Chapter 8 - The Price of the Hawk
Anna did not scream.
That frightened Lorenzo more than if she had.
She stared at the photograph on the phone until the screen dimmed. Then she touched it once and brought it back to life.
Sophie. Back seat. Gray rabbit. Tear tracks on both cheeks.
Alive.
For now.
"Where is Bianca?" Anna asked.
Nico was already moving.
"Her phone is traveling south. Last tower hit near Brooklyn. I'll pull traffic cameras."
"Carlo said bring him the ledgers, the ring, and me."
"You're not going," Lorenzo said.
Anna looked at him.
"My daughter is in his car."
"My niece is in his car."
"Then you understand why I am going."
Lorenzo stepped closer.
"I understand exactly why. That is why Carlo wants you emotional. He wants us to do what I did twelve years ago - move before we know the board."
Anna's eyes burned.
"Do not compare this to a lesson from your father while Sophie is with the man who killed mine."
Lorenzo took the hit.
"Fair."
He turned to Nico.
"Find the car."
Rebecca Sloan entered with one of the federal agents.
"Our task force can track toll cameras and plate readers. If Carlo is using his own people, he may switch vehicles."
Anna rounded on her.
"Then track faster."
Rebecca did not react.
"We will. But if you make a private exchange and he kills all of you, Sophie still does not come home."
Anna looked away.
Her breathing was too fast.
Lorenzo remembered Gabriel at sixteen after Salvatore had been hospitalized with pneumonia, pacing the hall and pretending he was not scared.
He had always hidden fear behind movement.
Anna hid hers behind anger.
The resemblance was not blood.
It was love.
Nico's phone buzzed.
"Got them. Carlo's sedan crossed the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel seven minutes ago. Then disappeared near Red Hook."
Anna's head snapped up.
"Red Hook."
Lorenzo knew what she was thinking.
The clinic.
Where Salvatore had died.
"The building still exists?" he asked.
"The clinic closed years ago. The warehouse behind it didn't."
Rebecca was already typing.
"Address?"
Anna gave it.
The federal agent shook his head.
"Property belongs to a shell company. Alder Recovery."
The room went still.
Nico looked at Lorenzo.
"Martin Hale's company."
Carlo had taken Sophie to the place where Salvatore's last hours had begun.
Not sentiment.
Control.
He wanted the ending to belong to him.
Lorenzo opened the evidence case and lifted out Salvatore's signet ring.
Anna watched him.
"You're going to give it to him?"
"I'm going to let him believe I will."
Rebecca frowned.
"Do not improvise."
"I don't improvise."
Nico looked at the bullet hole in his own shoulder bandage.
"That statement has never survived contact with reality."
Lorenzo ignored him.
They built the plan in nine minutes.
The original ledgers would stay with Rebecca. Nico made copies and placed them in the same oilcloth. The ring would be real because Carlo knew it too well to accept a fake.
Anna would wear a recording device.
Lorenzo would enter visibly alone.
Federal agents would stay two blocks out until Sophie was confirmed.
"No shooting unless he moves on the child," Rebecca said.
Lorenzo looked at her.
"If he moves on the child, you will not need to repeat that."
Anna went to the washroom and stood in front of a mirror.
For twelve years she had trained herself to leave.
New address. New grocery store. New bus route. New doctor. Never the same coffee shop three mornings in a row. Never tell a neighbor where you were born. Never let Sophie wear anything with her full name stitched inside.
Running had saved her.
Tonight it would not.
She pressed both hands to the sink.
"Mama?"
The memory of Sophie's voice came so clearly she turned.
No one was there.
Anna closed her eyes.
When she came back out, Lorenzo was waiting.
He held something in his palm.
Gabriel's old silver watch.
"Where did you get that?"
"My mother kept his things. I found it after he died."
He handed it to her.
Anna stared.
The leather strap was cracked. The crystal had one faint scratch near the four.
Gabriel had worn it the day they married.
Her knees nearly gave.
"Why now?"
"Because you are going into a room where Carlo will try to convince you that everyone you loved died because you were weak."
Lorenzo closed her fingers around the watch.
"Take proof that he is a liar."
Anna looked at him.
"Gabriel should have told you."
"Yes."
"I should have told you about Sophie sooner."
"Maybe."
"You are allowed to be angry."
"I am."
"At me?"
Lorenzo looked toward the dark window.
"At twelve years of decisions made by frightened people who thought silence was protection. We can assign the pieces later."
Anna understood then why Gabriel had believed in him.
Not because Lorenzo was good.
Because he could become better after learning he had been wrong.
At Red Hook, the warehouse smelled of salt, oil, and old rain.
Lorenzo entered through the loading door carrying the evidence case.
Anna walked beside him.
Carlo waited beneath a row of dead fluorescent lights.
Four armed men stood behind him.
Sophie sat on a wooden chair ten feet away.
Her hands were free.
Rabbit was in her lap.
Anna's heart tore itself open.
"Mama!"
She took one step.
A gun lifted.
Lorenzo stopped her with his forearm.
"She's alive," Carlo said. "Keep her that way by behaving intelligently."
Sophie glared at him through tears.
"You're bad Carlo."
One of the armed men almost smiled.
Carlo did not.
"Charming child. Gabriel would have ruined her."
Anna's entire body shook.
"Don't say his name."
Carlo looked pleased.
"Still tender. After all this time."
Lorenzo set the case on a crate.
