Chapter 4 - The Currency of Fear
At 8:00 PM, the house fell into a state of quiet that wasn't the dead, heavy silence of grief, but the warm, soft exhaustion of four boys who had spent two hours running through damp grass in rubber boots.
Alessandro was asleep in his bed with his cardboard armor stacked neatly beside his nightstand like an old suit of plate mail. Nico was snoring lightly under a green quilt. Marco was under his covers with a flashlight, reading a book about military aircraft I’d pulled from the lower shelves of the library.
And Matteo was sitting on my bed in the third-floor room.
Lucia had arrived an hour ago.
Mrs. Gable had brought her up in a private car Victor had dispatched to Astoria—a bulletproof Volvo driven by a grey-haired man named Thomas who looked like he’d spent thirty years guarding high-value cargo.
Lucia was three years old, with dark, wild curls that wouldn't stay in pigtails and my father’s hazel eyes. She was currently sitting cross-legged on the grey linen duvet, wearing yellow footie pajamas with small rabbits on the toes, holding out a wooden block toward Matteo.
"Tower," Lucia said. It wasn't a request; it was a directive.
Matteo took the block. He was four. He didn't speak much, but he had spent the last thirty minutes carefully placing blocks on top of each other until they formed a rickety, six-inch wall between them.
"Higher," Lucia demanded, pointing her small finger at the top.
Matteo carefully placed the red cube on the blue cylinder. It wobbled, held, and stayed up.
I sat on the bay window bench, watching them through the reflection in the dark glass. Outside, the Hudson River was a black ribbon cutting through the valley, the lights of the Jersey shore flickering through the mist.
A knock came at the open door.
Victor stood in the doorway. He had taken off his jacket and tie, the collar of his white shirt unbuttoned by two buttons, revealing the dark line of his throat. He looked tired—not the corporate tired of a man who had been in meetings, but the heavy, ancient weariness of a man who carried too many names in his head.
He looked at Lucia. Then he looked at Matteo sitting beside her.
"She looks like you," Victor said, his voice quiet.
"She has my father's eyes," I replied, standing up from the window bench. "And her father's temper, unfortunately."
Victor walked into the room. He didn't look like a mob boss in that moment; he looked like a long shadow against the warm light of the bedside lamp. He reached down, picked up a loose yellow block from the carpet, and held it out to Matteo.
Matteo took it without looking up, adding it to the foundation of the tower.
"Aunt Sophia left for Englewood at six," Victor said.
"I know. I saw the Maybach leave."
"She’s dangerous, Serena," he said, turning his head to look at me. "Not because she has soldiers, but because she knows where the seams are in this family. She’s been trying to force me to sell my father's shipping terminals to the Moretti group for three years."
"Julian Cruz works for the Moretti group," I said, the connection finally clicking together like two teeth on a gear.
Victor’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Julian is a bottom-feeder. He collects twenty percent on small loans in Queens. But he came to Sophia because he knew she wanted leverage on me. If he gets custody of your daughter, he uses her to force you to sign over your father's property in Little Italy."
"The restaurant," I whispered. "It's on Mulberry Street. It's only forty feet wide, Victor. Why would the Moretti family care about an old pizza kitchen that burned out three years ago?"
Victor reached into his trousers pocket, pulled out a gold cigarette case, looked at Lucia, and put it back.
"Because beneath that pizza kitchen is a forty-foot storage vault built in 1928," Victor said softly. "It connects to the old pneumatic mail tube system under Lower Manhattan. My grandfather used it during Prohibition to move five hundred cases of scotch a week without crossing a single street above ground."
I stared at him. "My father... he never told me."
"Frank didn't know," Victor said. "He thought it was just a deep cellar with cold stone floors. But Julian found the deeds in the county registry after Frank died. If Moretti gets that vault, he has an unmonitored line from the docks straight into the basement of the Federal Reserve building on Liberty Street."
The weight of it dropped onto my shoulders like a wet wool coat.
I wasn't just fighting an ex-fiancé who wanted to hurt me. I was standing in the middle of a war between two families that had been carving up New York since my grandfather was in diapers.
Lucia suddenly let out a small squeal.
Matteo had accidentally knocked over the top three blocks of the tower. Lucia didn't cry; she reached out with both hands, grabbed Matteo’s small cheeks, and pulled his face three inches from hers.
"No break!" she yelled softly. "Build again!"
Matteo didn't pull away. He blinked his large, dark eyes, let out a tiny, breathy noise that sounded almost like a laugh, and picked up the red block from the carpet.
Victor froze.
He stared at his four-year-old son—the boy who hadn't made a sound in this house since his mother’s coffin was lowered into the ground in Westchester fourteen months ago.
"Did he..." Victor’s voice cracked. Just a tiny fraction, a split second where the armor failed. "Did he just laugh?"
"He likes her," I said softly, stepping closer to Victor until my shoulder almost touched his arm. "She doesn't treat him like he's made of glass."
Victor slowly dropped to one knee on the grey rug. He reached out with his large, hand—a hand that had signed executions and orders that moved millions of dollars—and gently laid it on top of Matteo’s head.
Matteo didn't flinch. He leaned his small head slightly into his father's palm, his eyes still fixed on the red block in his hands.
Victor closed his eyes for three long seconds. When he opened them, the coldness was back, but behind it was something else—something raw, sharp, and terrifyingly focused.
He stood up and looked down at me.
"The custody hearing is in eleven days," Victor said.
"Fourteen," I corrected.
"Eleven," he said flatly. "I had my attorneys pull the file to the top of the docket in Queens. Judge Miller will preside."
My heart jumped into my throat. "Miller? He's on Moretti's payroll. Everyone in Astoria knows that."
"He was," Victor said, his hand dropping to his side, his fingers curling into a fist. "Until eight o'clock tonight, when his eldest son's law firm received an anonymous retainer to represent Rinaldi Logistics in a thirty-million-dollar land acquisition in Jersey."
I stared at him, my mouth slightly open. "You bought the judge?"
"I bought his son," Victor said smoothly. "It’s cleaner. On Tuesday morning, you will walk into that courtroom with Arthur Vance's boss sitting at the table behind you. You will have a six-month employment contract signed by my firm, a residential lease for a three-bedroom apartment in Rye, and forty thousand dollars in a trust account for Lucia's education."
"Victor..." My voice was barely a whisper. "Why are you doing this?"
May you like
He looked at Matteo, who was now laying another block with Lucia’s small hands guiding his wrist.
"Because my sons ate dinner at six o'clock yesterday," Victor said, his eyes meeting mine with an intensity that made the breath catch in my chest. "And because nobody takes a child from this house. Not Julian Cruz. Not Arthur Vance. And not the Moretti family."
