Chapter 3
"I won't let her go," Dante promised. "You will walk right beside me. Every step. If you want her back, you take her back. But let me carry her up the elevator."
Mia looked from Dante’s open hands to his eyes. Children who have grown up in the shadow of neglect possess an animal instinct for genuine danger; they know the difference between a predator and a protector better than any social worker with a clipboard. She saw no mockery in Dante’s face. She saw no pity, which she had already learned to despise. She saw only an immovable mountain offering shelter from the wind.
Slowly, carefully, she leaned forward and transferred the bundle into his arms.
Dante took the infant. He cradled her against his chest, tucking the dry flap of his suit jacket over her damp blanket, using his own body heat to shield her from the air conditioning. The baby sighed against his white linen shirt, her tiny nose pressing into the fabric.
Dante looked at the receptionist.
"Debbie."
"Yes, Mr. Moretti?"
"Clear the private elevator. Tell the kitchen in the executive dining room to send up warm chicken broth, sliced apples, fresh bread, and whole milk. Now."
"Right away, sir."
Dante reached down with his free hand and offered it to Mia.
She stared at his large, silver-ringed hand for a beat, then reached up and slipped her small, icy fingers into his palm.
"Come with me, Mia," the king of Chicago’s underworld said gently. "Your shift is over."
The penthouse on the sixty-fifth floor was a vast expanse of limestone, dark walnut, and panoramic glass that looked out over the stormy gray belly of Lake Michigan. On ordinary days, it was a tomb of silence where Dante reviewed logistics manifests and dictated policy to men who feared his silence more than other men feared a blade.
Today, it was organized chaos.
Dr. Antonio Rossi, a man in his late fifties with rumpled silver hair and thirty years of experience tending to the discreet medical needs of the Moretti family, was kneeling on a Persian rug beside the leather sectional. He had a miniature stethoscope pressed to Lily’s tiny ribcage while a nurse he had brought with him gently fed the infant an electrolyte solution through a sterilized dropper.
"Her lungs are clear, thank God," Rossi murmured, not looking up. "Mild dehydration. Early-stage caloric deprivation. Another twenty-four hours in that weather without nutrition, Dante, and we’d be talking about respiratory arrest from hypothermia. As it is, she’s tough. Strong pulse. Good marrow."