Chapter 4 - The Debt on the Ledger
Rosie’s breath caught. She looked from the kneeling man to her mother.
Clara’s eyes flashed with a sudden, desperate panic that burned through the fog of her fever. "She isn't... she isn't yours, Luca. Don't touch her. I swear to God, she’s—"
"Don't lie to me while you're coughing up blood, Clara," Moretti said, his voice entirely free of anger, which made it ten times more terrifying. "She has your chin. But she has my mother's eyes. Grey. Not hazel like yours. Not brown like your father's. Grey like slate from the quarry in Palermo."
He reached out. His large, scarred hand hovered for a second before his knuckles gently brushed against Rosie’s temple, tucking a strand of wet hair behind her ear. His fingers were warm, smelling of cedarwood and the clean rain.
"I looked for you for three years," Moretti continued, his gaze never leaving Clara’s face. "From Boston to Baltimore. I thought you went to your sister in Chicago. I never thought you were stupid enough to move six blocks from the precinct house on Delancey."
"I had to get away from the blood," Clara whispered, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, tracking through the fever flush on her cheeks. "Every night... waiting for a car to slow down outside the window. Every dinner... wondering if the meat was paid for with someone’s life. I wanted her to be ordinary. I wanted her to go to school without two men in suits sitting on the bench across the street."
"And look what ordinary gave you," Moretti said, gesturing with one open hand toward the water-damaged ceiling, the dead radiator, the plastic cups on the counter. "A five-dollar bill on the floor and a child begging in a diner on a Friday night."
Dr. Rossi stepped between them, his stethoscope already warm in his hand. "Luca, move. Her lips are turning blue. She has bilateral lobar pneumonia. If we don't get oxygen into her right now and broad-spectrum antibiotics into her femoral vein, she won't last until dawn."
Moretti stood up immediately. He stepped back two paces, clearing the space for the physician.
Rosie did not move. She kept her small hand clamped over her mother's wrist, feeling the frantic, fluttering pulse beneath the damp skin. "Is she going to die?"
"No," Moretti said.
"How do you know?"
"Because I haven't given her permission," he said.
It was an arrogant, impossible statement, but he said it with such absolute, granite certainty that Rosie felt the panic in her chest loosen its grip by a fraction of an inch.
Dr. Rossi worked with frantic efficiency. Within four minutes, he had strapped an elastic green mask over Clara’s nose and mouth, the rhythmic hiss of pure oxygen filling the small room. He drove a needle into the crook of her arm, taping down an intravenous line that ran to a plastic bag of saline and antibiotics suspended from the arm of the floor lamp.
From the hallway below, a sudden, metallic clang reverberated through the floorboards.
Then another.
Then a long, groaning hiss of escaping steam.
Within sixty seconds, the cold cast-iron radiator beneath the window let out a sharp ping, followed by a deep, bubbling rattle as boiling water surged through the pipes. A faint wave of dry, dusty heat began to bleed into the freezing room.
Silvio appeared in the doorway. His trench coat was dry now, but his knuckles were red, and he carried a heavy wool blanket under one arm. "The boiler is operational, Mr. Moretti. Vinnie found a spare relief valve in his locker."
"Is he still breathing?" Moretti asked, not turning around.
"He's breathing fine, boss. He has a black eye, but he understands the schedule now."
"Bring the car around to the alley," Moretti ordered. "Tell St. Jude’s private clinic on 12th Street that Dr. Rossi is bringing in an emergency transfer. Private wing. Third floor. No police reports. No administrative intake through the public desk."
"Wait," Clara’s voice was muffled behind the plastic mask, but her eyes were wild. She reached out, her fingers clawing weakly at Moretti’s trousers. "Luca... no... don't take her... don't make her like you..."
Moretti stopped. He looked down at the woman on the floor—the woman who had stolen his child, who had hidden in the gutters of his own territory for nine years rather than ask him for a crust of bread.
"She is already like me, Clara," Moretti said softly. "She counted her pennies, she walked two miles through the rain, and she looked a grown woman in the eye and refused to leave without what she came for."
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He bent down, lifted Rosie into his arms again, and turned toward the door.
"Come on, little bird," Moretti murmured against her damp hair. "Let’s go buy the bakery."
