PART 2 Every afternoon at exactly 3:17, I disappeared from the twentieth floor of Calvetti Tower

PART 2 Every afternoon at exactly 3:17, I disappeared from the twentieth floor of Calvetti Tower

PART 2

Dante did not move.

For one long, suspended second, no one in the basement seemed to breathe.

Tommy stood in the wash of cold light from the stairwell, one hand clutching the hem of his faded blue sweater. His small face was tilted upward, solemn and uncertain, as though he had asked a question he had been carrying for years without knowing the words for it.

“Daddy?” he said again.

One of Dante’s men shifted behind him.

Dante lifted a hand without looking back.

The gesture was slight, but all four men stopped instantly.

His eyes remained on Tommy.

“No,” I said, too quickly.

The word cracked through the basement.

Tommy flinched.

I hurried to him and lowered myself to my knees, wrapping an arm around his narrow shoulders.

“No, sweetheart,” I said more gently. “That isn’t your father.”

Tommy looked at me, then at the photograph on the wall.

In the picture, Ruth Foster stood beneath a summer sky, one arm around Marcus and the other resting on Jonah’s shoulder. Isabelle and Sophie grinned in matching yellow dresses. Lily held a red balloon. Tommy, barely more than a baby, sat on Ruth’s hip.

And beside them stood Dante.

He was younger in the photograph. His hair was longer, his expression less guarded. He wore no suit, only a dark sweater with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. One hand rested behind Ruth’s back.

Tommy pointed at him.

“You,” he whispered.

Dante’s face had become unreadable again, but not before I saw something pass through it.

Recognition.

Not of Tommy.

Of the room.

Of Ruth.

Of a life he had known before Calvetti Tower, before the suits and the armed men and the city that lowered its voice around his name.

“Everyone upstairs,” I said.

Marcus stepped in front of the younger children.

“No.”

His voice was quiet, but steady.

“Marcus,” I warned.

“We’re not leaving you down here with them.”

Dante glanced at the metal pipe in Marcus’s hand.

He did not smile. He did not threaten him.

Instead, he slowly reached beneath his jacket, removed the pistol from his shoulder holster, and handed it to the man behind him.

Then he took off his coat.

“Stay on the stairs,” he told his men.

“Mr. Calvetti—”

“That was not a suggestion.”

The men retreated several steps.

Dante came farther into the basement alone.

Without his coat and weapon, he should have looked less dangerous.

He did not.

He looked more real.

That frightened me more.

He stopped several feet from us and turned toward the photograph.

“Ruth Foster,” he said.

It was not a question.

“You knew her,” I replied.

His jaw tightened.

“She raised me.”

Behind me, Lily made a small sound.

Marcus lowered the pipe by an inch.

I stood slowly, keeping myself between Dante and the children.

“You told no one,” I said.

“There are many things I tell no one.”

“That does not answer the question.”

His gaze shifted to mine.

“You have been lying to me for six months.”

“So have you.”

For the first time since entering the basement, something almost familiar appeared in his expression. It was the look he gave me in the office whenever I corrected one of his lawyers or refused to be intimidated by a senator.

But here, surrounded by patched blankets and medicine bottles, it held no amusement.

Only exhaustion.

“Send the children upstairs,” he said.

“No.”

“Olivia.”

Hearing my full name in his voice made my spine stiffen.

Nobody at the tower called me Olivia. On my forged employment papers, I was Olivia Hart. To the children, I was Liv. Ruth had called me Livia when she wanted me to listen and Olive when she wanted to make me laugh.

Dante had never used any name for me except Miss Hart.

Until now.

“You do not give orders here,” I said.

His eyes moved around the basement.

The leaking pipes.

The old heater.

The ceiling stained dark from water damage.

The wire running from a portable battery to the lanterns.

One corner of his mouth tightened, not in disgust but in restrained alarm.

“Apparently no one gives sensible orders here.”

Marcus lifted the pipe again.

“Don’t talk about our home like that.”

Dante looked at him.

“What is your name?”

“You don’t need to know.”

“I already do.”

Marcus went still.

Dante looked toward each child in turn.

