Chapter 2: The Logistics of a Kidnapping
The harsh, aggressive glare of a single swinging incandescent bulb blinded Beatrice for a fraction of a second. She blinked rapidly, her icy blue eyes adjusting to the dim, cavernous light of her surroundings.
She found herself in a sprawling, dilapidated warehouse. The air was thick and tasted of rust, mildew, and stale, burned coffee. Standing directly in front of her were two large men who looked like they had been lazily cast out of a low-budget gangster film.
“Don’t try anything stupid, Blondie,” the taller one grunted. He had a jagged scar running through his left eyebrow and was aggressively chewing on a wooden matchstick. “The big boss will be here in a minute. You’re going to sit there, shut up, and pray he’s in a good mood.”
Beatrice blinked again, her eyes sweeping down to the thick plastic zip ties digging into her skin, and then back up to the two enforcers.
“Who exactly secured these ties?” Beatrice asked.
Her voice wasn’t trembling. It didn’t possess a hint of fear. It was sharp, flat, and echoed off the corrugated metal walls with the authoritative annoyance of a senior manager addressing an incompetent intern.
The two thugs exchanged a thoroughly bewildered, unsettled look.
“What?” the shorter one muttered, his hand resting near his waistband.
“I asked who secured these zip ties,” Beatrice repeated, leaning forward against the nylon rope as much as her constraints would allow. “Because they are fastened at a faulty forty-five-degree angle directly over my radius bone. If I twist my left arm clockwise, the locking mechanism will snap within ten seconds. It is remarkably amateurish work.”
The tall thug took a slow step back, his jaw dropping slightly as the matchstick fell from his lips onto the dirty floor. “Hey… shut up. You don’t talk unless you’re spoken to.”
“And another thing,” Beatrice continued, completely ignoring his warning as her cold gaze scanned the warehouse floor behind them. “You have pallets of imported Italian olive oil stacked six crates high along the east wall. The structural integrity of those specific bottom wooden pallets is only rated for a maximum of four.”
She locked her icy blue eyes onto the tall thug’s face.
“If you do not unstack those top two tiers immediately, you are going to lose roughly eighty thousand dollars in luxury inventory when they inevitably collapse. Given the ambient moisture in this room, I estimate that will happen in about three days.”
The two men stood entirely frozen, their brains visibly short-circuiting as they tried to process a logistics and supply-chain lesson from their own hostage.
Before the shorter thug could open his mouth to swear, the heavy iron security doors at the far end of the warehouse groaned open with a screech of rusty hinges.
Footsteps echoed across the concrete floor—slow, measured, and radiating absolute command.
Leo Falcone stepped out of the shadows and into the harsh light of the swinging bulb. At thirty-five, Leo was the newly minted king of the Falcone crime syndicate. He had spent the last two grueling years desperately trying to transition his family’s blood-soaked legacy out of the streets and into legitimate, white-collar corporate enterprises.
He was exceptionally tall, dressed in a sharply tailored charcoal suit that cost more than the van his men drove, and possessed a face that was strikingly handsome but hardened by a lifetime of systemic violence.
Leo walked slowly up to the wooden chair, pulling a sleek silver lighter from his trousers and flicking it open. He didn’t look at Beatrice right away. He kept his eyes locked on his enforcers.
“She give you any trouble, Nico?” Leo asked, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that commanded instant submission.
“Uh… no, boss,” Nico stammered, shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot. “She’s… she’s just talking about boxes, sir. And my zip ties.”
Leo finally turned his dark, predatory gaze down to the woman tied to the chair.
He expected to see a terrified, mascara-streaked society girl begging for her life. He expected to see Chloe Montgomery—the reckless girl who had foolishly stolen two million dollars from one of his underground high-stakes baccarat tables to pay off a rival West Side drug cartel.
Instead, he saw a woman sitting perfectly straight in a tailored, albeit slightly crumpled, four-thousand-dollar Prada suit. Her platinum blonde hair was pulled back into a severe, immaculate chignon. Her posture was razor-sharp, and the look in her eyes wasn’t terror—it was utter, unadulterated contempt.
Leo’s brow furrowed in deep confusion. He pulled a glossy photograph from his breast pocket and looked at it. The picture showed a blonde woman laughing hysterically, holding a champagne flute at a nightclub. He looked back down at Beatrice.
They shared the exact same bone structure and hair color, but the aura was entirely different.
“You’re not Chloe,” Leo stated flatly.
The realization hit him like a physical blow to the chest. The calculated coldness in his demeanor instantly morphed into a dangerous, simmering anger. He rounded violently on his men.
“Who the hell is this?” Leo hissed, his voice dropping into a lethal register.
“B-Boss, she had the coat!” Nico protested, physically shrinking back toward the van. “She came out of the Montgomery high-rise! She got into the Audi! We thought—”
“You idiots,” Leo growled, rubbing the bridge of his nose in sheer frustration. He turned slowly back to Beatrice, forcing his temper down. “I apologize for the gross inconvenience, ma’am. My men are complete imbeciles. Who are you?”
Beatrice looked up at the syndicate boss, her expression completely unbothered.
“My name is Beatrice Montgomery,” she said, her voice dropping the ambient temperature of the warehouse by ten degrees. “I am Chloe’s older sister. And you, I presume, are Leo Falcone—the man she owes an exorbitant amount of money to.”
