Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH
Roman remembered the blood.
He remembered the man, too.
Eddie Marconi.
Thirty-two years old. Two children. A gambling habit he had hidden until he started taking money from a retirement fund Roman maintained for the widows of dead men.
Roman had found him in the kitchen of a warehouse office.
He had not killed Eddie.
He had broken three of his fingers and put his face through a cabinet door.
Then Roman had gone home.
He remembered standing at the kitchen sink, washing another man’s blood from his hands while Norah stood somewhere behind him.
He had never noticed how pale she looked.
“I remember,” Roman said quietly.
Norah’s eyes hardened.
“That’s the problem. You remember the man. You remember what he stole. You remember exactly how you punished him.”
Her hand moved protectively over the baby sleeping against her chest.
“You don’t remember me standing ten feet away.”
Roman said nothing.
For once, there was nothing useful to say.
The aircraft door closed behind the final passenger.
A flight attendant began securing the cabin.
Outside the window, snow rushed sideways beneath the airport lights.
Norah looked down at the little boy on her lap.
“I found out I was pregnant that night.”
Roman’s throat tightened.
“The next morning, I bought three more tests because I thought the first one had to be wrong.”
A sad laugh escaped her.
“All three were positive.”
Roman stared at her.
“You knew for one day?”
“Less.”
“And then you left.”
“No.”
Norah finally looked at him.
“Then I went to a doctor.”
Roman stopped moving.
“I was almost ten weeks along. I’d been tired. Sick in the mornings. I thought it was stress.”
Her thumb brushed the yellow blanket.
“The ultrasound showed two heartbeats.”
Roman’s gaze dropped to the children.
Two heartbeats.
While he had been threatening men over stolen money.
While he had been ordering shipments moved and guns collected and names removed from payrolls.
His children had already existed.
“Who knew?”
“My doctor.”
“Who else?”
Norah hesitated.
Roman saw it.
“Norah.”
“Your mother.”
That hit harder than he expected.
“Elena?”
“I called her from outside the clinic.”
“Why her?”
“Because my own mother had been dead four years, Roman.”
His jaw tightened.
He had known that.
He had simply forgotten, for one selfish second, how alone Norah had been.
“She cried when I told her,” Norah continued. “She told me to go home, lock the door, and wait for her.”
Roman leaned slightly closer.
“And?”
“She never came.”
The captain announced a delay while the aircraft waited for deicing.
Nobody around them paid attention.
Roman could hear only Norah.
“I drove home alone. When I came out of the pharmacy near our building, there was something beneath my windshield wiper.”
She reached toward the diaper bag at her feet.
Roman tensed.
Norah noticed.
“It’s paper, Roman. Not a gun.”
“I know.”
“No. You expected a gun.”
She unzipped an inner pocket.
Her fingers emerged holding a photograph.
Not a phone photograph.
An actual printed image.
The edges had been softened by time.
Norah handed it to him.
Roman looked down.
His stomach turned cold.
It showed Norah exiting St. Vincent’s Medical Center.
Her hair was loose.
One hand held her purse.
The other held a white envelope against her chest.
The photograph had been taken from across the street.
She had no idea anyone was watching.
Roman turned it over.
Four sentences had been written in black ink.
HE WILL CHOOSE THE FAMILY.
THE CHILDREN WILL BECOME LEVERAGE.
LEAVE BEFORE HE KNOWS.
ST. AGNES. NINE O’CLOCK.
Roman read it again.
Then a third time.
“I didn’t write this.”
“I know that now.”
His eyes snapped toward her.
“But you didn’t know then.”
“No.”
Norah swallowed.
“I thought one of your people had written it.”
“Why would one of my people warn you about me?”
“Because your people were afraid of you.”
That answer landed cleanly.
Roman stared at the handwriting.
It was familiar.
Not enough to name.
Enough to disturb him.
“What happened at St. Agnes?”
Norah looked toward the window.
The aircraft began moving slowly away from the gate.
“I went.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
His expression darkened.
“I was scared.”
“You were carrying my children and walked into a church alone after receiving a surveillance photograph?”
“You keep saying that like I had good choices.”
