Chương 8
Luca held Milo beneath his chin.
“Are they arresting my dad?”
“I don’t know.”
“You say that a lot.”
“It’s better than making something up.”
“My uncle makes things up.”
“Most people do when the truth is expensive.”
“Does my dad?”
Mara watched Dante answer a paramedic’s questions. He kept looking across the garage toward Luca, as though physical distance might turn into something permanent if he stopped checking.
“Yes,” she said. “Your dad has made things up.”
Luca nodded. The answer did not surprise him.
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“What did you make up?”
“That leaving Chicago meant nothing there could hurt me anymore.”
He rubbed Milo’s ear. “Did it work?”
“No.”
The paramedics insisted on transporting Dante to the county hospital. He refused until a state trooper named Evelyn Hart told him refusal would be documented and that child-protection staff might interpret it as impaired judgment while Luca was in his care.
Dante looked at Mara.
“She’s manipulating me.”
Trooper Hart heard him. “I’m explaining consequences.”
“Same suit, different tailoring.”
Mara folded her arms. “Go to the hospital.”
“You’re coming.”
It was not phrased as an order, but the old shape remained.
“I’m taking Luca,” she said. “You are going with the paramedics.”
Dante’s nostrils flared.
Luca crossed the garage and put one gloved hand on his father’s wrist.
“Go.”
Dante looked down at him.
The anger left his face without disappearing; it simply moved somewhere private.
“All right.”
He removed the silver ring.
For the first time, Mara saw a narrow seam inside the band and a tiny glass panel beneath the blue indicator.
Dante held the ring toward Marco.
Marco did not take it.
“The police will inventory it,” he said.
“I’m aware.”
“Then keep it.”
“They’ll remove it at the hospital.”
“Let them.”
Dante turned to Mara and placed the ring in her palm.
She tried to close his fingers around it again.
“No.”
“If I’m separated from Luca, you authenticate the archive.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Marco does.”
“Then give it to Marco.”
“I trust Marco with my life.”
“That sounded impressive until yesterday.”
“I trust you with the truth.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know what you refused to change.”
Mara looked at the heavy ring in her palm. It was warm from his hand.
“I may give it to the police.”
“Then choose which police.”
“That is exactly the kind of sentence that makes people dislike your family.”
Dante’s mouth moved slightly.
“Keep Luca away from Rocco,” he said.
The paramedic guided him toward the ambulance.
Mara slipped the ring into the inside pocket of her sweater.
Trooper Hart drove Mara and Luca to the hospital in the back of her cruiser. Marco followed with another officer. The black convoys had vanished from the lake road, leaving tire marks and churned snow as the only evidence that Mara’s cabin had briefly become the center of an empire.
At the hospital, Dante registered under his legal name.
The clerk recognized it.
Mara saw the moment happen: the second glance at the screen, the slight straightening, the hand moving toward a phone. Bellaro Freight and Harbor had terminals across Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio. Its name appeared on trucks, warehouses, charity dinners, youth hockey jerseys, and campaign donor lists. Dante’s father had built it from three trucks and a marina. Dante and Rocco had turned it into a network with more than four thousand employees.
Respectability, Mara had learned, was often a scale problem. People stopped asking how money was made once enough families depended on it.
A nurse placed Luca in a family waiting room with juice, crackers, and a social worker named Beth who spoke too brightly until Luca stared at her in silence.
Mara sat beside him.
Marco remained in the hall with two troopers. Every few minutes, his phone vibrated. He declined each call.
After an hour, a physician came out.
“Mr. Bellaro’s condition is stable,” she said. “The wound repair is holding, but he has a fever and significant inflammation. We’re admitting him for observation and treatment.”
“Can Luca see him?” Mara asked.
“Briefly.”
The social worker leaned toward Mara. “And your relationship to the child is?”
“Temporary shelter.”
Beth blinked.
“Friend,” Mara said, although the word felt dishonest in a different direction.
“His father listed you as an emergency caregiver.”
“When?”
“During intake.”
Mara looked toward the hall.
Dante had made another decision for her while lying on a hospital bed.
Beth continued, “We’ll need contact information for the child’s mother or another legal guardian.”
“His mother is dead,” Luca said.
The social worker softened. “I’m sorry.”
“Everybody says that too.”
Mara put a hand near his shoulder without touching. He leaned into it on his own.
Dante’s room was small and overheated. He lay beneath a white blanket with an IV in his arm, his tattoos incongruous against the hospital gown. Without the ring, his right hand looked strangely unfinished.
Luca climbed into the chair beside him.
Dante reached across the rail and touched the boy’s hair.
“I’m staying here tonight,” he said.
“I know.”
“You’ll stay with Mara.”
Luca looked at her.
Mara said, “We haven’t discussed that.”
Dante’s eyes held hers.
“There is no one else I trust.”
“Again, not persuasive.”
“Marco cannot take him. Rocco would accuse him of kidnapping before they reached the parking lot.”
Marco stood by the door. “He’s right.”
“The state can place Luca somewhere secure,” Mara said.
Luca gripped Milo.
Dante saw it.
“So Rocco can petition as next of kin?” he asked. “He already has attorneys preparing it.”
Beth, who had followed them in, cleared her throat. “No placement decision has been made.”
“But he can petition,” Mara said.
“Yes.”
“How quickly?”
“It depends.”
“That means quickly when someone has money.”
Beth did not answer.
Dante turned his head toward Mara. Fatigue had weakened his voice but not his focus.
“Keep him for forty-eight hours.”
“You cannot assign me a child.”
“I can ask.”
May you like
“You’re terrible at asking.”
A pause.
