Chapter 2 - THE CHILD WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN DEAD
Lorenzo did not move for several seconds.
The orchestra continued playing.
Glasses touched.
Somewhere behind him, Senator Avery laughed quietly at something a cardinal had said.
But Lorenzo heard none of it.
His entire world had narrowed to the three-year-old child holding a gray stuffed rabbit against her chest.
“What did you say?”
Emma blinked.
She seemed confused by the question.
Children assumed adults understood everything the first time.
“Your baby,” she whispered again. “She’s not in the ground.”
Lorenzo’s lungs stopped working.
Five steps behind him, Matteo Rinaldi moved instinctively closer.
Matteo had been Lorenzo’s consigliere for twelve years and his closest friend for nearly thirty. They had attended the same Catholic school in Brooklyn, fought the same neighborhood bullies, buried Lorenzo’s father together, and built the DeLuca organization from a fractured collection of crews into the most feared family on the East Coast.
Matteo saw Lorenzo’s face and lowered his voice.
“Lorenzo?”
Lorenzo raised one hand.
Matteo stopped.
Then Lorenzo looked toward the reception table.
Sophia was already moving.
Not toward him.
Toward the door.
“Nico.”
Lorenzo barely said the name.
His security chief appeared beside him.
“Close the house.”
Every exterior door locked within fifteen seconds.
The music faltered as armed guards quietly moved across the room.
Three hundred wealthy guests suddenly realized the memorial was no longer a memorial.
Sophia reached the foyer before Nico Ferraro stepped in front of her.
“Move,” she whispered.
“I can’t.”
“My daughter needs to leave.”
Nico’s expression did not change.
“Your daughter is standing with Mr. DeLuca.”
Sophia closed her eyes.
That frightened Lorenzo more than anything Emma had said.
He crossed the room slowly.
People moved aside without being asked.
“Sophia.”
She looked at him.
For eight months, he had barely noticed the woman beyond knowing her name and knowing she worked in his house.
Now she looked as though she were standing in front of an execution squad.
“What does Emma know?”
Sophia’s lips trembled.
“Nothing.”
Emma frowned.
“Yes, I do.”
Sophia turned sharply.
“Emma.”
“The baby with the stars.”
Every drop of blood seemed to leave Sophia’s face.
Lorenzo crouched.
“What baby?”
Emma hugged the rabbit.
“The little baby. She sleeps under blue stars.”
“Where?”
“Emma, stop.”
Lorenzo looked up.
He had never shouted.
He did not shout now.
“Sophia.”
She began crying.
Not loudly.
That made it worse.
The tears simply appeared and rolled down her cheeks.
“I was trying to protect her.”
The room seemed to tilt beneath Lorenzo.
“Protect who?”
Sophia looked at Emma.
Then at the guests.
“Not here.”
Lorenzo immediately understood.
“Nico. Library.”
Ten minutes later, the mansion’s mahogany library contained only six people.
Lorenzo.
Sophia.
Emma.
Nico.
Matteo.
And Father Thomas, Isabella’s childhood priest.
Sophia refused to speak until the doors were locked.
Then she removed something from beneath the lining of her apron.
A photograph.
She placed it on Lorenzo’s desk.
His hand did not reach for it immediately.
He was afraid.
Lorenzo DeLuca had entered buildings knowing men inside intended to kill him.
He had once sat through six hours of questioning while federal agents threatened to bury him beneath forty-seven indictments.
None of that frightened him like the photograph lying six inches from his fingertips.
Finally, he picked it up.
A baby lay inside a white hospital crib.
Dark hair.
Round cheeks.
A pale yellow sleeper.
Above the crib was a painted ceiling covered in blue stars.
Lorenzo stared.
“She could be anyone.”
Sophia nodded shakily.
“Yes.”
Then she pointed behind the child’s left ear.
A tiny crescent-shaped birthmark.
Lorenzo stopped breathing.
Lucia had been born with it.
He remembered Isabella laughing when she first noticed it.
Our little moon, she had whispered.
His thumb shook against the photograph.
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
Lorenzo’s head snapped up.
“You saw her three weeks ago?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“St. Catherine’s House.”
Nico frowned.
“The private pediatric hospice in Queens?”
“It isn’t only a hospice,” Sophia replied. “They rent several rooms privately to families who don’t want records entered into the main hospital system.”
Lorenzo stood so fast the chair struck the floor.
“Why was my daughter there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I know only what my sister told me.”
“What sister?”
