Sadie's Demise

SADIE

Three days in the freezing hell of the Gulf of Alaska will make you forget what it feels like to be human.

By the time the captain of the Northern Star screamed over the roaring diesel engine to cut the lines, the sky had turned the color of a bruised vein.

The radio in the wheelhouse was spitting nothing but panicked atmospheric data—a massive, unseasonal low-pressure system rolling down from the Bering Strait, bringing fifty-knot winds, blind currents, and a whiteout that would lock the entire coast of Seward down by midnight.

We had broken off the haul early, leaving thousands of dollars of king crab in the dark water just to outrun the twelve-foot swells.

On deck, it had been pure, unadulterated chaos. My hands, swollen and stiff inside heavy, industrial rubber gutting gloves, had fought the freezing steel of the rigging while the ocean tried to throw us into the deep.

Every muscle in my back felt like frayed rope. My skin was coated in a bitter crust of dried salt, sea spray, and frozen fish blood that had dried dark against the canvas of my gear.

The moment the hull slammed against the ice-slicked wooden docks of the harbor, I was the first one over the starboard bulwark. I didn’t stay behind for the catch split. I didn’t want to make small talk with the crew over cheap mugs of black coffee at the harbor master’s shack.

I just pulled the hood of my grease-stained jacket low over my eyes, tucked my hands deep into my pockets, and walked.

In this godforsaken town, I wasn’t Sadie Garcia. I wasn’t a Mafia princess, a pawn traded across a blood-stained cathedral altar, or the fugitive bride of the most dangerous man I left behind in Italy. Here, I was Rae.

A quiet, tight-lipped deckhand who kept her mouth shut, took her weekly pay in crinkled paper bills, and didn’t ask questions about the scars or the pasts that people carried in a place this close to the edge of the earth.

It had been six agonizing months since I successfully vanished into the northern dark. Six months of letting the syndicate, the Feds, and my father believe that Dante Conti had finally broken me, buried me, or driven me into the sea.

My home was a converted fisherman’s shed sitting on the absolute edge of the jagged pine treeline. It was less than three hundred square feet of weathered, salt-rotted cedar planks perched on concrete pilings directly above the rocky shoreline.

The tide broke beneath the floorboards on stormy nights, a constant, violent reminder of how isolated I truly was. It was small, freezing, and entirely mine.

The wind howled behind me, throwing a vicious spray of gravel against my back as I trudged up the steep path from the docks.

The storm was moving faster than the weather reports predicted. The air already tasted like iron and impending ice. The only thing keeping my heavy insulated boots moving forward was a single, desperate mantra.

Hot water.

I wanted to stand under the small propane-heated shower until my skin turned raw. I wanted a double shot of cheap, burning whiskey from the bottle hidden beneath the floorboards, and twelve hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep while the blizzard tore the coast apart outside.

I finally reached the porch, the wet wooden steps groaning beneath my weight.

I reached into my pocket, my numb fingers fumbling for the brass key ring. But the exact moment my gloved hand extended toward the door, a cold spike of adrenaline sliced straight through the thick, heavy fog of my exhaustion.

The door was already ajar. Barely a fraction of an inch, just enough that the heavy weather stripping wasn’t sealing out the wind.

I stopped. My breath formed a thick, erratic cloud of white vapor in the freezing air.

never left this door unlocked. Never.

It was an instinct drilled into the marrow of my bones long before I ever set foot in Alaska. When you spend your entire life looking over your shoulder for assassins and federal wiretaps, you don’t forget to lock a deadbolt.

Slowly, without breaking my rhythm or making a sound on the creaking porch, I let my hand slide beneath the heavy, grease-stained canvas of my jacket. My frozen fingers wrapped around the cold, textured polymer grip of the suppressed 9mm pistol tucked into my waistband. The familiar weight of the weapon instantly burned away the fatigue, leaving my mind sharp, predatory, and lethal.

I used the toe of my boot to nudge the door. It slid back on its hinges with a quiet, agonizing hiss.

The smell hit me first.

It wasn’t the smell of my cabin. It wasn’t the comforting, rustic scent of dried woodsmoke, kerosene, and damp wool blankets that usually greeted me. It was something else. A subtle, high-end contrast that didn’t belong within three thousand miles of this frozen harbor.

It was the rich, unmistakable scent of expensive cedarwood, premium tobacco, and cold, absolute power.

The air caught in my throat, freezing there like shattered glass.

The cabin was completely dark, the heavy smart-glass windows I’d installed blacked out to block the view from the coast, but the ambient flare of the approaching lightning outside caught a distinct silhouette.

Someone was sitting in the single wooden chair by my unlit cast-iron stove.

He didn’t move. He sat with his long legs loosely crossed at the ankle, his massive, broad-shouldered frame utterly dominating the tiny, cramped room. He looked entirely unbothered by the freezing temperature seeping through the floorboards.

As the lightning flashed outside, the dim light glinted off the flawless, dark fabric of a charcoal wool coat that cost more than this entire harbor town made in a winter.

My hand tightened on the trigger of my gun, my knuckles turning white, but I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.

“You’re late, Sadie,” a low, gravelly velvet voice purred from the dark, sending a violent shockwave of pure adrenaline crashing through my veins.

Dante leaned forward, the shadows shifting across the sharp, aristocratic angles of his face. His icy dark eyes cut through the gloom, locking onto mine with a terrifying, possessive familiarity that told me my six months of freedom had just expired.

He glanced at the empty counter, then back at my frozen expression.

“And you left your navigation charts completely unfinished.”

I didn’t lower the weapon. I shifted my weight, the rubber soles of my boots making no sound on the wood, but the cold safety clicked off under my thumb.

“The charts are fine, Dante. I just didn’t think I’d need to map a route out of my own kitchen.”

“Clearly,” he murmured, his gaze traveling lazily up the salt-crusted canvas of my jacket, entirely unbothered by the muzzle tracking his forehead. “Though I see your choice in local tailoring remains as subtle as your exit from Palermo. Tell me, does the fish blood complement the perfume, or is ‘Rae’ simply fond of the pungent look?”

“It keeps people from asking questions,” I spat, my voice a low, lethal hum over the sound of the wind. “Unlike you, who seems to think a three-thousand-dollar coat is good camouflage for a dead man walking.”

Dante let out a soft, dark chuckle that vibrated in the small room. He didn’t rise, but the tension between us stretched so taut I could hear my own pulse racing.

“A dead man, sweetheart? You left me in handcuffs, true. But you forgot that the keys to a kingdom rarely stay in a prosecutor’s pocket for long.”

“They stayed long enough for me to buy a ticket to the edge of the world,” I shot back, taking a cautious half-step into the room, keeping the gun level. “So why are you here? Did the Mediterranean run out of politicians for you to buy?”

He tilted his head, a wicked, familiar smirk pulling at the corner of his lips.

“I grew bored of the weather in Sicily. And frankly... I came to see if you were still as terrible at keeping a lock turned as you were at keeping a promise.”