Chapter 1 - The Photograph on the Wet Tiles
The wallet hit the tile with a sound like a bone breaking.
Dante Moretti did not move at first.
He stood at the counter of Bellucci’s Market with one hand halfway inside his dark wool coat, the other resting beside a bottle of water he had no real reason to buy. Outside, November rain hammered the windows hard enough to turn the street beyond them into a watercolor of headlights and gray pavement.
Three men stood several feet behind him. They wore black. They said nothing. They rarely had to. Most people in Chicago knew enough about Dante Moretti to understand that silence was the safest response when he entered a room.
At thirty-five, Dante controlled companies whose names appeared on office towers, shipping yards, luxury hotels, and construction sites across the city. There were also businesses that did not appear on public directories, arrangements never written on paper, and favors powerful men pretended they had never requested.
People called him many things. Mr. Moretti in public. Boss behind closed doors. Monster when they were certain he could not hear them.
But five years earlier, one woman had called him Dante as if he had been nothing more than a man.
That woman was the reason he froze when his wallet fell open. The old photograph slid halfway from its plastic sleeve.
He had carried it for five years without looking at it. That was the lie he told himself. In truth, there were nights when he removed it after midnight, sat alone in his study, and stared at the woman in the photograph until memory became too painful to tolerate.
Elena. Long dark hair. Brown eyes. A smile that made him remember what his life had felt like before loyalty became more important than happiness.
Small footsteps interrupted him. A little girl in a pale yellow dress and red raincoat hurried from the end of the checkout aisle. She could not have been older than five. Her shoes squeaked against the wet floor.
Before Dante could bend down, she crouched beside the wallet.
“Careful,” he said automatically.
She looked up. For one strange second, Dante forgot what he had been about to say. There was something familiar about her eyes.
The girl picked up the photograph. Then she stopped. Completely. She held the photograph close, her small fingers tightening around the edges.
Then she looked up at him. “That’s my mama.”
Dante’s body went cold. “What?”
The girl pointed at Elena. “That’s my mama.”
Dante slowly lowered himself onto one knee until he was level with the child. “What is your mama’s name?”
“Elena.”
“She has a little scar here,” the girl added, touching the inside of her left wrist.
Dante’s lungs stopped working. The pale line from his father’s broken kitchen glass five years ago flashed before his eyes.
“What is your name?”
“Lily.”
“Where is your mother?”
“Home. Above the flower shop. She’s sick. She was sleeping, but she wouldn’t wake up when I called her.”
Dante stood immediately. He took Lily's warm, tiny hand into his own. Moments later, climbing the narrow wooden stairs above the flower shop, Dante found Elena unconscious on the bedroom floor, burning with fever.
When Elena stirred and opened her eyes to see Dante standing in her doorway holding Lily, terror flooded her face.
“Please,” Elena whispered. “Please don’t take her.”
Dante asked the question that would divide his life into everything before it and everything after.
May you like
“Is Lily my daughter?”
Elena did not answer. She did not need to. Her silence told him everything.
