Chapter 2 – THE TICKING CLOCK

The heavy silver watch felt like ice against my palm.

“You killed a man ten years ago,” I said, my voice eerily calm despite the terror gripping my throat. “And his watch is sitting in our daughter’s bedroom. Explain it to me, Richard. Now.”

He stared at the engraved silver casing as if it were a ghost.

“Ten years ago, the Bennett family tried to take over the South Side ports,” Richard said, his voice hollow. “Their boss, Arthur Bennett, ambushed my convoy. I survived. I went to his house the next night and ended it. I took his watch to prove to his men that he was gone.”

Bennett.

The name echoed in my mind.

Camille Bennett.

“She’s his daughter,” I realized, the pieces violently slamming together. “Camille isn’t just a woman you met at a charity gala. She targeted you.”

“I didn’t know,” Richard pleaded, grabbing my shoulders. “Ellie, I swear on my life. She told me her parents died in a car crash when she was a teenager. I didn’t know who she was.”

“She spent months sleeping in your bed,” I spat, pulling away from him. “She listened to you talk about our family. She made you fall in love with her. And all she wanted was revenge.”

Suddenly, the cracked screen of my daughter’s phone lit up on the floor.

A text message had arrived from an unknown number.

I snatched it up.

“Pier 44. Come alone, Richard. If you bring your men, or if you bring your wife, the little girl goes in the water.”

My heart stopped.

Pier 44 was an abandoned shipping dock on the edge of the city. It was isolated, dark, and deep.

“I’m going,” Richard said, standing up and pulling his gun from his holster. He checked the magazine with cold, practiced precision. The broken husband was gone. The ruthless boss had returned.

“I’m coming with you,” I said, standing up to face him.

“No, you’re not,” he said firmly. “She said come alone. I am not risking Mia’s life.”

“You already risked her life the second you unbuttoned another woman’s dress!” I screamed, hitting his chest. “I am not sitting in this empty house while my granddaughter is held at gunpoint!”

Richard caught my wrists. His grip was tight, but his eyes were filled with a desperate, agonizing sorrow.

“Eleanor,” he whispered. “If I don’t walk out of that pier tonight, I need to know you are safe to raise Mia. Please. Let me fix the biggest mistake of my life.”

He kissed my forehead, turned, and walked out the door.

I stood in the destroyed bedroom, listening to the roar of his engine fading into the rain.

I looked down at the silver watch in my hand.

I noticed a small hinge on the side of the casing. It wasn’t just a watch. It was a locket.

I pried it open with my thumbnail.

Inside, there was a tiny, faded photograph.

But it wasn’t a picture of Camille. And it wasn’t a picture of her father.

It was a picture of a young man with dark hair, smiling widely.

I recognized him instantly.

It was my brother, Thomas.

Thomas had disappeared fifteen years ago. The police said he drowned in a boating accident, but his body was never found. Richard had held me while I cried for months.

Why was my dead brother’s photograph inside the pocket watch of a rival mafia boss?

I didn’t wait for Richard’s men to arrive. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed the spare keys to the old pickup truck we kept at the lake house, and ran out into the storm.

I wasn’t staying behind.

I drove toward Pier 44, my mind racing with a terrifying new reality.

Richard hadn’t just lied to me about his mistress.

He had been lying to me about my own family for fifteen years.

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