Chương 1
Elena O’Shea put her puppy between the money and the pistol and said, “You can have Bruno forever. Just please save my mommy.”
Her voice was too loud for the dim back room of Café Nate. It struck the yellow light, the concrete walls, the four men in dark suits, and seemed to leave everything vibrating after she stopped. Water ran from the sleeves of her faded pink jacket. One drop landed on the open ledger. Another darkened the corner of a hundred-dollar bill.
Bruno tried to stand on the polished table. His wet paws slipped apart, and his belly touched the wood. He made a small sound that was not quite a bark.
Nobody moved.
Damiano Rossetti sat at the head of the table with one hand beside an untouched espresso cup. Rain had darkened the shoulders of his charcoal suit. He looked first at the puppy, then at the rusty safety pin holding the child’s broken zipper together, then at her face.
Seven years old, perhaps. Too thin. Wet hair pasted across pale cheeks. Hazel eyes that were holding back tears through effort rather than courage.
“You can have him,” she repeated. Her fist rose toward her mouth and stopped there. “He’s good. He only pees inside when he’s scared.”
Enzo’s chair creaked.
Vittorio did not move at all.
Damiano reached across the cash, the open handwritten ledger, and the silver pistol. He placed two fingers against Bruno’s damp chest and pushed the puppy gently back toward Elena.
“Then you don’t give him away,” he said. “Tell me who has your mother.”
Elena gathered Bruno against herself so quickly that his hind legs kicked one of the cash bundles sideways. She pressed her face into his wet fur, breathed once, then looked over the puppy’s head.
Her eyes went to Vittorio.
It lasted less than a second.
When they returned to Damiano, they were wider.
“Mommy said to tell Damiano Rossetti…” Elena swallowed hard enough for him to see it. “Elena has his eyes.”
Something inside Damiano’s face gave way.
His hand rose toward his mouth. The silver wristwatch at his cuff caught the overhead light. For a few seconds, he heard nothing but rain ticking against the high rear window and the puppy’s frightened breathing.
Eight years earlier, Maeve O’Shea had stood in his apartment wearing one of his white shirts and told him his coffee tasted like boiled furniture. She had laughed when he said that was not a real comparison. The memory appeared without permission, complete with the chipped blue mug in her hand and the way one side of her mouth lifted before the other.
Damiano lowered his hand.
“Where is she?”
“Three blocks away, beneath the—”
The black phone beside the ledger vibrated so sharply that Elena flinched.
It moved half an inch across the wood.
Everyone looked at it except Vittorio.
Damiano noticed that, too.
The screen showed no number. Only a message.
SHE BROUGHT YOU THE WRONG THING.
A second message appeared before anyone spoke.
LOWER ROOM. LA ROSA CLEANERS. COME WITH THE LEDGER. EIGHT MINUTES.
Damiano stood. The movement sent the men around the table to their feet, though he had given no order.
“Enzo,” he said.
“I’m here.”
“Take the phone. Paolo, get the car around back.”
Vittorio reached for the silver pistol.
Damiano put his palm over it first.
“No.”
Vittorio’s hand remained suspended above the table. He was a broad man with a careful beard and a dark red mark beneath one thumbnail, as though he had recently slammed it in a drawer. “If they have Maeve—”
“I said no.”
The name changed the air again.
Elena looked from Damiano to Vittorio. Her arms tightened around Bruno until the puppy squirmed.
Damiano turned to her. “Did you see who took your mother?”
She stared at the knot of his tie.
“Elena.”
“One had shiny shoes.”
All four men were wearing shiny shoes.
“And the other one smelled bad.”
“What kind of bad?”
She pressed her nose into Bruno’s fur. “Like sweet smoke.”
Vittorio slipped his right hand into his trouser pocket.
Enzo watched him do it.
Damiano took off his suit jacket and placed it around Elena’s shoulders. It nearly reached her ankles. She stiffened as if he had dropped a net over her.
“I’m not going without Mommy.”
“You’re not going into that room.”
“You don’t know where the door is.”
“I’ll find it.”
“There are two doors.” Her voice cracked, and she became angry at it. “The first one goes to washing machines. The second one has a red handle, but it sticks. You have to pull up.”
Damiano looked at Enzo.
Enzo nodded once. He had already understood.
They left the cash and the pistol where they were. Vittorio started after them.
Damiano turned in the doorway. “You stay.”
Vittorio’s expression shifted by almost nothing. “Why?”
“Because I told you to.”
“Damiano, this could be about all of us.”
“No,” Damiano said. “It’s about me.”
He walked upstairs with Elena beside him and Bruno tucked under her chin. Café Nate was still open. Three customers sat at the counter pretending not to notice the men emerging from the employees-only door. Nate Costello stood behind the register with a towel in his hand. He was sixty, narrow shouldered, and had owned the café long enough for the room to smell permanently of burnt espresso and orange peel.
He saw Elena and went gray.
“What happened?” Nate asked.
Damiano kept walking. “Close early.”
“I’ve got people.”
“Then tell them the plumbing failed.”
Nate looked toward the back-room door. “Did it?”
“It’s about to.”
Outside, rain fell in slanted sheets. Paolo had the black sedan angled against the curb, engine running. Enzo opened the rear door.
Elena stopped on the sidewalk.
“No.”
Damiano looked down at her.
“They put Mommy in a black car.”
“This is a different black car.”
“It looks the same.”
May you like
He had no useful answer to that.
A city bus passed through the intersection, spraying water across the gutter. Elena’s oversized sneakers were wrapped at the toes with silver duct tape. One strip had peeled loose and dragged on the sidewalk like a tail.