“Marcus. Jonah. Isabelle. Sophie. Lily. Thomas.”

The silence that followed was heavier than the first.

I stepped forward.

“How do you know their names?”

Dante turned back to the photograph.

“Ruth sent me letters.”

My anger arrived so suddenly that my hands began to shake.

“Letters?”

“For years.”

“And you never came?”

His face hardened.

“I did not receive them.”

“That is convenient.”

“It is the truth.”

“Ruth waited for you.”

“I did not know.”

“She believed you would come eventually.”

“I did not know.”

His voice rose for the first time, not loudly, but with enough force to echo against the low ceiling.

Tommy startled.

Dante immediately stopped.

He looked at the child, and some of the tension left his shoulders.

When he spoke again, his voice was controlled.

“I did not know.”

There was no performance in the words.

I had spent six months studying Dante Calvetti closely enough to recognize when he was manipulating a room. At the tower, he could make men doubt their own memories. He could silence arguments with a glance and negotiate without revealing the smallest fracture in his composure.

But this was not control.

This was the effort to maintain it.

“Where are the letters?” I asked.

“I never saw them.”

“You just said she sent them.”

“I found out after she died.”

The answer made no sense.

Marcus looked between us.

“How?”

Dante did not take his eyes off me.

“My mother kept them.”

The basement seemed to contract.

I knew almost nothing about Dante’s family. Chicago knew the Calvetti name, but the stories contradicted one another. His father had built the empire. His mother had disappeared. His brothers had died young, or moved overseas, or never existed, depending on who was telling the story.

At the tower, personal questions were not asked.

Not by employees who wanted to remain employed.

“Why would your mother hide letters from Ruth?” I asked.

Dante’s expression became distant.

“Because Ruth knew where I came from.”

Lily slipped her hand into mine.

I held it tightly.

“You were a foster child,” I said.

A faint muscle moved in Dante’s cheek.

“For four years.”

The children stared at him.

Even Marcus lowered the pipe.

Dante walked to the photograph, but stopped before touching it.

“I was nine when Ruth took me in. I stayed until I was thirteen.”

“What happened when you were thirteen?” Jonah asked.

It was the first time he had spoken since Dante entered.

Jonah rarely asked direct questions. He collected answers by listening from doorways and watching faces when people thought no one was paying attention.

Dante glanced at him.

“My father found me.”

“You didn’t know him before?” Sophie asked.

“No.”

“Did Ruth know?” Isabelle added.

“Yes.”

“Did she make you go?”

“No.”

The final answer came without hesitation.

Something changed in Marcus’s face.

He knew what it was to be taken from somewhere, even somewhere imperfect, without being asked.

Dante looked again at the photograph.

“I thought Ruth abandoned me,” he said. “My father told me she had accepted money to surrender custody.”

“She would never do that,” I said.

“I know that now.”

“How long have you known?”

“Three years.”

My anger sharpened.

“You knew Ruth had been trying to contact you for three years, and you still never came?”

Dante turned.

“She was already dead by the time I found the letters.”

I opened my mouth, but no answer came.

He continued.

“My mother died three years ago. Her private files were released to me afterward. I found twelve letters from Ruth, all unopened.”

“Did they mention the children?”

“Some of them.”

“Then why didn’t you look for them?”

His silence was answer enough.

He had looked.

I felt it before he spoke.

“I did.”

Marcus’s grip tightened around the pipe.

“You found us?”

“No.”

Dante looked at me.

“I found Olivia Hart.”

The basement became very quiet.

My pulse thudded against my throat.

Dante’s eyes held mine.

“Or rather, I found that Olivia Hart did not exist before the age of twenty-two.”

Lily pressed closer to me.

I forced myself not to look toward the locked metal cabinet behind the folding screen.

“What else did you find?” I asked.

“A college record that led nowhere. References belonging to real people who had never employed you. A social security number registered to a woman who died in Vermont eight years ago.”

Marcus stared at me.

“You said you went to college.”

“I did.”

“Under what name?” Dante asked.

I ignored him.

Marcus’s voice dropped.

“What name, Liv?”

There are lies told to deceive and lies told to protect.

The trouble is that the person hearing them rarely cares about the difference.

