Chapter 9: No More Hiding
For a moment, nobody moved.
The photograph on Lorenzo’s screen showed Rosie’s empty bed. Her stuffed rabbit lay against the pillow, one long ear folded beneath its head. The night-light cast a soft glow over the room. Whoever had taken the picture had stood close enough to touch it.
Rosie pressed herself against Elena’s side.
“Is that my room?”
“Yes,” Elena said, keeping her voice steady. She turned the phone facedown on the counter. “But we’re not going back there tonight.”
Lorenzo felt the old instinct rise: find the sender, find the photographer, make someone answer. It came with a dozen possible ways to do it, all of them leading back to the man he was trying not to be.
He forced himself to look at Elena instead.
“Your call,” he said. “We leave now. Where we go is your decision.”
Elena’s eyes searched his face, as if looking for the catch.
“Not the apartment,” she said.
“Not the apartment,” he agreed.
Enzo checked the front window. The street beyond it was empty, but that proved nothing.
“I can call the lawyer from the back office,” he said. “He can arrange another place and tell us how to preserve the message.”
“Do it,” Elena said.
Enzo disappeared through the kitchen door.
Lorenzo stayed where he was. He wanted to put his hand on Elena’s shoulder, but didn’t. The bandage on her palm had a small red stain near the edge. He noticed it, then let her decide whether she wanted help.
Rosie looked up at him.
“Is the bad man going to come back?”
“I don’t know,” Lorenzo said. “But we’re going somewhere safer, and we’ll stay together.”
“Is it a scary place?”
“No.”
She studied him, weighing the promise.
“Can we have soup there?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Elena gave him a tired, almost disbelieving look.
“Don’t promise her things you can’t control.”
“You’re right.” He crouched so he wasn’t towering over Rosie. “I can’t promise soup. I can promise I’ll try.”
Rosie seemed satisfied with that. She took Elena’s uninjured hand.
Enzo returned with the lawyer on speakerphone. The lawyer had arranged a different location and was contacting the building manager and police about the photograph. He wanted the original message preserved, along with the time it arrived. He warned them not to answer the sender or return to the compromised apartment.
When the call ended, Enzo gathered the deed document and pen from the counter.
“You want me to take this?” he asked Elena.
She glanced at the paper without touching it.
“Photograph it where it is first. Then give it to the lawyer. I’m not signing anything until he explains what it says.”
Enzo nodded and used his own phone. The men had taken his other one, but he’d brought a second device. He photographed both sides of the document, then left it on the counter for the lawyer’s team to collect.
Elena’s gaze moved around the restaurant—the worn tables, the old photographs, the faded green awning visible through the window. The place smelled of broth and cold air, of home and the things that had tried to erase it.
“I can’t leave her here,” Lorenzo said quietly. “Not tonight.”
“I know.”
“And I can get you both out of Boston. Somewhere they won’t know to look.”
Elena’s face hardened.
“Out of Boston?”
“Just until this is over.”
“People like him make a threat, then wait for you to do the work for them.” Her voice shook, but her chin stayed lifted. “You want me to disappear again because someone took a picture of my daughter’s room?”
“No,” he said. “I want you alive.”
“So do I. That’s why we’re leaving this building. But I’m not surrendering my home to a man with a ring and a piece of paper.”
Lorenzo looked at the deed document. He had spent much of his life believing a problem was a thing to crush before it could grow teeth. Elena was asking him to understand that protection could also mean standing beside someone while she made her own choice.
“We’ll leave for tonight,” he said. “We won’t decide the rest tonight.”
“Good.”
He didn’t ask her to forgive him. He didn’t ask her to trust him. He simply opened the back door when Enzo said the route was clear.
They went out one at a time. Enzo checked the alley first, then signaled. Lorenzo stayed behind Elena and Rosie as they crossed to the waiting car. He kept his hands visible and gave Elena room to buckle Rosie in herself.
The new location was a small, lawyer-arranged apartment in a different neighborhood, with a staffed entrance and no connection to the building they’d left. It wasn’t a fortress. It was a place to sleep while the lawyer checked the access records and decided what should happen next.
Once inside, Elena settled Rosie on a sofa with her coat still on. The girl clutched her stuffed rabbit against her chest.
“Can we go see Nana’s Soup again?” Rosie asked.
Elena sat beside her.
“Not tonight, sweetheart.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Rosie’s mouth turned down. “I want the little table by the window.”
“I know.”
“And I want the soup that has the tiny noodles.”
Elena stroked her curls. For a moment she looked less frightened than heartbroken.
Lorenzo leaned against the wall, careful not to crowd them.
“You don’t have to decide anything about the restaurant tonight,” he said.
“I already decided one thing.” Elena looked toward the window. “I won’t sign away the place because somebody threatened my child. The lawyer can tell me what the paper means. Then I’ll decide what to do with it.”
“It’s yours to decide.”
“It belonged to Isabella before it was mine to protect.” She paused. “If there’s a way to keep it open without handing it over to you, I want that way.”
“You won’t have to hand it over to me.”
“Don’t say that like it’s easy.”
“It isn’t.” He held her gaze. “But I won’t take it from you.”
Elena didn’t thank him. She didn’t need to. The silence between them was still full of everything he had missed and everything she had been forced to carry alone.
Enzo sat at the narrow kitchen table with his second phone and a laptop the lawyer had provided. He frowned at the screen.
“What is it?” Lorenzo asked.
“I may have the recording.”
Elena sat straighter. “The one they took?”
“Not the phone. A backup.” Enzo tapped the laptop. “I started an automatic upload before we went into the restaurant. It caught most of the confrontation, then cut out when the signal dropped.”
“You knew they might take it?” Lorenzo asked.
“I knew they might take the phone. I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain that distinction.”
The recording opened as a block of muffled sound. Enzo turned up the volume. At first there was only the scrape of chairs and the lieutenant’s voice demanding Elena sign. Then Lorenzo heard his own answer—low, controlled, unmistakable.
Let them go.
The file continued through the front door. Wind hissed against the microphone. Footsteps moved away. A car door slammed.
Then came another voice, tinny but clear enough to make everyone still.
“They refused. The woman’s holding the key, and Moretti knows about the old accident.”
A second voice answered. “Then keep the deed pressure on her. The accident doesn’t matter unless someone can prove what happened.”
Lorenzo’s hand tightened against the edge of the table.
The recording crackled. A door opened, shutting out some of the wind. Someone shifted near the phone.
“Who’s asking about it?” the first voice said.
“Nobody yet. But if they start, the mechanic’s the problem.”
Enzo leaned closer to the laptop.
The second voice dropped almost to a whisper.
May you like
“Marty Vale. He serviced Isabella’s brakes.”
The file ended.
