Chapter 5 - The Face in the Cradle
The name left her lips in a shattered, breathless gasp that seemed to pull all the oxygen out of the hallway.
She staggered backward two steps, her hand shooting out to grab the edge of the hallway shoe rack to keep from collapsing onto the floorboards.
“Adrian…” she repeated, her voice cracking into a high, terrified whimper. “No… no, God, please… no.”
“Evelyn,” I said, taking half a step over the threshold, my hands raised empty at my sides, my posture completely stripped of its usual predatory dominance. “Don't run. Please.”
“Get out!” she screamed suddenly, her voice shattering the quiet morning like breaking glass. “Get out of my home! Marcus! Where are your men?! Who told you where we were?!”
She lunged forward, trying to slam the heavy wooden door in my face, but my reflex was faster. My hand caught the edge of the door, holding it open with effortless, immovable strength.
“Evelyn, stop!” I pleaded, my own voice trembling with an emotion I hadn't felt in twenty years. “I'm alone! There are no teams on the stairs! I just want to talk!”
“Mommy?”
A small, sleepy voice drifted from the kitchen archway.
Evelyn froze. Her entire body turned to rigid ice.
From around the corner of the hallway partition, a little boy walked out onto the runner rug. He was wearing blue flannel pajamas with little yellow stars, clutching a worn plush blue elephant against his chest with both hands.
His dark, unruly curls were ruffled from sleep. He had Evelyn’s soft, expressive mouth, but his cheekbones, his straight nose, and the intense, solemn way he tilted his chin were an exact, unmistakable replica of the Moretti bloodline.
And then, stepping out from behind him, rubbing her eyes with two chubby fists, came a little girl.
She wore pink fleece footie pajamas. She had a tiny silver barrette holding her dark hair away from her forehead.
She looked up.
Her eyes met mine.
They were stormy gray. The exact slate-gray eyes that had defined the Moretti dynasty for four generations—the eyes of my father, the eyes of my grandfather, the eyes that looked back at me in every mirror I had ever owned.
My knees gave out.
The sovereign boss of the Chicago syndicates, the man who had faced down federal indictments and rival cartels without flinching, dropped straight to both knees on the wooden floorboards of an ordinary Boston apartment.
“My God…” I breathed, tears rushing to my eyes with such sudden, overwhelming violence that my vision blurred completely.
The boy—Leo—tilted his head, clutching his stuffed elephant tighter, studying the giant man kneeling in his doorway with innocent, fearless curiosity.
“Mommy?” Leo asked, his voice sweet and clear. “Who is the big man?”
Evelyn threw herself between us like a lioness shielding her cubs from a hunter. She scooped Leo into her left arm, swept Mia up with her right, and retreated rapidly toward the living room, backing against the bookshelf, pressing both children against her chest with white-knuckled desperation.
“Don't look at him, Leo,” Evelyn choked out, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. “Don't look at him, baby.”
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She looked down at me from across the small room, her eyes burning with an agony so profound, so absolute, that it made me feel lower than the dirt beneath her shoes.
“You took everything from me, Adrian,” Evelyn whispered, her voice shaking with rage and heartbreak. “You took my youth. You took my home. You took my dignity. But you will not take my children. I will kill you myself before I let your mother touch them.”