“My name is Olivia,” I said.

“That isn’t what he asked,” Marcus replied.

Dante watched us both.

I wanted to hate him for exposing me in front of them, but the truth was worse.

He had not done it cruelly.

He had done it because he was waiting for me to decide whether I would lie again.

“My last name is not Hart,” I said.

Sophie frowned.

“What is it?”

I looked at Dante.

His face gave nothing away.

“Vale.”

The reaction was immediate.

One of the men on the stairs inhaled sharply.

Dante’s gaze turned cold.

“Leave,” he said.

No one moved.

“All of you.”

His men withdrew up the stairs. The door shut above them.

The children watched Dante with new fear.

They did not understand the name.

But they understood his reaction to it.

“What does that mean?” Marcus asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

Dante’s expression changed.

“Do not lie to him again.”

My anger flashed.

“You followed me across the city, entered our home with armed men, and now you think you have the right to instruct me?”

“No,” he said. “But he has the right to know when a name puts him in danger.”

The words landed harder because they were true.

Marcus stepped closer.

“Who are you?”

I had known this moment would come.

I had imagined it in dozens of ways. A police officer at the door. A social worker asking for identification. One of Dante’s investigators finding an old photograph. A stranger recognizing me on the train.

Never here.

Never with six children looking at me as though the floor beneath them had shifted.

“My father was Daniel Vale,” I said.

Jonah’s eyes widened.

Even children who had grown up in shelters knew the name.

Daniel Vale had been a federal prosecutor.

On television, he had been handsome, eloquent, and relentless. He had promised to clean organized crime out of Chicago. He had investigated judges, police commanders, union leaders, and men whose names were spoken only behind closed doors.

Then his career collapsed.

Evidence disappeared. Witnesses changed their stories. Money was found in accounts linked to him. He was accused of taking bribes from the very organizations he claimed to be pursuing.

Before he could stand trial, he vanished.

Some said he had fled the country.

Some said he had been killed.

I knew only that one morning he had kissed my forehead, told me to stay home from school, and never returned.

“You’re his daughter,” Marcus said.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because the name is dangerous.”

“To who?”

I looked at Dante.

His eyes had not left my face.

“To everyone.”

Dante took one slow step toward me.

“Did Ruth know?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“She knew my mother.”

The last word came out thinner than I intended.

My mother, Elaine Vale, had spent two years defending my father publicly and the next ten refusing to speak his name. She moved us from apartment to apartment, city to city. She taught me to check reflections in windows and never use the same route twice.

When she became ill, Ruth came.

Not a relative.

Not a friend I remembered.

Just a quiet woman with gray hair, practical shoes, and a worn leather handbag.

She sat beside my mother’s hospital bed for three days.

After the funeral, she gave me a key to this basement.

“I met Ruth when I was twenty,” I said. “She had been helping my mother.”

“With what?” Dante asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You never asked?”

“I asked constantly. Ruth never answered directly.”

That was not entirely true.

Ruth had answered once.

Your father made a mistake, Olivia. Then he learned something that made the mistake look small.

At the time, I had thought it was grief talking.

Now Dante’s face told me otherwise.

“What did she leave you?” he asked.

“The building.”

“This building is owned by a shell company.”

“I know.”

“Which shell company?”

“I don’t know.”

His gaze narrowed.

“You have lived here for eighteen months.”

“I do not live here.”

“Where do you sleep?”

“That is not your concern.”

“It became my concern when I discovered six children living beneath a condemned property with a woman using a dead person’s identity.”

Marcus moved between us.

“Stop talking to her like she’s done something wrong.”

Dante looked at him.

“She forged legal documents.”

“She feeds us.”

“She brought six minors into a building with faulty wiring.”

“She kept us together.”

Dante’s mouth closed.

Marcus’s voice shook, but he continued.

“You know what happens when people like you call the city? They separate us. They send Lily somewhere because she’s little and people want little kids. The twins go together if they’re lucky. Jonah goes to a group home. Tommy stops talking completely. And I age out in four years.”

The pipe slipped from his hand and struck the floor.

The sound echoed.