"Let Sophie walk to Anna. Then you get the ring."
"No."
"Then you get nothing."
Carlo's gaze moved to the case.
"You never understood negotiation."
"I understand leverage. Sophie is yours. The evidence is mine."
Carlo smiled.
"And Anna?"
Lorenzo said nothing.
Carlo looked at her.
"Your father was stubborn too."
Anna felt the recorder against her skin.
"You saw him die?"
"I saw him refuse a very reasonable offer."
Lorenzo's eyes sharpened.
Anna continued.
"What offer?"
Carlo tilted his head.
"To tell me where Salvatore put the records."
"He didn't know."
"Correct. Which made his loyalty useless."
Anna's nails cut into her palms.
"So you killed him."
Carlo shrugged.
"He had already chosen the wrong brother."
The recorder caught every word.
Lorenzo did not move.
Anna swallowed.
"And Gabriel?"
Carlo's expression cooled.
"Gabriel had the unfortunate habit of thinking love made him brave. He found you. He found the chapel. He was going to destroy everything Salvatore built because he wanted to play husband with a fugitive."
Sophie's face changed.
She understood her father's name.
"You hurt my daddy?"
Carlo looked at her.
That was his mistake.
Sophie threw Rabbit.
Not far.
Not hard.
But directly at his face.
Carlo flinched.
Anna moved.
She ran toward Sophie.
One of the gunmen raised his weapon.
Lorenzo fired first.
Chaos broke open.
Sophie dropped to the floor the way Bianca had taught her.
Anna reached her and covered her body.
Nico and federal agents came through the side doors.
Two of Carlo's men surrendered immediately.
One ran.
The fourth fired toward Lorenzo and missed.
Carlo grabbed Anna by the shoulder and dragged her upright, a pistol pressed beneath her jaw.
"Stop!"
Every weapon in the room froze.
Sophie screamed.
Lorenzo stood ten feet away with his gun lowered but not dropped.
Carlo breathed hard against Anna's ear.
"Put it down."
Lorenzo did.
The pistol touched concrete.
Carlo smiled.
"There. Finally. A choice you understand."
Anna's hand closed around Gabriel's watch in her pocket.
Then around the tiny brass key still hanging beneath her collar.
She drove the key backward into Carlo's wrist.
He shouted.
The gun moved away from her throat.
Lorenzo crossed the distance in two strides.
Carlo fired.
The bullet grazed Lorenzo's side.
Lorenzo hit him hard enough to send the weapon skidding.
Nico kicked it away.
Federal agents swarmed.
Carlo ended on his knees with his hands forced behind him.
For the first time in Anna's life, Carlo Duca looked small.
Not harmless.
Just human.
Rebecca entered holding a phone.
"We have the confession. We have the ledgers. Martin Hale was picked up in Florida forty minutes ago, and he is already asking for counsel."
Carlo laughed through split lips.
"You think this ends because men with badges arrived?"
Lorenzo pressed one hand to the blood at his side.
"No."
He looked at Sophie clinging to Anna.
"It ends because the people you taught to be afraid of you are still alive."
Carlo stared at him.
Lorenzo bent, picked up Salvatore's ring, and held it where his uncle could see.
"My father spent his last breath trying to leave me a truth. You spent twelve years trying to bury it."
He closed his fist around the silver hawk.
"You failed."
At the hospital after Red Hook, Sophie refused to let anyone separate her from Anna.
A pediatric nurse examined her while she sat in her mother's lap. There were no serious injuries. A bruise on one wrist. A scrape on one knee. Dehydration from crying.
"Did the man hurt you?" the nurse asked gently.
Sophie looked at Anna before answering.
"He yelled. And he said Mama made bad choices."
Anna's arms tightened around her.
"Mama made one very good choice."
"What?"
"Keeping you."
Sophie leaned back against her chest.
Across the room, Lorenzo looked away.
He had been stitched and bandaged but had refused pain medicine strong enough to make him sleepy.
"You can sit," Anna told him.
"I am sitting."
"You are standing against a wall."
"The wall is supportive."
Sophie giggled.
The sound changed the room.
Later, when she finally slept, Lorenzo placed Salvatore's ring into a clear evidence pouch and handed it to Rebecca.
Anna noticed how long his fingers remained on the plastic.
"Hard to let go?"
"It belonged to my father."
"And for twelve years it belonged to a murder."
He looked at her.
"That is why it goes with the case."
Rebecca signed the receipt in front of both of them.
"When the case is over, it can be returned to the lawful estate."
Lorenzo glanced at Sophie.
"Maybe not the estate."
Anna followed his gaze.
"She is five."
"I said maybe."
"She trades important objects for stickers."
"I have heard."
For a few minutes they sat in silence while machines beeped softly beyond the curtain.
Then Lorenzo said, "I am sorry."
Anna did not ask for what.
There were too many possibilities.
"I know."
"That is not the same as forgiveness."
"No."
"Do you forgive me?"
She looked at him.
"For signing an order against my father? Not yet. For failing to know what Carlo was? Some days. For believing me when it cost you something? Yes."
Lorenzo nodded slowly.
"That seems fair."
"It isn't supposed to be fair. It is supposed to be true."
He looked at the sleeping child.
"Gabriel would have liked that answer."
Anna's eyes filled.
"He would have argued with it first."
May you like
"Naturally."
For the first time, they shared a memory of Gabriel that did not feel like a grave.
