Chapter 4 - THE MAN DOMINIC CALLED BROTHER
Dominic did not confront Marco immediately.
That frightened Nico more than shouting would have.
At 7:30 the next morning, Dominic sat behind his desk and drank coffee while Marco entered as usual.
Same gray suit.
Same burgundy tie.
Same easy walk.
"Morning."
Dominic looked up.
"Morning."
Marco set two folders on the desk.
"We found movement from the Rosses near Pier Eleven. I think they know we're stretched."
Dominic studied him.
Twenty years.
Marco had stood beside him at his father's funeral.
He had hidden Dominic in the trunk of a Lincoln when the Mancinis tried to kill them in 2008.
He had once taken a knife across the ribs meant for Dominic.
Trust, Dominic thought, was not one decision.
It was a thousand small decisions stacked together until questioning them felt like questioning gravity.
"Anything else?" Dominic asked.
Marco poured himself coffee.
"You tell me."
Dominic's eyes narrowed slightly.
Marco smiled.
"I heard St. Cecilia had a break-in."
"News travels."
"It does in your neighborhood."
"Queens isn't my neighborhood."
"Everything becomes your neighborhood when you care enough."
Dominic leaned back.
There.
A small thing.
But wrong.
Marco should not know how much Dominic cared.
Not yet.
"Have you ever been there?" Dominic asked.
"St. Cecilia?"
"Yes."
"No."
The lie came smoothly.
Dominic nodded.
Marco sipped his coffee.
"Did you find anything interesting?"
"A girl."
Marco's cup paused a fraction of an inch from his mouth.
Only a fraction.
Dominic saw it.
"One of the orphans?"
"Yes."
"That's what you'd expect at an orphanage."
Dominic almost admired him.
"She has a photograph."
Marco set down the coffee.
"And?"
"I'm in it."
Silence.
Outside the windows, Manhattan moved beneath pale morning light.
Marco smiled slowly.
"That's impossible."
"Why?"
"You've never had children."
"That I know of."
Marco looked away.
Too quickly.
Dominic stood.
"Do you remember Elena?"
"Of course."
"Do you?"
Marco turned back.
"What is this?"
"Conversation."
"No. It's interrogation dressed as conversation."
Dominic walked around the desk.
"Then answer faster."
Marco's expression hardened for the first time.
"I remember Elena. You were obsessed with her. She disappeared. I helped you look."
"Did you?"
Marco stared at him.
"Careful."
One word.
Softly spoken.
And with it, something twenty years old broke.
Dominic stepped closer.
"Who are you warning?"
Marco's face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
Then Dominic's desk phone rang.
Nico answered from the side of the room.
His expression turned immediately.
"What?"
Dominic looked at him.
Nico lowered the phone.
"St. Cecilia."
Dominic was already moving.
"What happened?"
"Mia's gone."
The world snapped into focus.
Dominic turned toward Marco.
Marco looked stunned.
Perfectly stunned.
Too perfectly.
Dominic grabbed his coat.
"If she has a scratch on her, Marco, I will know."
Marco stood frozen.
"You think I took a child?"
"I think I don't know you."
Dominic walked out.
St. Cecilia was chaos.
Police filled the entrance.
A side gate hung open.
Sister Teresa stood in the courtyard with no coat despite the cold.
Dominic crossed the yard.
"When?"
"Twenty-three minutes ago."
"How?"
"Someone pulled the fire alarm in the west dormitory. During evacuation, a man dressed like a city maintenance worker told Mia I'd sent him."
Dominic's jaw clenched.
"She went with him?"
"No."
Sister Teresa looked toward the oak tree.
"She ran."
Dominic stared at her.
"Mia ran?"
"She remembered Anna's warning about Marco."
"What does that have to do with—"
"We found this."
She handed him a folded piece of paper.
It was children's handwriting.
MR DOMINIC,
THE MAN SAID SISTER SENT HIM BUT SHE DIDN'T SAY THE SECRET WORD.
I RAN TO THE BUS.
I'M SORRY.
MIA.
Dominic stared.
"What secret word?"
Sister Teresa's mouth trembled.
"Peanut butter."
Dominic looked up.
"You have a secret word?"
"Every child here does."
He closed his eyes for one second.
"Smart girl."
"Terrified girl."
Nico approached.
"Security camera caught her boarding the Q60 on Queens Boulevard."
"Where does it go?"
"Manhattan."
Dominic's head snapped up.
"Why would she go there?"
Sister Teresa answered.
"Because yesterday you gave her your business card."
