Chapter 4 - Clear Tomorrow
Marco Ricci was a man who could read the mood of a room before anyone else noticed the temperature changing. That talent had kept him beside Alessandro Moretti for eleven years. It failed him completely when he returned to the war room and found a little girl's purple drawing lying where the neighborhood maps had been.
"You sent for me?" Marco asked.
Alessandro stood beside the windows, watching the storm sweep across Brooklyn. Maria and Sophia were in the adjoining sitting room, waiting for a car. They were close enough that Alessandro could hear the child humming whenever the wind paused.
"Cancel tomorrow."
Marco didn't move. "Tomorrow's calendar is full."
"I'm aware."
"Bianchi's people expect the waterfront discussion at nine. Our lawyers need your approval before noon. And Greco has given us until evening to accept the shipping terms."
"Cancel all of it."
"For a trip to a playground?"
Alessandro turned. "Choose your next words carefully."
Marco dropped his gaze. "I only meant that the timing is dangerous."
"Then perhaps our timing has been dangerous for years."
It was an unusual response, and Marco knew better than to challenge it. He had spent the last eleven months carrying a secret that made every ordinary conversation feel like a trap. He had supplied the Greco organization with warehouse schedules and meeting locations, not because they offered him money, but because they had sent him a photograph of Maria Alvarez leaving a pediatric clinic with Sophia in her arms. A threat followed. If he refused to cooperate, the maid and the child would disappear.
At the time, Marco had told himself his concern was simply human decency. Maria worked in their house. Sophia was an innocent little girl. Yet he had stared at the photograph longer than the warning itself, unable to explain why the child's eyes seemed painfully familiar.
Now that child was sitting a room away, and Alessandro had unexpectedly promised to spend an entire morning with her.
"Greco will interpret your absence as an insult," Marco said.
"Greco interprets breathing as an insult when it suits him."
"And Bianchi?"
"Tell him I'll call personally."
Marco opened his calendar, grateful for something routine to do with his hands. "I'll arrange a driver and the usual team."
"One car. Elena can be nearby without being obvious. No convoy."
"That's not enough protection."
"A child doesn't need to watch eight men with earpieces follow her to the swings. If my presence makes an ordinary morning impossible, I won't go."
"Maybe that's the sensible choice."
Alessandro crossed the room. His voice remained level, which Marco had learned was more dangerous than shouting. "I didn't ask for your opinion about whether that child deserves a morning. I asked you to clear my schedule."
"Of course."
"One more thing. Why did you stare at her?"
The question landed like a dropped glass. Marco found his composure by focusing on a brass clock above the fireplace.
"She reminded me of someone."
"Who?"
"A woman I knew. Years ago."
Alessandro held his gaze. Marco had known him too long not to recognize when an answer had failed. Before either man could speak again, Sophia appeared in the doorway carrying her drawing, which she had borrowed back to repair its crooked sun.
"Mister, what color is your favorite?"
Marco took a step backward. Alessandro's attention shifted toward the child.
"Apparently purple," he said.
"Good. I think you needed more purple."
She returned to the sitting room as abruptly as she'd arrived. Marco watched the hallway after she disappeared.
"Is your friend still alive?" Alessandro asked.
Marco looked at him. "What?"
"The woman she reminded you of."
"I don't know," Marco lied.
He had spent three years believing Isabella had simply left him. The truth was that he'd been afraid to find out anything else. For a long time, looking for her had meant risking questions he couldn't answer about why he had loved a woman outside his world and still remained loyal to the violence inside it.
Alessandro stepped back. "You look terrible. Go home after you finish the schedule."
"I'll be here if anything changes."
"I know. You always are."
The unexpected warmth in that sentence made Marco feel worse than suspicion would have. He remembered Alessandro standing beside his mother's hospital bed, quietly arranging doctors Marco could never have afforded. He remembered a dozen times his friend had trusted him with decisions no one else would touch. Every compromised document he had sent Greco felt heavier beneath that memory.
When Alessandro left to speak with Maria, Marco walked alone to his office. Three new messages waited on the secure phone he kept in a locked drawer.
We saw her at Moretti's house.
Why is he canceling tomorrow?
Do you want us to collect the girl before he changes his mind?
He considered calling the police himself. He even opened the contact number for a detective whose investigation had once brushed against the Grecos. But what would he say first? That he had been threatened? That he'd compromised his employer to prevent a threat he hadn't even reported? Every honest sentence required admitting another dishonest one. Marco had spent so long treating his decisions as temporary that he'd forgotten the first rule of emergencies: an emergency does not remain temporary simply because you refuse to name it.
Marco's stomach tightened. He typed the only answer that might buy time.
Touch her and the arrangement ends.
The reply arrived almost immediately.
You have never understood the arrangement.
He locked the phone and pressed both hands against his desk. Outside, thunder rolled over the river. Somewhere below, Sophia was asking Maria whether rich men liked strawberry ice cream. Marco stared at his reflection in the dark window and understood that his attempts to protect the child had placed her directly in a danger he no longer controlled.
For the first time in eleven years, he considered telling Alessandro everything. Then he thought of the photograph, the threat, and how quickly a mistake could reach an innocent person before even the most powerful man in Brooklyn could stop it.
May you like
He picked up his ordinary phone and called Maria. When she didn't answer, he left no message. Instead, he opened an old box in his desk and removed a faded photograph of Isabella standing beside a lake. He hadn't looked at it in months.
Her smile was unmistakable. So, he realized with a frightening jolt, was the little girl's.
