Chương 2
“Elena Vassallo?”
She moved so quickly her shoulder struck Anthony’s chest.
“How is he?”
“He’s stable.”
The physician glanced at the people around her, visibly recalibrating what he wanted to say.
“He has a concussion, two fractured ribs, a fracture in his right hand, and internal bleeding we’re monitoring very closely.”
“Does he need surgery?”
“Not at the moment.”
“At the moment?”
“We need to see how the bleeding develops.”
Elena swallowed.
“Can I see him?”
“For a few minutes.”
Anthony stepped forward.
“I need to speak with him first.”
The doctor frowned.
“Are you family?”
“He’s with me,” Teresa said.
Anthony looked at her sharply.
Elena did too.
Teresa continued before either could speak.
“And he will wait outside.”
The physician gave Anthony the wary expression of a man grateful that someone else had solved a problem he had no intention of owning.
He held the door open for Elena.
Teresa started after her.
“No,” Elena said.
Her grandmother stopped.
“I want to see him alone.”
For several seconds Teresa’s face revealed nothing.
Then she nodded.
Elena entered and closed the door behind her.
Nico looked smaller in the hospital bed.
That offended her somehow.
Her brother had spent most of his life occupying more space than circumstances allowed, stretching his legs under restaurant tables, leaving shoes in doorways, singing badly while other people watched television.
Seeing him reduced to tubes, tape, bruises, and the mechanical pulse of a monitor felt obscene.
His left eye opened when she touched his shoulder.
“Hey,” she whispered.
His lips moved.
She bent closer.
“You look terrible,” he murmured.
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
It broke halfway through.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah.”
“Who did this?”
His eyelid lowered.
“Nico.”
He moved his head once against the pillow.
“Don’t.”
“Anthony Renda is outside.”
That brought his eye open again.
Fear appeared so nakedly that Elena wished she had not said the name.
“Listen to me,” he whispered.
“I am listening.”
“No cops.”
“Somebody nearly killed you.”
“No cops.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
His good hand caught her wrist with surprising strength.
“Elena.”
She had not heard him use that tone since they were children and he had fallen through the ice behind their father’s house.
“What?”
“Get out of the city.”
She stared at him.
“Why?”
“Tonight.”
“Nico, tell me what happened.”
His gaze shifted toward the door.
“I messed up.”
“What did you do?”
“I thought it was numbers.”
“What was numbers?”
He closed his eye.
The monitor kept marking his heartbeat with patient green flashes.
Elena leaned nearer.
“Nico.”
“I found something at work.”
He had been doing bookkeeping for Calderone Produce for eight months, a job their father had arranged before his heart attack.
Nico complained about invoices, warehouse coffee, and a manager named Paul who microwaved fish in the break room.
Nothing about it had ever sounded capable of ending with a hammer.
“What did you find?”
Nico’s fingers tightened around her wrist.
“Accounts that weren’t accounts.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It does to them.”
“Who is them?”
His breathing changed.
A nurse appeared through the glass and tapped on the door, warning Elena with two raised fingers that her time was nearly over.
Nico pulled her closer.
“There was your name.”
Elena stopped breathing.
“What?”
“In the ledger.”
She searched his face for confusion from the medication.
“My name?”
“And Grandma’s.”
The nurse opened the door.
“That’s enough for now.”
Elena did not move.
“What ledger?”
Nico released her wrist and turned his face toward the wall.
The nurse touched Elena’s elbow.
“He needs rest.”
“Nico.”
“Go.”
“What does my name have to do with anything?”
“Please.”
It was the please that moved her.
She stepped into the corridor feeling as though the building had shifted slightly beneath her feet.
Anthony was gone.
The second man was gone too.
Only Teresa remained, sitting in a molded plastic chair with her umbrella across her knees.
She had found a paper cup of coffee somewhere and was drinking it with the resigned expression of a person who had expected it to be bad and was annoyed to have been proven right.
Elena walked toward her.
“Where are they?”
“Outside.”
“You sent them away?”
“For the moment.”
“How?”
Teresa examined her granddaughter’s face.
“What did Nico tell you?”
Elena stopped.
There it was.
Not concern.
Not surprise.
A question aimed exactly where it needed to land.
“You already know.”
Teresa set the coffee on the floor.
“I know several things, Elena, and most of them are things I wish I didn’t.”
“He said my name is in a ledger.”
The muscles around Teresa’s mouth tightened.
It was a tiny reaction.
Elena might have missed it if she had not spent half her childhood trying to determine when her grandmother was angry.
“What ledger?”
Teresa stood.
“Not here.”
“No.”
“Elena.”
“No more of that.”
A nurse behind the desk glanced toward them and then quickly back to her computer.
“You don’t walk in after seven years and start giving orders.”
“This is not about seven years.”
“Everything with you is about seven years.”
Teresa picked up her umbrella.
“Then be angry while you walk.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Why?”
“Because Anthony Renda was not here to frighten Nico.”
Elena felt the skin tighten across her shoulders.
“He took my phone.”
“He was looking for something.”
“What?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be standing in a hospital corridor arguing with you.”
That admission frightened Elena more than anything else Teresa had said.
Her grandmother had always treated ignorance like a private illness.
Elena glanced toward the treatment-room door.
“I’m not leaving Nico.”
“You aren’t.”
Teresa reached into her coat and handed Elena a phone she did not recognize.
“Call your father.”
“Why?”
“Because if he answers, tell him nothing.”
Elena stared at her.
“And if he doesn’t?”
May you like
Teresa’s eyes moved toward the elevator as its floor indicator began descending.
“Then we have a different problem.”
