Chương 10
She looked at him.
“I told the nurse no Rossi name.”
“Bennett isn’t a first name.”
“I panicked.”
A small breath escaped her. It might have been the beginning of a laugh, but pain stopped it.
Dante looked down.
“My mother called.”
Grace’s face closed.
“She wants me to meet her.”
“No.”
“She says she’ll give us the original financial records and a statement admitting the psychiatric documents are false.”
“She won’t.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you going?”
“Because she may bring Dr. Vale.”
Grace’s fingers tightened on the blanket.
“What are you not telling me?”
He looked at her.
She waited.
Dante had spent his adult life deciding how much truth another person could survive. He had called it discretion, protection, leadership. In practice, it meant other people lived inside stories he edited for them.
“The night you disappeared,” he said, “I threatened you.”
“I remember.”
“You found records in my office.”
“I remember that too.”
“My mother has copies. She intends to use them to frame me for what happened to you.”
Grace stared at him.
“She doesn’t need to frame you for the threat.”
“No.”
“She told me you signed papers.”
“She forged them using blank documents I gave her.”
Grace turned her face toward the window.
“I spent months trying to decide whether you knew.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that now.”
Relief came too quickly.
Then she said, “I don’t know whether you would have stopped her.”
The relief vanished.
Dante sat very still.
Grace looked back at him.
“You threatened to use your police, your judges, your lawyers to take me back. Then your mother did exactly that, and you want the difference between you to be that you didn’t know which room.”
“I searched for you.”
“You searched where she pointed.”
“Yes.”
“You hurt people looking for me.”
He did not answer.
“I heard them talk,” Grace said. “Men came downstairs sometimes. They never entered the chamber, but voices carried through the pipes. One said you put a Moretti boy in the hospital because he wouldn’t tell you where I was.”
“He lied to me.”
“He was nineteen.”
Dante’s mouth went dry.
Grace closed her eyes briefly.
“I wanted you to find me so badly that I used to imagine the sound of your shoes in the corridor. Then, when I believed you had ordered it, I wanted you dead. Then I would feel the baby move and be glad you were alive because I didn’t want him to grow up with no father. Then I hated myself for that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what to do with sorry.”
“Neither do I.”
The machines continued their patient clicking.
Dante took the ring from his finger and placed it on the rolling table between them.
Grace looked at it but did not reach for it.
“My mother believes I’ll protect myself,” he said.
“Will you?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s honest.”
“I’m going to meet her with the police.”
Grace’s breath shortened.
“No.”
“They’ll be close.”
“She had people hold me down while she explained how no one would believe me. She planned every answer before anyone asked a question. You think because you’re angry, you’re stronger than she is.”
“I don’t.”
“Then don’t go.”
“If Dr. Vale disappears, her documents remain.”
“Let them. I know what happened.”
“The court may not.”
“So you risk becoming another body she explains?”
Dante looked at her hands. Even cleaned, the nails were broken and bruised.
“I can give the police everything,” he said.
“What does everything mean?”
“Accounts. Payments. Names. My father’s records. Mine.”
“Where are they?”
“In a secure server my mother cannot access without me.”
Grace studied him.
“You told her you had copies.”
“I do, in a way.”
“What happens to you?”
“Prison.”
She looked toward the window again.
The rain had stopped. Morning light reflected off the hospital across the street, making the glass painfully bright.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Years?”
“Yes.”
“Our son almost died before you met him.”
“I know.”
“And your answer is to leave?”
“My answer is to make sure she cannot reach either of you.”
“You always make leaving sound like protection.”
The sentence sat between them.
Dante rose and walked to the window. Cars moved along the avenue below. A delivery truck blocked one lane while drivers leaned on their horns. Somewhere in the city, bakeries were opening, children were refusing shoes, people were arguing over coffee. The world had gone on while Grace lived in a cage.
He turned back.
“What would staying look like?”
Grace blinked.
“For me,” he said. “Tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“If I fight only the charges about you, she keeps the rest. Her money, her police, her men. She can appeal, intimidate witnesses, wait for attention to fade. If I give them the organization, I lose years with you and him.”
“You may have already lost me.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He held her gaze.
“Yes.”
Her face tightened, and this time a tear slipped into her hair.
“I don’t want your sacrifice to become another debt I owe the Rossi family.”
“It won’t.”
“You’ll think it.”
“I might.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll have to live with being wrong.”
Grace looked at the ring on the table.
“Bring Dr. Vale in alive,” she said. “Not for revenge. Not for your mother. He knows what he gave me.”
Dante nodded.
“And no private deal.”
“No.”
“You tell the police before you go that you’ll give them everything.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t decide afterward that some cousin deserves protection because he was nice to you when you were twelve.”
Dante almost smiled.
“Luca was never nice to me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
She reached toward the ring, then stopped.
“And if she gives you a choice between the evidence and coming back, you come back.”
He did not answer quickly enough.
Grace’s eyes hardened.
“Dante.”
“I’ll come back.”
May you like
“Say it without sounding like a man at a funeral.”
“I will come back.”