Dominic went still.
He remembered.
He had written his private number on the back.
If you ever need me.
A promise made casually.
Received literally.
"She thinks she's coming to me."
Nico was already calling people.
Dominic turned.
"Every subway entrance. Every bus stop between here and Midtown. No uniforms. They'll scare her."
Sister Teresa grabbed his sleeve.
"Dominic."
He looked down.
"She doesn't trust adults when she's frightened."
"I know."
"No. You don't."
Her eyes filled.
"She spent five years learning that adults leave."
Dominic's throat tightened.
"Then today she learns something different."
The Q60 reached Manhattan at 9:18.
Mia got off too early.
The driver had told her Fifty-Ninth Street.
She heard Fifty-First.
She stepped onto a crowded sidewalk and realized immediately that she had made a mistake.
Every building was enormous.
Every adult walked too fast.
She held Dominic's card in one hand and the photograph beneath her coat.
A man bumped into her.
She flinched.
"Sorry, kid."
Mia kept walking.
She knew Dominic's building was glass.
Unfortunately, nearly every building seemed to be glass.
At 9:36, she sat on the steps of a church and tried not to cry.
She had four dollars and thirteen cents in her pocket.
A packet of crackers.
One red mitten.
She had lost the other on the bus.
A black SUV slowed at the curb.
Mia stood.
Something inside her remembered Anna's face.
Don't go with Marco.
The back door opened.
A man stepped out.
Not Marco.
But one she had seen before.
Across the street from St. Cecilia.
Holding a phone.
Mia ran.
The man cursed.
She darted through pedestrians, crossed against traffic, heard horns explode behind her.
She reached an alley.
Dead end.
She turned.
The man entered.
"Easy."
Mia backed toward the wall.
"I'm taking you back to the home."
"What's the secret word?"
He stopped.
"What?"
"The secret word."
His expression changed.
Mia screamed.
A delivery driver at the end of the alley looked over.
The man grabbed her wrist.
Mia bit him.
Hard.
He shouted.
She twisted free.
Then a voice behind him said:
"Take your hand off her."
The man turned.
Dominic stood at the alley entrance.
No coat.
No tie.
Nico and two others behind him.
Dominic's face held nothing.
That was the frightening part.
The man raised both hands.
"This is a misunderstanding."
Dominic walked toward him.
Mia ran past the stranger and straight into Dominic.
He stopped dead.
Her arms wrapped around his waist.
For one second, Dominic looked almost confused.
Then he put both arms around her.
"I'm sorry," Mia sobbed.
"No."
"I ran away."
"No."
"I shouldn't have—"
Dominic crouched and held her shoulders.
"You did exactly right."
Her lower lip trembled.
"I lost my mitten."
Dominic stared at her.
Of all the things.
Then he pulled her against him.
"We'll buy another mitten."
Behind them, Nico had the stranger pinned against the wall.
Dominic stood, Mia still holding his hand.
"Who sent you?"
The man said nothing.
Dominic looked at Mia.
"Nico."
Nico understood.
He called over a female detective approaching from the street.
Dominic walked Mia toward the sidewalk.
He would not interrogate a man in front of a child.
He was learning.
Slowly.
Badly.
But learning.
As they reached the car, Dominic's phone rang.
The clinic.
He answered.
Listened.
Mia watched his face.
Dominic lowered the phone.
For the first time in years, his knees felt weak.
"Mia."
She looked up.
"The test?"
He nodded.
Sister Teresa had taught Mia not to hope aloud.
So she simply waited.
Dominic crouched.
His voice broke on the first word.
"You're mine."
Mia stared.
Dominic swallowed.
"The DNA says I'm your father."
Her face did not change at first.
Then her eyes filled.
"Really?"
"Really."
She looked down at their hands.
"Then why didn't you come?"
There it was.
The question he had feared since the moment he saw the photograph.
Dominic could have blamed Elena.
Blamed ignorance.
Blamed Marco.
Blamed the entire cruel architecture of his life.
Instead he said the only thing a child deserved.
"I didn't know you were there."
Mia cried silently.
Dominic pulled her into his arms.
"And now?"
Her voice was muffled against his shirt.
Dominic closed his eyes.
"Now I know."
Across the street, Marco Bellini sat behind the tinted window of another car.
He watched Dominic hold his daughter.
His driver whispered, "What now?"
Marco stared at the scene.
Then at the police car containing his failed man.
"Now?"
May you like
His smile was gone.
"Now we stop pretending Dominic Moretti is going to survive this."
