Chapter 7: The Man With the Commendation
Leo arrived at 1:14 in the morning.
He was thinner than Sienna remembered.
He had grown a beard, and his jacket was too large for him, the kind of thing bought quickly from a rack without trying it on.
He came through the door of the Newark safe house and stopped when he saw her.
She crossed the room and held onto him for a long time.
He held on too.
When they separated, his eyes were red at the edges.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I didn't know it would go this far.
I thought I could get the documents and bring them forward quietly and it would just — I thought it would be clean."
"It's okay," she said.
"It's not." He looked at their father.
"Dad.
I'm sorry."
Robert crossed the room and put both hands on Leo's shoulders.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
By two in the morning they were all seated around a table with Leo's documents spread across it — printed copies he had carried in a sealed waterproof envelope inside his jacket lining for three weeks.
The federal prosecutor's name was Grace Alderman.
Robert called her at 2:15 a.m.
She answered on the second ring, which told Sienna everything she needed to know about how long Grace Alderman had been waiting for this call.
"Robert," she said.
"I have it," he said.
"All of it.
Can you come to Newark?"
A pause of perhaps four seconds.
"Give me the address," she said.
She arrived at 3:40 a.m.
in a grey coat with her reading glasses already in her hand.
She was in her mid-forties, precise in her movements, and when she sat down at the table and began reading through Leo's documents, the room went quiet in the way rooms go quiet when someone capable takes hold of something serious.
She read for forty minutes without speaking.
Then she set the last page down and looked at Robert.
"This is enough," she said.
"This is more than enough."
"For an arrest?" Sienna asked.
"For an arrest, a prosecution, and a very public unraveling of everything Carrow has built inside that department for the past decade." Grace looked at Leo.
"You understand what this means for you.
The debt, the flight — all of it will need to be addressed formally.
But given what you've brought forward, I can make that manageable."
"I understand," Leo said.
Grace looked at Damian, who had been standing near the wall throughout.
"Mr.
Russo," she said.
"The forged documents implicating your family in the warehouse acquisition — I'll need your cooperation to formally establish the forgery."
"You have it," Damian said.
Grace nodded.
She picked up her phone.
"I'm going to make some calls," she said.
"I need two hours.
I need everyone to stay in this building." She looked around the table.
"And I need someone to make coffee, because it's going to be a long night."
Robert stood up and went to the kitchen without being asked.
It was the most purposeful Sienna had seen him move in years.
She watched him fill the kettle and thought about all the nights she had come home to find him in the armchair with the glass, and how she had never once understood what he was actually carrying.
Leo sat down beside her.
"He told you," Leo said quietly.
"About the task force."
"Tonight," she said.
"He was going to tell you eventually.
He just didn't know how." Leo looked at their father's back.
"He did the right thing, Sienna.
In that room with Damian's father.
He told the truth when it would have been easier and safer to let a corrupt case go forward.
They punished him for it."
"I know," she said.
"He's not a man who fell apart," Leo said.
"He's a man who got buried alive and kept breathing."
Sienna didn't answer.
She looked at her father standing at the kitchen counter, waiting for the kettle, his back straight for the first time she could remember.
The door opened.
Silas came in from outside, his face tight.
May you like
"We have a problem," he said.
"Carrow knows where we are."
