Chương 11
She moved toward the corner where a deli remained open. “Stay there.”
“I need five minutes.”
“You have none.”
“You think Moretti will protect you when investigators start asking where his money came from?”
“I think you should stay away from me.”
“He told you I locked the closet.”
“The video shows you doing it.”
“You know why?”
“To keep me out.”
“To keep him from seeing.”
Mara continued backing toward the deli. “He saw anyway.”
“Because Rosa started pounding like an idiot.”
“Do not say her name.”
Victor glanced toward the street. “I was helping you.”
“You photographed my child.”
“I documented what you did.”
“You forged my signature.”
“I processed benefits you were too proud to ask for.”
“I never got the money.”
“You got shifts. Flexibility. Protection.”
Mara laughed once. “You threatened to fire me every week.”
“And did I?”
The question revealed his entire moral world. Harm did not count if he stopped one step before the worst thing he had promised.
Sirens sounded several blocks away.
Victor’s face changed. “Tell investigators Moretti approved the transfers.”
“Did he?”
“He signed the fund.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“He knew how business was done.”
“Did he approve the transfers?”
Victor came closer. “You think truth is going to feed your baby?”
Mara’s hand shook around the phone.
“Stop.”
“You think the state cares whether you were tired? They’ll take her, Mara. Diane will help them. She already called.”
For a second, the sidewalk tipped beneath her.
Victor saw it.
“Ask your mother-in-law,” he said. “She gave a statement.”
The police car turned onto the block.
Victor stepped back. “You can still fix this. Say Moretti ordered you to use the closet. Say the fund was fake. Say he threatened you.”
“Did he threaten me?”
“He doesn’t need to. Look at the men who follow you.”
The police car stopped at the curb.
Victor raised both hands before the officers emerged, transforming himself into the reasonable man in the scene. “We were talking.”
Mara heard her own voice from far away. “He was ordered not to contact me.”
No formal order existed. Not yet. Priya had sent warnings. Victor knew the difference.
He smiled faintly. “She’s confused.”
Mara hated him for choosing the word.
One officer separated them. The other took her statement. Victor denied making threats and claimed he had come to retrieve personal documents Mara had accidentally taken from Aurelia. He had no proof. The officers told him to leave and documented the encounter.
It was not the arrest Mara had imagined. Real systems moved in smaller, more frustrating increments.
After he walked away, Eddie’s car arrived.
Dominic stepped from the back seat.
Mara’s anger found him because Victor was gone.
“You said the detail ended at ten,” Dominic said.
“You said they were called off.”
“I reduced the hours after your lawyer threatened an injunction.”
“You kept track anyway.”
“Victor has associates.”
“So do you.”
Dominic looked toward the officers. “Did he touch you?”
“No.”
“Threaten you?”
“He talked.”
“What did he say?”
“That Diane gave a statement against me.”
Dominic’s expression shifted. “Did she?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can find out.”
“No. I can.”
“Mara—”
“I said I can.”
She walked toward the building.
Dominic followed as far as the door. “There is a safe apartment available.”
“I’m not moving into anything you own.”
“It is not in my name.”
“That makes it worse.”
“Victor knows where you live.”
“So do you.”
The words landed between them.
Dominic looked through the glass into the dim lobby. “I will place someone inside the building.”
“No.”
“Then outside.”
“No.”
“What would you do if our positions were reversed?”
“I would ask.”
“I am asking now.”
“You’re asking after deciding.”
He rubbed one hand over his face, the first unguarded sign of fatigue she had seen from him. “Then tell me what you will accept.”
Mara looked down the street. The deli clerk watched through the window. A bus groaned at the intersection. Ellie was upstairs with Diane, perhaps awake, perhaps sleeping, while two dangerous men argued over who had the right to protect her.
“One person,” Mara said. “Across the street. No following me unless I call. No entering the building. No reporting who visits me.”
Dominic nodded. “Agreed.”
“And not Eddie. He comments on groceries.”
“Eddie considers himself socially gifted.”
“He is mistaken.”
Dominic almost smiled. Then his face sobered. “Victor will try again.”
“I know.”
“Your fear is not a failure.”
“I know that too.”
She did not thank him.
Upstairs, Diane sat beside Ellie’s crib with the yellow rattle in her hand.
“She likes this,” Diane said.
Mara removed her coat slowly. “Did you talk to Child and Family Services?”
Diane’s fingers tightened around the rattle.
“That’s a yes.”
“They called me.”
“What did you tell them?”
“The truth.”
“Which truth?”
“That you love her. That you work too much. That you don’t ask for help until the room is already burning.”
Mara stared at her.
Diane set the rattle on the dresser. “I told them you would never intentionally hurt Ellie.”
“What else?”
“That you make bad decisions when you’re scared.”
“You think I’m an unsafe mother.”
“I think you are a tired mother who believes needing people is a debt.”
“From the woman who has spent eleven months blaming me for her son’s death.”
Diane’s face tightened. “I have spent eleven months blaming everyone.”
“Mostly me.”
“Mostly myself.”
The answer stopped Mara.
Diane looked toward the crib. “Owen called me from the truck that night.”
Mara had not known.
“He said he was tired,” Diane continued. “I told him to drink coffee and finish the route because the company had already warned him about refusing overtime.”
Mara sat on the edge of the bed.
“I told investigators after the accident that he never complained,” Diane said. “That was a lie. He complained to me.”
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“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were pregnant. Because you were sitting in a hospital gown holding his wedding ring. Because if I told you, then I had to know what I had done.”
