Chapter 4
Dante stood three feet away, his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze never leaving the infant. He had discarded his suit jacket; his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his forearms, revealing the dark, faded ink of an old Sicilian cross etched into his left wrist.
Across the room, at the massive quartz breakfast bar, Mia was sitting on an upholstered stool.
She was wearing an oversized gray cashmere sweater that belonged to Dante, the sleeves rolled up four times so her hands could emerge. Her wet clothes had been taken by the housekeeper to be washed and dried. In front of her sat a bowl of rich, golden chicken soup, a plate of warm rolls with sweet butter, and a tall glass of milk.
She wasn't eating like a starving animal. She was eating with that same terrifying, heartbreaking discipline she had displayed in the lobby: two small spoonfuls of soup, a sip of water, a tiny bite of bread.
And her eyes never left the baby. Not for five seconds.
Dante walked over to the island and pulled out the stool beside her. He sat down, resting his forearms against the quartz.
"Good soup?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," she said quietly. She set her spoon down precisely in the center of the napkin. "Thank you."
"You don't have to call me sir. My name is Dante."
"Mr. Dante."
He didn't correct her. "Where did you walk from this morning, Mia?"
Mia picked at a stray thread on the oversized cashmere sleeve. Her gray-green eyes drifted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, where the rain was still lashing against the reinforced glass sixty stories above the pavement.
"Twenty-fourth Street," she whispered. "Near the bus yard."
Dante’s jaw tightened. Twenty-fourth and the bus yard was nearly four miles south. A wasteland of cracked asphalt, rusted chain-link fences, abandoned diesel repair bays, and transient encampments. A grown man would think twice about walking those blocks after dusk without a weapon in his coat.
A seven-year-old girl had carried an infant through that corridor in the dark, in the April freezing rain, with ninety-five cents in her pocket.
"And your mother?" Dante asked, keeping his voice as neutral as water. "Is she on Twenty-fourth Street?"
Mia looked down at her small, clean hands. The warmth of the apartment had brought color back into her cheeks, but the shadows beneath her eyes looked bruised.
"Mama went to get medicine," she said.