“You think this place is bad?” Marcus asked. “You should see the places that are legal.”

No one spoke.

Dante looked around the basement again.

This time, he did not see only the broken ceiling and unsafe heater.

He saw six beds placed close enough that no child had to sleep alone.

He saw schoolbooks stacked beside battery lanterns.

He saw labeled medicine containers.

He saw drawings taped over cracks in the walls.

One of Lily’s pictures showed seven people holding hands beneath an orange sun.

I was in the center.

“Why six?” Dante asked softly.

“What?”

“Why these six children?”

“They were Ruth’s.”

His face hardened.

“Ruth had no legal children.”

“Not legally.”

I walked to the old table and picked up a clothbound notebook.

The cover was frayed at the edges. Ruth had carried it everywhere. After her death, I found it beneath her mattress with the photograph and a letter addressed to me.

Inside were names.

Dozens of them.

Children moved through temporary homes. Mothers hiding from violent husbands. Teenagers sleeping in train stations. Former foster children who needed job references. Ruth had kept track of every person she helped.

Most entries ended with an address or a note.

Safe with aunt.

Accepted to nursing school.

Returned home.

Do not contact until April.

The final six entries had no ending.

Marcus Reed.

Jonah Bell.

Isabelle and Sophie Laurent.

Lily Foster.

Thomas Gray.

“These six were still with her when she died,” I said. “There was no one else.”

“Lily has Ruth’s name,” Dante said.

“She took it unofficially.”

“Was Ruth her grandmother?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

“Because Lily chose it.”

Lily looked up at him.

“She said family names didn’t always come from blood.”

Dante’s expression softened so slightly that I might have imagined it.

“She used to say that,” he murmured.

Lily studied him.

“Did she love you?”

The question stunned him.

Dante had faced prosecutors, rival families, and public investigations without hesitation. Yet a seven-year-old girl asking whether a dead woman had loved him seemed to leave him defenseless.

“Yes,” he said at last.

“How do you know?”

He looked at the photograph.

“Because she kept writing.”

Lily considered this.

Then she nodded, apparently satisfied.

Tommy had wandered closer to Dante. He stared at the man’s polished shoes.

“Why did I call you Daddy?” he asked.

Dante crouched.

The movement startled everyone, including me.

At the tower, I had never seen Dante lower himself physically for anyone. People rose when he entered rooms. Chairs were pulled out for him. Men leaned forward to hear him speak.

But in the basement, he crouched until his eyes were level with Tommy’s.

“Because you saw me in the picture,” he said.

Tommy shook his head.

“I dreamed you.”

A chill moved across my skin.

“What dream?” I asked.

Tommy looked embarrassed.

“The car.”

Dante became very still.

“What car?”

“Black car. Rain. You said stay down.”

I stared at Tommy.

He had been two years old when Ruth took him in. He remembered almost nothing from before that. Or so I had believed.

Dante’s voice was careful.

“Was anyone else in the car?”

Tommy nodded.

“A lady.”

“What did she look like?”

“Pretty.”

Sophie rolled her eyes.

“That doesn’t help.”

Tommy frowned in concentration.

“Red scarf.”

The blood drained from Dante’s face for the second time that night.

He stood abruptly.

“Where did Ruth find him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have her records.”

“Only what she left in the notebook.”

“Show me.”

I hesitated.

The notebook was the closest thing I had to Ruth’s voice. I had protected it from police, social workers, landlords, and everyone else who might turn her compassion into evidence of wrongdoing.

But Dante was no longer looking at the children.

He was looking at a memory.

I opened to Tommy’s page.

The entry was shorter than the others.

Thomas Gray. Approximately two years old. Brought by E. Injured, frightened, no documents. Keep hidden until further notice. Do not trust C.

Beneath that, in different ink, Ruth had written:

E never returned.

Dante read the lines twice.

“Who is E?” I asked.

He did not answer.

“Dante.”

The use of his first name made him look at me.

I had never called him that before.

Not even silently.

His gaze lingered on my face, as if the change mattered.

“Dante,” I repeated. “Who is E?”

He looked toward Tommy.

“My sister.”

The answer rippled through the room.

I had never heard of a Calvetti sister.