Roman forced himself to remain quiet.
She was right.
“At nine o’clock,” Norah continued, “someone was waiting in the back pew.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t tell me who had taken the photograph.”
“Norah.”
“He said there was a leak inside your organization. He said people were already talking about what would happen someday if you had an heir.”
Roman’s hand closed around the photograph.
“What man?”
“He told me that if you learned I was pregnant, you would put armed men around me. That those armed men would make it impossible to disappear. And that sooner or later somebody would use the babies to control you.”
“Who?”
Norah reached into the diaper bag again.
This time she removed a gold pocket watch.
Roman stopped breathing.
The heavy case was scratched around the edges. A narrow chain had been wound carefully around it.
His father had carried that watch for twenty-nine years.
Roman remembered it sitting on a hospital tray the night Giuseppe Moretti died.
Roman had given it to one person afterward.
His uncle.
Matteo.
“He put that watch in my hand,” Norah said. “He told me it proved he wasn’t some stranger trying to hurt me.”
Roman opened the watch.
The tiny second hand still moved.
Matteo had kept the mechanism maintained.
Of course he had.
“What exactly did he say?”
“That I had one chance to give my children a life outside yours.”
Roman lifted his eyes.
“You trusted him?”
“I trusted the man your father trusted enough to raise you after he died.”
Something ugly moved through Roman’s chest.
Matteo Moretti had taught Roman to drive.
Taught him to shoot.
Sat beside him at his father’s funeral.
He had been the closest thing Roman possessed to a second father.
Roman looked at the photograph again.
A new possibility formed.
One he hated.
Months before Norah disappeared, Roman had quietly assigned security to follow her whenever he could not be with her.
Not because he suspected her.
Because a rival had photographed Roman leaving their apartment.
Roman had never told Norah.
He had called it protection.
Now it looked like something else.
“I had you followed.”
Norah’s eyes widened.
“What?”
“Not that day specifically. For months.”
Her face changed.
Roman recognized the expression.
Betrayal.
“You had men following me?”
“To protect you.”
“You didn’t think I deserved to know?”
“I thought knowing would frighten you.”
Norah laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“So instead you secretly had men photograph me.”
“I never received that photograph.”
“But someone did.”
“Yes.”
Roman looked again at the angle.
The distance.
The clean telephoto compression.
Professional work.
His work.
His system.
His mistake.
Matteo could have accessed security reports.
Matteo could have known.
But only if someone had shown him.
The plane stopped near the deicing line.
The little boy in Norah’s lap stirred.
His face tightened.
A soft cry escaped him.
Norah immediately shifted him against her shoulder.
Roman watched with an ache he had no name for.
“What’s his name?”
Norah hesitated.
“Luca.”
Roman froze.
His younger brother had been named Luca.
He had died at seventeen, long before Norah entered Roman’s life.
A drunk driver.
One tragedy in the Moretti family that had nothing to do with bullets.
Roman looked away.
“And her?”
“Rose.”
“Your mother.”
“Yes.”
His son began crying harder as the engines changed pitch.
Norah tried to adjust both babies at once.
Roman extended his hands.
She pulled back instinctively.
“Norah.”
“No.”
“You can’t hold both safely during takeoff.”
“I’ve managed for three months.”
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
The words surprised them both.
For several seconds, they stared at each other.
Then slowly, reluctantly, Norah placed Luca into Roman’s arms.
Roman had held guns worth more than some houses.
Men had trusted him with millions of dollars.
He had once walked calmly through automatic gunfire.
Nothing had frightened him as much as the warm seven-pound child settling against his chest.
Luca opened dark eyes.
Roman forgot how to breathe.
“Support his head,” Norah whispered.
“I know.”
“You’re not doing it.”
Roman adjusted immediately.
Norah almost smiled.
Almost.
The baby quieted.
Roman looked down at his son.
Then Norah spoke.
“There’s something else.”
Roman’s eyes lifted.
“The night I disappeared, Matteo didn’t take me out of Chicago.”
Roman’s voice became very still.
“Who did?”
May you like
Norah held his gaze.
“Your mother drove the car.”
