Chapter 8 · What If My Don's Worst Foe Became My Only Safe Haven?

Chapter 8

She had nothing.That was the part she couldn't get around on the drive back. She'd spent nine days building a way out, and a man had listened to all of it in four minutes and told her, correctly, that she'd been offering him somebody else's furniture.Nadia was waiting at the office with two coffees."Well?""He said no."Nadia set both cups down very carefully."He said no.""He said come back when I own something.""You do own""Nothing." Sera dropped her bag on the desk. "Say one thing in this building that's mine. Go ahead. One.""The auction rooms.""Whose money opened them?""The trucks.""Whose name's on the yard?"Nadia stopped."Nine years," Sera said. "And there isn't one piece of paper in here with only my name on it. He worked that out in about four minutes standing in the wind.""That's not fair.""It's completely fair. That's the problem with it." She sat down on the edge of her own desk. "I've been walking around this week telling everybody what I'm worth, and the whole time I've been counting a pile of things that belong to Rafe Grieco."Nadia was quiet for a second."So we get you something," she said."With what?""I don't know yet." Nadia picked her coffee back up. "But you notice he didn't say never. He said Monday.""He said come back.""Sera." Nadia looked at her over the cup. "Men like that don't hand out homework to women they're finished with."She got to Ellencove at four.And stopped walking about ten feet from her father's door.Because the two men outside room fourteen were not the two men who had been outside room fourteen for three years.They were polite. They were extremely polite. One of them stood up off the wall and said "Ms. Caravella," and the other one didn't stand up at all.She had never seen either of them before in her life."Where's Sal?" she said."Reassigned, ma'am.""By who?"The one on the wall smiled at her.Sera went in and shut the door and stood with her back against it for four seconds.Then she picked up her father's laundry bag like a woman with nothing on her mind and walked over to the bed."Dad."He was awake. He'd been awake a while, she thought. He was watching the door."New," he said."I saw.""Since Tuesday."Tuesday. The day Nadia had made the call to North Basin.Her father's hand found hers."Sera. Go.""I'm getting you out of here. I've got a place forty minutes north, I've got""Sera." Slow, and completely clear. "Go now. Tonight.""I'm not leaving you in a building with four men I don't know.""They won't touch me." Half his mouth pulled up. "I'm the reason you come."And there it was. Said out loud in a small warm room that smelled like disinfectant, by a man who had worked out the shape of his own use three years ago and had never once complained about it.Sera sat down on the edge of the bed, and for the second time in her adult life, in front of her father, she cried.He let her.He put his good hand on the back of her head and let her get it out, and when she was finished he handed her the tissues off the nightstand with the air of a man who'd been waiting three years to be able to do something for his daughter."Now," he said. "Question."She wiped her face. "Okay.""Devane.""How do you""Sera." He gave her a look she remembered from being fifteen. "Whole city.""He turned me down," she said. "This morning. Said I've got nothing that's mine to sell."Her father nodded slowly."Good," he said."Dad.""He's right." Emilio's fingers tightened. "Nine years. Everything you built. Whose name?"Sera opened her mouth and closed it again."His," she said."Yes."They sat with that for a while."Now," her father said. "Tunnel road. You asked him.""I asked.""And.""He didn't answer." She leaned forward. "But Dad, he stopped. For half a second, he stopped."Emilio closed his eyes."Sera. Listen." He was working for the words now. "Four people knew that route. Me. Your mother. Vince.""That's three.""Yes," her father said.The room was very quiet."Who was the fourth?" Sera said.Emilio Caravella opened his eyes and looked at his daughter for a long moment."Ask him yourself," he said. "Not me. Me you'll believe. Him you'll watch."Her phone went off at seven the next morning.Nadia, already talking."Are you at the office?""Twenty minutes out. Why?""Because he's here," Nadia said. "He's been here since six. He sent everybody home. He's sitting in your chair, Sera, and he brought a box."

Chapter 8