Dante walked away from us and stood beneath the photograph.

“Her name was Elena,” he said. “She was three years younger than me.”

“What happened to her?” Marcus asked.

Dante’s shoulders tightened.

“She disappeared seven years ago.”

“How old is Tommy?” I asked.

“Five,” Lily said.

I knew his age. We all did.

But Dante’s sister had disappeared two years before Ruth received Tommy.

The timing did not fit.

Unless Elena had been alive after everyone believed her gone.

“Did Elena wear a red scarf?” I asked.

Dante closed his eyes briefly.

“Yes.”

Tommy stepped closer.

“She sang.”

Dante turned.

“What?”

“The lady. In the car. She sang when it rained.”

His voice became smaller.

“I don’t remember the words.”

Dante crossed the room in two strides and stopped himself before reaching for the child.

“What tune?”

Tommy hummed.

Only four notes.

Simple.

Soft.

Dante’s face changed completely.

He sat down on the edge of a chair as though his legs had failed him.

I had seen that tune written in Ruth’s notebook.

Not as music.

As words.

Sleep now, little sparrow. Night will carry you home.

Ruth sang it to Lily when she had nightmares.

She sang it to all of them.

“She taught Ruth that song,” Dante said.

“Who did?”

“Elena.”

The children fell silent.

I sat across from him.

“Are you saying Tommy belongs to your sister?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it is possible.”

His eyes moved to Tommy’s face.

In the dim lantern light, the resemblance was not obvious. Tommy had softer features, brown eyes rather than gray, and a small dimple in his chin.

But there was something in the way he frowned when concentrating.

Something in the curve of one eyebrow.

Dante saw it too.

“We need a test,” he said.

“No.”

His gaze snapped to mine.

“You cannot decide that alone.”

“And neither can you.”

“If he is my nephew—”

“He is still Tommy. He does not become property because of a blood test.”

“I did not say that.”

“You did not need to.”

His expression went cold.

“You think you understand me.”

“I understand what men in your position do when they discover something they believe belongs to them.”

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Then Lily tugged on my sleeve.

“Can we turn the lights back on?”

The ordinary question broke the tension.

I looked around.

The lanterns had gone dark when Dante’s men entered, but I had assumed someone had switched off the battery.

Jonah was already examining the power unit.

“It’s dead,” he said.

“It was charged this morning,” I replied.

Dante pulled out his phone.

“No signal.”

“There’s never much signal down here.”

“Not weak,” he said. “None.”

Marcus looked toward the ceiling.

“The building blocks it.”

Dante walked to the stairs and opened the basement door.

One of his men stood halfway up.

“Phones?” Dante asked.

The man checked.

“No service.”

Dante’s expression sharpened.

“Did the power fail when you entered?”

“No. The lanterns went out before we touched the door.”

I looked at the battery pack.

A thin wire trailed behind it and disappeared through a crack in the wall.

Jonah followed it with his fingers.

“This isn’t ours.”

He tugged gently.

The wire came loose.

At the end was a small black device no larger than a matchbox.

Dante took it from him.

“What is that?” I asked.

“A signal interrupter.”

My stomach dropped.

“Someone put it here?”

“Yes.”

“Your men?”

“No.”

He examined the device, then looked toward the stairs.

“How long have you been followed?”

“I haven’t.”

“You did not know I was following you.”

I had no answer.

Dante turned to his men.

“Search the building. Quietly.”

Two men disappeared upstairs.

He looked back at me.

“Pack what the children need.”

“We are not going anywhere with you.”

“This building has been compromised.”

“By whom?”

“I do not know.”

“Then how do I know you didn’t arrange this?”

His stare hardened.

“You don’t.”

The honesty stopped me.

He took a breath.

“But if I wanted to take you or the children, Olivia, I would not need a device hidden inside your wall.”

Marcus glanced at me.

The worst part was that Dante was right.

He could have exposed us months ago. He could have called the city, the police, or one of the judges who owed him favors.

He had done none of those things.

Not yet.

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“My family owns a house north of the city.”

“No.”

“It has heat, security, and enough bedrooms.”

“No.”

“You prefer this basement?”