“Elena.”
Sophia wiped her eyes.
“She was a trauma nurse at Harbor Memorial the night of the crash.”
Lorenzo’s face changed.
Every medical employee involved in the crash had been interviewed.
Twice.
“There was no Elena Rossi.”
“She used her married name. Elena Walsh.”
Nico immediately pulled out his phone.
Sophia continued.
“She called me at two in the morning. She was terrified. She said two victims had been brought in secretly before the police arrived.”
Lorenzo stared at her.
“Two?”
Sophia nodded.
“A woman and a newborn.”
The silence that followed felt violent.
“Isabella?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Elena never saw the woman’s face clearly. She was unconscious and covered in blood. But she saw the necklace.”
Lorenzo’s eyes dropped toward the silver swallow in Isabella’s memorial portrait.
“The necklace was recovered from Isabella’s body.”
“That’s what you were told.”
Lorenzo turned toward Matteo.
His consigliere had become strangely still.
Sophia continued.
“Elena was ordered to leave the trauma room. Forty minutes later, the woman was gone. The baby was gone too.”
“Who gave the order?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who took them?”
“I don’t know.”
Lorenzo struck the desk with both hands.
Emma jumped.
He immediately saw her frightened face and forced himself under control.
Sophia crouched beside her daughter.
“That’s why I stayed quiet,” she said. “Because Elena started asking questions.”
Lorenzo’s voice became colder.
“What happened to her?”
“She died six weeks after the crash.”
Nico looked up from his phone.
“Car accident.”
Sophia nodded.
“Except Elena hadn’t driven in years.”
A chill passed through the library.
“She had epilepsy. Her husband drove her everywhere.”
Lorenzo looked at the photograph again.
“How did you find Lucia?”
“Elena left me a safety-deposit key. I opened the box after her funeral. There were notes, patient numbers and the name St. Catherine’s House.”
“And you waited?”
“I was afraid.”
“You let me bury my daughter.”
Sophia flinched.
“I had no proof she was yours.”
“You had this.”
“I didn’t have the photograph then.”
Sophia’s voice cracked.
“I went to St. Catherine’s three weeks ago. I pretended I was looking for work. I saw the baby.”
“And Emma?”
“My babysitter canceled. I had to take her.”
Lorenzo looked at the toddler.
Emma smiled shyly.
“I sang to the baby.”
That almost destroyed him.
“What is she called there?”
Sophia swallowed.
“Lucy Rose.”
Lucia.
Lucy.
Lorenzo looked at Nico.
“Cars.”
Matteo stepped forward.
“You cannot walk into a medical facility with twenty armed men.”
Lorenzo stared at him.
“My daughter is alive.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
Matteo immediately softened his tone.
“I’m trying to protect you. If someone hid her, they may be waiting for exactly this reaction.”
He was right.
Lorenzo hated him for being right.
“Nico. Six men. Quiet.”
Nico nodded.
Then Emma suddenly pointed.
“That’s him.”
Everyone turned.
The toddler was staring at Matteo.
Matteo smiled uncertainly.
“Me?”
Emma shook her head.
“Your ring.”
Matteo looked down.
A silver serpent curled around the black stone on his right hand.
Emma buried her face against Sophia.
“The scary man had that snake.”
Sophia went completely rigid.
Matteo slowly covered the ring with his opposite hand.
Lorenzo did not blink.
“Matteo.”
His oldest friend looked at him.
“I’ve worn this ring for fifteen years.”
“I know.”
“So have dozens of men in Sicily.”
“I know.”
Emma peeked out from behind her mother.
“He said Mommy would disappear.”
Sophia’s head jerked toward her.
“What?”
“The man at the baby place.”
“You never told me that.”
Emma’s voice became tiny.
“He saw us.”
Lorenzo turned toward Matteo again.
For the first time in almost thirty years of friendship, neither man seemed to recognize the other.
Then Nico’s phone vibrated.
He looked at the screen.
His expression changed.
“We have a problem.”
“What?”
“I pulled traffic cameras near St. Catherine’s from the afternoon Sophia visited.”
He hesitated.
“There was a black DeLuca security sedan parked across the street for four hours.”
Lorenzo’s stare remained on Matteo.
“Whose?”
Nico slowly lifted the phone.
The vehicle registration appeared on the screen.
May you like
It belonged to Matteo Rinaldi.
And suddenly the man Lorenzo had trusted with his life was standing between him and the possibility that his dead daughter was breathing somewhere in New York.
