Chapter 8: Nine Days
The safe house was in Brooklyn — a brownstone on a quiet street that belonged to a name with no connection to mine.
Dante had arranged it in under four hours.
There was a bedroom for Sofia with a window that faced a small garden, and Elena had said nothing when she saw it except to ask where the nearest pharmacy was.
I told her we would handle the medication.
She said she preferred to handle it herself.
I didn't argue.
I came every day for those nine days.
Not for long.
An hour in the morning, sometimes less.
I sat at the kitchen table while Sofia did her schoolwork at the other end, and Elena moved around the apartment with the careful efficiency of someone who had learned not to need anything from anyone.
On the third day, Sofia pushed a drawing across the table toward me without looking up from her workbook.
It was a man and a little girl.
The man had gray-green eyes.
The little girl was wearing a yellow dress.
Above them, a sky full of yellow suns.
I looked at it for a long time.
"Do you like it?" Sofia asked, still not looking up.
"Very much," I said.
She nodded, satisfied, and went back to her workbook.
Elena, at the counter, had her back to both of us.
But she'd stopped moving.
On the sixth day, I arrived to find Elena sitting at the table alone.
Sofia was napping.
Elena had a cup of tea in front of her and a letter in her hand — paper, handwritten, the envelope already opened.
She looked up when I came in.
"It's from my mother," she said.
"In Naples.
She heard I was sick.
Someone told her." She set the letter down.
"She wants me to come home."
"Are you sick?"
"I was.
Last year.
I didn't tell Sofia how bad it was." She looked at the letter.
"I'm better now.
But my mother doesn't know that yet."
I sat down across from her.
"You were sick last year and you didn't—"
"There was no one to tell," she said simply.
Those five words.
There was no one to tell.
I had spent seven years building an empire, and the woman who had been carrying my child had spent those same seven years with no one to call when she was frightened.
"Elena—"
"Don't apologize again," she said.
"I'm not ready for it to mean anything yet."
I closed my mouth.
She picked up the tea.
"She asks about Sofia in the letter.
My mother.
She's never met her." A pause.
"That's my fault too.
I kept us hidden from everyone.
I was so afraid that if anyone knew where we were—"
"You were protecting her."
"I was.
But she grew up without grandparents.
Without cousins.
Without—" She stopped.
"She's been so alone.
And she never complained.
Not once." Her voice had gone very quiet.
"What kind of child doesn't complain?"
"The kind who learned early that complaining didn't change anything," I said.
Elena looked at me.
Something shifted in her face.
"She's going to be all right," I said.
"After Thursday.
Dr.
Yuen said the outcomes at her age are—"
"I know what he said." She set the cup down.
"I've read every study.
I know the statistics.
I know the recovery timeline." Her hands were flat on the table.
"I'm still terrified."
"I know."
"Are you?"
I looked at her.
"Yes."
She held my gaze for a moment.
Then she nodded, once, as if that answer had settled something.
On the eighth day, Dante called.
"Caruso moved," he said.
"He sent two men to the old address in Astoria.
Rosa's building."
"Rosa—"
"She's fine.
She wasn't home.
But they went through the apartment." A pause.
"They were looking for something specific.
They took a laptop and some papers."
"What papers?"
"Rosa's not sure.
She thinks — medical documents.
Things Elena left behind when she moved."
Sofia's medical history.
Her name.
Her date of birth.
"Caruso knows about the surgery," I said.
"Yes," Dante said.
I stood up from the table where I'd been sitting and walked to the window.
Nine days of careful arrangements.
Nine days of moving quietly, keeping the address clean, making sure nothing led back to Brooklyn.
And Caruso had found another way in.
"Double the coverage on Columbia Presbyterian," I said.
"Starting tonight.
I want someone on every entrance."
"Already done," Dante said.
"Boss — there's something else."
There was always something else.
"Caruso reached out directly.
Not through Fitch.
He called the main line and left a message." A pause.
"He said to tell you that he hopes the surgery goes well.
He said he's always had a soft spot for children."
The line went quiet.
"He's telling me he knows," I said.
"Yes."
"He's telling me he could reach her if he wanted to."
"Yes."
I looked at the window.
The garden below was small and ordinary — a patch of grass, a rusted chair, a bird on the fence.
"He won't," I said.
"Not before Thursday.
He wants me to cancel the surgery.
He wants me distracted.
He wants me to move her again and lose the window with Dr.
Yuen." I paused.
"He's not going to touch her.
He's going to make me afraid that he will."
A long pause on Dante's end.
"And if you're wrong?" he said.
I thought about Sofia at the kitchen table, drawing suns.
"Then I'm wrong," I said.
"But I'm not wrong."
May you like
I hung up.
Thursday was one day away.
