Chapter 4 - The Evaluation
The safehouse on Mott Street was less a safehouse and more an urban fortress disguised as an antique porcelain warehouse. The upper floors were piled high with crates of chipped teacups and Ming-style vases that served as acoustic baffles for the electronic surveillance array humming behind the drywall.
In the second-floor library—a room lined with heavy mahogany shelves containing books that nobody had read in fifty years—Sophie was fast asleep on a velvet divan, wrapped in a cashmere throw that Luca had fetched from the master suite upstairs.
Camille sat stiffly in a wingback chair by the cold marble fireplace, her hands clutching a cup of black coffee she hadn't touched since it was poured ten minutes ago.
Alessandro stood by the tall, iron-barred window that overlooked the brick alleyway below, watching the rain wash the grime down the glass.
"She likes to draw," Alessandro said without turning around.
"She's talented," Camille replied, her voice defensive, brittle. "She spends hours with her colored pencils. She doesn't need your approval for that."
"I didn't offer approval. I stated a fact." He turned slowly, his tall frame cutting a dark silhouette against the light of the desk lamp. "Who is funding the studio in Paris, Camille?"
She stiffened. "I sell my paintings. People buy them."
"A struggling artist in the 6th arrondissement does not afford a loft with a view of the Seine and private international schooling on the proceeds of three watercolor landscapes a month. Who is paying the bills?"
"My father's estate," she lied, her eyes darting away from his for a fraction of a second—too fast, too clean.
"Your father died bankrupt in Marseilles in 2011, leaving behind two gambling debts and a rusty fishing boat that the harbor master sank for scrap," Alessandro said smoothly, stepping out of the shadows. "Let's try again. Who is paying for the loft?"
Camille set her coffee cup down so hard the porcelain cracked against the saucer. "It doesn't matter! It's clean money—money from an account that can't be traced to you or your enemies!"
"In my world, there is no such thing as money that can't be traced. There are only people who haven't looked hard enough yet." He walked over to her chair, stopping just out of arm's reach. "Was it the Corsicans? Did you take money from the Morel family to keep her fed while I was presumed dead?"
"No!" She stood up, her small frame trembling with a fury that had been bottled up for six years. "It wasn't the Corsicans! It was a gallery owner named Julien. He's an old friend of my mother's family. He doesn't know who you are, Alessandro. He doesn't know anything about the syndicate. He just thinks I'm a tragic young widow with a talented kid!"
"A widow," Alessandro repeated, tasting the word. "You told him I was dead."
"What was I supposed to tell him? 'Oh, my daughter's father is a Sicilian warlord who lives in a bunker in Manhattan and has half the European police forces on his payroll' sheaf? Yes, Julien would have loved that."
"He will be dealt with," Alessandro said quietly.
"Dealt with?" Camille's voice rose, sharp and cracking, and she took a step toward him, her fist balling up as if she wanted to strike him. "He's been kind to us! He gave Sophie a box of pastels for her birthday! You're not going to touch him, Alessandro—"
"Anyone who has financial leverage over you is a liability to my daughter," he interrupted, his voice dropping into that flat, terrifying register that brooks no argument. "The moment Julien realizes who the girl's father is—and someone will realize, because she has my face—he will become a point of entry for every rival syndicate from Palermo to Montreal. He will be bought, or he will be broken."
"She's my daughter too!" Camille screamed, the sound echoing off the high mahogany bookshelves.
Across the room, on the velvet divan, Sophie stirred. The small dark head lifted from the pillow. Gray-blue eyes blinked sleepily against the lamplight, taking in her mother's rigid posture and Alessandro's towering, unmoving form.
"Mom?" the girl asked, her voice small and furry with sleep. "Are we going home now?"
Camille froze. The fury drained out of her in a single second, leaving her looking hollowed out, defeated by the absolute reality of the room they were standing in. She turned away from Alessandro, her breath hitching, and hurried across the carpet to kneel beside the divan.
"No, sweetheart," Camille said, smoothing the dark hair back from Sophie's forehead with a hand that shook so badly she could barely touch her. "We're just... visiting some more. Go back to sleep."
Sophie looked past her mother's shoulder at Alessandro, who hadn't moved an inch from his spot by the fireplace.
"Alessandro?" she called out softly.
"Yes, Sophie?"
"Is this your house?"
"It is."
"It has a lot of books."
"It does."
"Can I borrow one tomorrow? The ones with the red spines on the bottom shelf?"
May you like
Alessandro looked down at the child—his child, bone of his bone, blood of his blood, sitting in a fortress built on blood money and guarded by killers—and felt something shift inside his chest that had been frozen solid since the day he took his first oath as a Vitali.
"You may borrow as many as you like," he said, and for the first time in six years, the words didn't taste like ash.
