Chapter 7: Calle Menor
The problem was a man sitting in a car outside Carmen's building.
Not Dante Moretti's driver this time.
Someone else.
Someone who had been there since six in the evening, according to the building super, who had called the number Marco had given him three days earlier for exactly this kind of situation.
By the time Vincent's car reached Calle Menor, the man was gone.
But he had left something behind.
On the front step of the building, propped against the door, was a child's shoe.
A small shoe.
White canvas.
The kind a girl might wear to school.
Vincent looked at it.
Then he looked at Marco.
"Isabella," he said.
"She's at the apartment," Marco said quickly.
"She's fine.
Our man on the school confirmed she came home at three-thirty.
She's been upstairs since then."
Vincent let out a slow breath.
"The shoe is a message," Marco said.
"I know what it is."
He picked it up.
Turned it over.
On the sole, written in black marker: *Last warning.*
Vincent set it down.
"Get Carmen," he said.
"Boss, it's almost ten—"
"Get her."
Marco went inside.
Vincent stood on the step.
The street was quiet.
A dog barked somewhere two blocks over.
A window lit up on the fourth floor of the building across the road, then went dark again.
He looked at the shoe.
He thought about the Moretti family's timeline.
The photograph taken Thursday morning.
The note delivered Tuesday.
The man outside tonight.
They were escalating faster than he had expected — which meant either they were more desperate than he'd thought, or someone had told them about the meeting with Greco.
Neither possibility was comfortable.
The front door opened.
Carmen came out in her coat, her hair loose, her face set in the expression she wore when she was holding herself very carefully together.
She looked at the shoe.
Her face didn't change.
But she reached out and took it from Vincent's hand and held it against her chest.
"That's not Isabella's," she said.
Her voice was steady.
"Isabella's shoes are upstairs.
Both of them."
"I know."
"They put it there to make me think—"
"I know, Carmen."
She looked at him.
"How long has this been going on?" she asked.
"Not the note.
Before that.
How long have they been watching us?"
"At least two weeks."
"And you knew."
"I found out Friday."
"You didn't tell me Friday."
"No."
She stared at him.
"I was handling it," he said.
"I am not something to be handled," she said.
The words came out quiet and precise, like she had been saving them.
"I am a person.
Isabella is a person.
We are not a problem in one of your folders."
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Carmen took a step toward him.
"Mr.
Torino." Her voice dropped.
"I have kept my head down in this house for four years.
I have asked no questions.
I have seen things I will never speak of.
I have done that because I needed this job and because I am not a fool." She paused.
"But my daughter is upstairs in a two-room apartment, and someone just put a child's shoe on my front step, and I need you to tell me the truth.
Right now.
Are we safe?"
Vincent looked at her.
"By Saturday," he said.
"Yes."
"And tonight?"
"My men are on the building.
Front and back.
Nobody comes in or out without me knowing."
She searched his face.
"Why?" she asked.
"Why does any of this matter to you?
We are nobody to you."
The question hung in the cold air.
Vincent looked at the shoe in her hands.
"Isabella told me you give her your food," he said.
"And say you already ate."
Carmen's jaw tightened.
"That's—"
"She told me you cry at night when you think she's asleep."
Carmen looked away.
"She wasn't telling tales," he said.
"She was trying to protect you.
The same way you protect her." He paused.
"I recognized it."
A long silence.
"My mother," he said, "did the same thing."
Carmen turned back to look at him.
His face gave very little away.
But his eyes were somewhere else for a moment — somewhere old and far back.
Then he came back.
"Go upstairs," he said.
"Lock the door.
Don't open it for anyone except Marco or me.
I'll have someone bring food up in an hour."
Carmen held the shoe for another moment.
Then she nodded.
She went inside.
Vincent stood on the step alone.
His phone buzzed.
A message from Greco's associate: *Saturday confirmed.
Warrants signed.
Calloway accounts frozen as of midnight.*
He put the phone in his pocket.
One more day.
He looked up at the third-floor window.
The light was on.
He could see the shadow of a small figure moving past the curtain — Isabella, probably, still awake, the way children are when they sense that the adults around them are afraid.
The shadow stopped at the window.
A small hand pulled the curtain back an inch.
Isabella looked down at the street.
She saw him standing there.
She raised one hand.
He raised his.
May you like
She let the curtain fall.
He stood there a while longer, in the cold, watching the window.
