Chapter 10 · What If My Don's Worst Foe Became My Only Safe Haven?

Chapter 10

He didn't ask. He took it."This is Grieco." Three seconds of listening. "Say your name and where you're standing. Good. Marguerite, listen to me. Go into fourteen. Lock it. Put the bed against the door and stay on this line."He was already walking. She got her coat and went after him."Bruno." Into his own phone now, taking her stairs two at a time. "Ellencove. Everything you've got north of the river.""And put it out in the clear. I want it heard. Say my name twice."Then he was in the car and she was in the passenger seat and they were doing ninety through a city that hadn't woken up yet.Neither of them said anything for four miles."Say it," Sera said finally."They'll be gone before we're halfway.""You don't know that.""I do know that. It's the only thing I'm sure of this morning." He didn't take his eyes off the road. "Whoever's standing in that hallway is standing there because on Monday this city decided your father wasn't covered anymore.""And now?""And now they've heard my name go out on an open channel. It costs them nothing to leave and everything to stay."Sera watched the road come at them."Was it your people?" she said."No.""You'd say no either way.""I would." He took the turn without slowing. "It still wasn't.""Whose, then?""By tonight I'll know. By tomorrow so will they." A beat. "Ask me the other thing.""What other thing?""The one you've been sitting on since the office." His hands hadn't moved on the wheel. "You want to know if I'd have told you. If the phone hadn't gone.""Would you have?""No," Rafe said.He was right.They were gone by six twenty. The nurse said four minutes, from the front desk phone ringing to the back stairwell door banging shut.Four minutes.Sera stood in the hallway at Ellencove with her coat still buttoned and understood exactly what had just been demonstrated to her.Not on purpose. He hadn't done it on purpose. That almost made it worse.She had spent nine days climbing out from under this man, and at ten past six in the morning it had taken one sentence with his name in it to clear a hallway two counties away.Everything she'd built this week was still standing on his floor. It had never once stopped being his floor.She went into room fourteen.Her father was upright in the bed with his cane across his knees and the call cord wrapped twice around his fist. He'd jammed the wheelchair sideways under the door handle.When he saw her, his whole face came apart."Sera.""I'm here.""Told you." His voice was shaking. "Told you to go.""Yeah, well."She sat down and put her forehead against his hand and stayed there a while.Rafe stood in the doorway and didn't come in.After a minute her father looked past her at him."Grieco.""Emilio.""My daughter's leaving." Slow, and perfectly clear. "You come to stop it?""I came because her phone rang.""Not what I asked."Rafe was quiet for a moment."No," he said. "I came to stop it.""Then you're late," her father said. "You've been late since October. And the only reason I'm not spitting on you is my daughter would have to clean it up."Nobody said anything for a while after that.Bruno's cars came in at ten to seven. Eleven men, two on the stairwell, two at the front desk. By seven the place looked like a bank.Rafe went down to the lot to deal with it.Sera walked out to the front desk to sign her father out, because he was leaving today. This morning. She'd carry him herself if she had to.Marguerite had made three cups of tea and drunk none of them. Her hands were still going."Are you okay?""Ask me tomorrow." The nurse pushed the folder across. "Sign at the flags."Sera signed."They came up the back," Marguerite said. "Nobody uses the back at that hour. That's what scared me. They knew it was there.""How many?""Three. Two in the hallway, one on the landing." She shook her head. "And they didn't touch me. That's the thing. They were polite. They said good evening."Sera's pen stopped."Good evening," she said."Yes.""Not good morning."Marguerite looked up.Sera put the pen down."What time did they actually get here?""I called you the second they started asking about""Marguerite. What time did they come up those stairs?"The nurse went quiet, and Sera watched her go back through her own night and find the hole in it."Ten," she said. "Maybe just before. I didn't call you until they started asking which room, because before that they just stood there.""For how long?""Eight hours."Nobody stands in a hallway for eight hours to hurt a man in a bed.Eight hours isn't an attack.Eight hours is a guard."Marguerite." Sera's voice had gone flat. "Who else came in last night?""Nobody. It's not visiting hours after""Get me the book.""Ms. Caravella""The book. Please."The visitor book at Ellencove was a green hardback ledger, because the place was built in 1954 and nobody had ever seen a reason to change it.Marguerite turned it around and pushed it across the desk.Sera ran her finger down Thursday.Three lines on it.The bottom two were the men. 10:04 p.m., both of them, no names, just initials and the word security in Marguerite's handwriting, because they hadn't given her anything else.And above them, one line, in ink, signed the way that ledger had been signed for seventy years.9:41 p.m. Room fourteen. Twenty-two minutes.The name written on the line was Serafina Caravella.Sera looked at her own name sitting in the middle of a page she had never touched. At the small tight loop on the capital S she had spent her whole childhood trying to copy and never quite managing.She knew that handwriting.She'd been reading it on birthday cards since she was four years old.Her phone buzzed in her coat.A number she didn't have.[Heard about your father. Everyone did.]And under it, a minute later:[You own it now. Come back Monday, Mrs. Devane.]

Chapter 10