Chapter 3 - The Man Outside My Door
Alessandro wanted me to stay at the clinic overnight.
I refused.
He wanted one of his drivers to take me home.
I refused that too.
Then I tried to stand.
My knees nearly folded.
Alessandro caught my elbow.
“You are very committed to losing arguments physically.”
“I can call a cab.”
“You cannot lift your left arm.”
“I only need one arm to call a cab.”
“You also have pain medication in your bloodstream.”
“That feels like a personal attack.”
Leo giggled from the chair.
Alessandro stared at me.
Then, unexpectedly, the corner of his mouth lifted.
It transformed his face.
Not enough to make him safe.
Enough to make him devastating.
“I will drive you.”
“That is worse.”
“Why?”
“Because people like you do not personally drive waitresses home.”
His smile disappeared.
“People like me.”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Yes.”
He looked at Leo.
“And people like you apparently throw themselves over children they do not know.”
That ended the argument.
Twenty minutes later, I sat in the back of a black SUV with Leo asleep beside me.
Alessandro drove.
No chauffeur.
No conversation.
Rain hammered the windshield.
We crossed from Lumina’s glittering district into my neighborhood.
The buildings got older.
The sidewalks cracked.
Storefronts became laundromats, check-cashing places, and twenty-four-hour convenience stores.
I hated that he was seeing it.
I hated even more that I cared.
“This is me.”
I pointed toward my apartment building.
Alessandro parked.
He looked up at the broken exterior light.
“This is where you live?”
“Try not to sound traumatized.”
“It was a question.”
“It was judgment wearing a suit.”
He got out anyway.
“Stay in the vehicle.”
“I live here.”
“Tonight that does not impress me.”
I watched him approach the building.
One of his men, who had followed us in a second SUV, joined him.
They reached the entrance.
Then both stopped.
Alessandro touched the door.
It opened.
My landlord had fixed that lock two days earlier.
I felt the blood leave my face.
Alessandro looked back at me.
I already knew.
Something was wrong.
He disappeared inside with his man.
Three minutes later, he returned.
His expression told me everything before he spoke.
“You are not sleeping here.”
I pushed open the car door.
“What happened?”
He blocked me.
“Mara.”
“What happened?”
“Your apartment was searched.”
I shoved around him.
He caught my wrist.
“Do not go inside.”
“That is my home.”
“Not tonight.”
My voice cracked.
“I don’t have anywhere else.”
Something shifted behind his eyes.
Not pity.
Decision.
“You do now.”
I laughed once.
It sounded terrible.
“No.”
“Mara.”
“No.”
“I am not going to some mansion where armed men stand outside every door.”
“You are describing one of my quieter properties.”
Despite everything, I stared at him.
“Was that a joke?”
“No.”
Leo woke inside the SUV.
He rubbed his eyes.
“Mara?”
I turned.
“I’m here.”
Then the little boy looked beyond me toward my apartment.
A man stood in the shadow of the alley.
My heart stopped.
I knew that posture.
The slouched shoulders.
The leather jacket.
The hand always buried in the right pocket.
David.
My former husband.
The man who had vanished eighteen months earlier with my savings and my grandmother’s ring.
He stared directly at me.
Then at Alessandro.
Then at Leo.
And smiled.
Before I could say his name, he turned and disappeared into the rain.
Alessandro saw my face.
“Who was that?”
I couldn’t answer.
His voice hardened.
“Mara.”
“That was David.”
“David who?”
“My ex-husband.”
Alessandro’s eyes moved toward the empty alley.
“What does he want?”
I thought about my destroyed apartment.
About Chloe vanishing.
About Julian staring at the loosened brass strip.
Then I remembered something David had said the night he left.
Something I had dismissed as another drunken excuse.
Your grandmother left you something worth more than you understand.
At the time, I thought he meant the ring.
May you like
Now I wasn’t so sure.
“I think,” I whispered, “he wants something he believes I have.”