“I prefer not placing six children in the center of your empire.”

His eyes flashed.

“They are already in the center of it.”

The words settled over us.

Tommy’s possible connection to Elena.

Ruth’s history with Dante.

My father’s name.

The signal device in the wall.

Whatever this was, it had begun long before I entered Calvetti Tower.

A sound came from upstairs.

Three soft knocks.

Then two.

Dante’s men returned.

One leaned close and spoke quietly.

“Rear door was open. Fresh mud in the corridor. Someone left recently.”

Dante glanced at the children.

“Any sign of entry?”

“Office upstairs was searched. Nothing taken that we can see.”

I looked at Marcus.

His face had gone pale.

“The cabinet,” he said.

I turned.

The metal cabinet behind the folding screen.

I ran to it.

The lock hung open.

Not broken.

Opened.

Inside were blankets, school records, emergency cash, Ruth’s documents, and the envelopes she had left me.

Everything appeared untouched.

Then I saw the gap on the bottom shelf.

A small green file box was missing.

“No,” I whispered.

“What was in it?” Dante asked.

I knelt and searched behind the remaining folders, already knowing it was gone.

“Ruth’s letters.”

Dante came closer.

“Which letters?”

“The ones addressed to my father.”

His expression changed.

“You had letters from Ruth to Daniel Vale?”

“Copies. She said the originals had been sent years ago.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did they say?”

“I never opened them.”

Dante stared at me.

“You had letters connecting Ruth Foster to one of the most important federal investigations in this city, and you never read them?”

“They were sealed.”

“That is not an explanation.”

“She asked me not to open them unless someone came looking for Tommy.”

Every eye in the basement shifted toward the little boy.

Tommy climbed onto Lily’s bed and pulled a blanket around himself.

Dante’s voice became very quiet.

“Someone came looking.”

I closed my eyes.

Ruth had known this day would come.

Perhaps that was why she had left the photograph where the children could see it. Why she had kept Dante in their lives as an image even when he was absent in every other way.

Maybe she had been waiting for him.

Maybe she had been hiding from him.

I no longer knew which possibility frightened me more.

“Was there anything else in the box?” Dante asked.

“A key.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked toward the stairwell.

“We leave now.”

This time, I did not refuse immediately.

The heater clicked, shuddered, and went silent.

Somewhere above us, metal scraped across concrete.

The children drew closer together.

Dante reached into his pocket and removed a second phone.

He handed it to me.

“No signal blocker will affect this one once we are outside.”

“What is it?”

“A secure line.”

“To whom?”

“To me.”

I almost laughed, but nothing about the moment was funny.

“You want me to carry a phone that calls only you?”

“It also has an emergency channel.”

“How reassuring.”

“Olivia.”

The quiet warning in his voice should have irritated me.

Instead, it steadied me.

Because beneath the authority was something else.

Fear.

Not for his reputation.

Not for his secrets.

For the children.

I slipped the phone into my bag.

“We go together,” I said. “Nobody separates them. Nobody questions them without me present. No lawyers, no doctors, no blood tests unless Tommy understands what is happening and agrees.”

“He is five.”

“Then we wait until he is ready.”

Dante’s jaw tightened.

I held his gaze.

“No one owns him.”

After a long pause, Dante nodded.

“No one separates them.”

Marcus stepped forward.

“And Liv comes with us.”

Dante looked at me.

“That was never in question.”

The words should not have affected me.

They did.

We packed quickly.

The children had practiced leaving before. Ruth had taught them. I had continued the routine, though I had hoped we would never need it.

Each child had one bag.

Marcus carried documents and cash.

Jonah carried batteries and the notebook.

The twins packed food.

Lily packed Tommy’s medicine.

Tommy packed a wooden bird Ruth had carved for him.

Within ten minutes, the basement looked almost empty.

A place could hold eighteen months of laughter, fever, arguments, birthdays, and bedtime stories, yet become anonymous with a few bags removed.

I stood at the foot of the stairs, unable to move.

This had been unsafe.

Illegal.

Temporary.

But it had been ours.

Dante stopped beside me.

“We can return.”

“You cannot promise that.”

