
Finding nothing else, he returned with the cigarettes, the vial, and the pouch to the table, laying them down one after the other.
Breadknife picked up the pouch, and took out the box. He looked at it for a long moment with wide eyes, and then his gaze flicked to me. “Why didn’t you hand it over as soon as you had it? Why take us through this elaborate… mess?”
“There were some complications,” I said evenly. “Why didn’t you wait a few hours before kidnapping a five-year-old girl?”
“When I smell a stench in the air, I act. You know that, Lou.” He sighed, shaking his head sadly. “Now, let’s see. If I open this box, will I find the crystal inside? Or will my finger be pricked by one of your poisonous traps?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re paranoid, Mr. Cisternino.”
“Am I?” He glanced at Hardy, who picked at the dirt in one of his fingernails. “If something happens to me when I open the box, walk into that room, and kill the girl.”
The man nodded. Breadknife raised an eyebrow, looking at me expectantly. I said nothing.
He twisted the key once in the lock, and pried the lid open. He picked up the chain holding the crystal and gazed at it. Despite myself, I tensed. Would he notice a flaw I couldn’t see? Could he see through the glamour?
And then he discarded it with disinterest on the table. My heart plunged. He knew. He had seen through it somehow. Now he would torture me. Or my daughter. Do whatever he could to get the real crystal.
But he didn’t. Instead, he focused on the black box. Caressing its lid with a trembling finger. Touching the key in the lock. I had no idea what he was thinking.
“What does your client want with the crystal?” I asked. “Is it really the Yliaster crystal?”
“The crystal?” He frowned. “I don’t know.”
I blinked. He didn’t know? What was he…
And then it dawned on me. I was dizzy with horror, the knowledge of what I’d done terrifying. “It was never about the crystal,” I said. “It was the box you were interested in.”
“It’s amazing how something so small can contain such a huge change,” he whispered, half to himself, still looking at the box.
“But there was nothing in it! Nothing except the crystal.”
“That’s what the first woman who ever received it thought as well—at first. She opened it, only to find it empty. But then she found out you could twist the key in the lock over and over. And if you twist it eleven times… the true contents of the box are exposed.” He put it on the table, shutting the lid.
Eleven times. My mind whirled. What was in that box? Whatever it was, it would lead to what Isabel had seen in the cards.
He twisted the key, and it clicked. One. No, along with the first twist from before, Breadknife had twisted the key twice already.
He twisted it again. Three.
“Can you guess her name? The woman who first received the box?” His voice quavered.
I thought hard. A box that contained horrors, kept in a secure vault. And then I recalled his words when he had first told me about it. The box was lost when Troy fell. Troy. Ancient Greece. What box could it be? But I already knew.
“Was her name… Pandora?” I asked.