“No.”

Again, the honesty.

I looked at him.

“You are not what Ruth said you were.”

His expression became guarded.

“What did she say?”

“That you were a boy who mistook power for safety.”

His eyes moved toward the photograph.

“She knew me well.”

“She also believed you could still choose differently.”

“And do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Believe that.”

The question was not asked by Chicago’s most feared Mafia boss.

It was asked by the boy Ruth had once raised.

I looked toward the children waiting on the stairs.

“I have not decided.”

Something unreadable passed through his face.

“Fair enough.”

We reached the street through the rear exit.

Rain had begun to fall.

Dante’s men spread out, watching rooftops and alleys. Two black vehicles waited at the curb, engines running.

I put the children in the first one.

Dante opened the rear door for me.

Before I climbed inside, I looked back at the condemned building.

A figure stood in a third-floor window.

A woman.

She wore a red scarf.

My breath caught.

“Dante.”

He turned.

The window was empty.

“What?”

“There was someone upstairs.”

His men moved immediately.

Two entered the building. Another circled toward the alley.

Dante stayed beside me.

“What did you see?”

“A woman.”

“What did she look like?”

“I couldn’t see her face.”

“What was she wearing?”

I hesitated.

“A red scarf.”

Dante went still.

Rain collected in his hair and darkened his shirt.

One of his men returned two minutes later.

“Building is empty.”

“Roof?”

“Clear.”

“Adjacent properties?”

“We’re checking.”

Dante looked at the third-floor window.

No light shone behind the cracked glass.

No curtain moved.

Nothing suggested anyone had ever stood there.

“Get in the car,” he said.

For once, I obeyed.

The drive north took nearly an hour.

The children fell asleep in stages.

Tommy first, curled against Lily.

Then the twins, shoulder to shoulder.

Jonah stayed awake until we crossed the river.

Marcus did not sleep at all.

Dante sat across from us in the rear-facing seat, silent and watchful.

City lights moved across his face.

At the tower, he belonged to glass, steel, and polished black stone. In the dim vehicle, with a sleeping child’s shoe resting against his knee, he seemed like someone wearing the life of another man.

Marcus watched him.

“Did you know Liv was Daniel Vale’s daughter when you hired her?”

“No.”

“When did you find out?”

“Three weeks ago.”

I looked up.

“You knew for three weeks?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you confront me?”

“I wanted to see where you went at 3:17.”

“You could have followed me sooner.”

“I could have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

His gaze held mine.

“Because you were the first person in that building who behaved as though my secrets were less interesting than your own.”

I did not know what to say to that.

Marcus did.

“That’s a terrible reason.”

Dante almost smiled.

“It is.”

The house appeared behind iron gates and a long line of trees.

It was not a mansion in the way I expected. It was large, but old, built of pale stone softened by ivy. Warm light glowed in the windows. A covered porch wrapped around one side.

It looked like a home.

That was more unsettling than armed guards would have been.

A woman in her sixties opened the front door before we reached it.

She had silver hair, sharp blue eyes, and wore a wool cardigan over a dark dress.

When she saw Dante, relief crossed her face.

Then she noticed the children.

The relief vanished.

Her gaze landed on Tommy.

A glass slipped from her hand and shattered on the floor.

“Santa Maria,” she whispered.

Dante stopped.

“Mrs. Bellini?”

The woman pressed one hand to her mouth.

Tommy woke in my arms and blinked at her.

She came down the steps slowly.

“Where did you find him?”

Dante’s voice hardened.

“You know him?”

Mrs. Bellini stared at Tommy as if she were seeing a ghost.

“No,” she said.

But tears filled her eyes.

“You are lying,” Dante replied.

She looked at him.

Then at me.

Then at the children clustered beneath the porch light.

“I promised Elena,” she whispered.

Dante’s face emptied of all expression.

“Promised her what?”

Mrs. Bellini began to cry.

“That I would never tell you the child survived.”

Behind us, the gates closed with a heavy metallic sound.

Dante did not move.

“Tommy is Elena’s son?”

Mrs. Bellini shook her head.

“No.”

She looked directly at me.

“He is Daniel Vale’s.”