Chapter 2 - A Desperate Night
The thermometer Elena held under the baby’s arm beeped with an urgent, tinny shrillness.
104.1 degrees.
Elena felt the room tilt around her. "No, no, no," she chanted under her breath. "Come on, baby girl. Stay with me."
The child was whimpering continuously now, a hoarse, ragged sound that tore straight through Elena’s chest. The fever was cooking the poor thing from the inside out. Elena had stripped her down, wrapped her in a lukewarm damp washcloth, and placed her on the bed, but the tremors hadn't stopped.
Elena looked at her chipped nightstand. Her wallet lay open. A crumpled twenty, three tens, two singles, and eighty-four cents in change. Exactly $62.84.
She grabbed her coat, wrapped the baby in a dry fleece throw blanket, pulled the child into her arms, and bolted back out into the Queens night.
The corner bodega on 31st Street had its neon sign buzzing through the drizzle. Old Sal, who had run the counter for thirty years, looked up from his small television as the door chime jingled violently.
"Elena? What's going on with you, girl? It's four in the—" Sal stopped cold when he saw the bundle in her arms.
"Sal, please," Elena panted, her hair plastered to her cheeks with cold rain. "Infant Tylenol. Liquid. An oral syringe. And infant formula. The sensitive kind. Do you have it?"
Sal didn't ask questions. He looked at the flushed, tiny face peeking out from the fleece, saw the sheer panic in Elena's brown eyes, and moved faster than a seventy-year-old man had any right to move. He unlocked the medicine cabinet behind the counter, grabbed a box of dye-free acetaminophen drops, reached into the lower aisle for a can of gentle powder formula, and threw in a box of sterilized bottles.
"That's forty-eight dollars," Sal said softly.
Elena slammed all three twenties onto the counter. "Keep the change, Sal. Thank you. Thank you."
"Elena," Sal called out as she turned to sprint out. "Whose baby is that?"
"A friend's!" she lied over her shoulder, the words burning her throat. "She's sick. I'm taking care of her."
Back in the subterranean damp of her apartment, Elena moved with mechanical precision. She measured the drops of medicine, gently pried open the baby’s tiny lips, and eased the liquid into the corner of her cheek. The baby coughed, sputtered, and cried—a stronger cry this time, which brought tears of relief to Elena's eyes.
"Good girl," Elena whispered, tears blurring her vision as she rocked the infant back and forth. "Fight it. You have to fight it."
She mixed the formula with warm boiled water, testing the temperature against the scarred skin of her wrist. When she offered the rubber nipple, the baby clamped down with surprising strength, suckling hungrily before tiring out after only an ounce.
Elena sat on the edge of the squeaking mattress, holding the baby upright against her shoulder, patting her back until a small burp surfaced. Then, she laid back against the thin pillows, keeping the baby pressed firmly over her heart.
"You need a name," Elena whispered into the dark, watching the baby's eyelids flutter shut. "Until I figure out how to get you back safely. I'll call you Mia. It means *mine*, even if it's only for tonight."
Meanwhile, four miles away in an underground garage beneath a warehouse in Red Hook, the air smelled of copper and ozone.
Lorenzo Moretti stood over a man tied to a steel pillar. The man was soaked in sweat and grease, his jaw swollen, his left eye swollen shut. He was a low-level broker who specialized in stolen transport plates.
"I didn't know who she was, Don Lorenzo! I swear on my mother’s soul!" the man shrieked, spitting blood onto his own knees. "They just paid me ten grand to switch the plates on a silver minivan! That's all! They said the nanny had a package that needed to disappear into the river!"
Lorenzo took a slow drag from a hand-rolled cigarette, the ruby ring on his finger glowing in the dim overhead bulb. He handed the cigarette to Marco, his underboss.
"The river," Lorenzo repeated. The words were flat, hollowed out of all human sentiment. "They were going to drown my daughter."
"Yes! But the driver panicked!" the broker stammered, sobbing. "The driver got spooked by a squad car on 43rd Street. He dumped the bag in an alley and ditched the van in Queens! I don't know where the alley is! I swear to God Almighty, I don't know!"
Lorenzo stepped closer. He didn't raise his voice. He reached out and gently straightened the collar of the broker's ruined shirt.
"Every garbage can," Lorenzo instructed Marco without looking at him. "Every alley between Long Island City and Sunnyside. Put five hundred men on the pavement. I want every vagrant, every night worker, every street cleaner questioned. If anyone saw someone carrying a bundle, I want an address within the hour."
Lorenzo looked at the weeping broker. "You made a mistake with my bloodline. You don't get to see sunrise."
Lorenzo turned and walked toward his armored Maybach. His hands, usually as steady as stone, clenched into fists inside the pockets of his cashmere overcoat.
*Sophia,* he thought, the memory of his deceased wife slicing through his chest like broken glass. *I promised you I would protect our daughter. If she is dead, I will burn this entire city to the ground.*
Back in the Queens basement, the dawn broke in pale shades of grey.
Elena opened her eyes. The room was silent save for the clanking radiator. She panicked instantly, her gaze dropping to her chest.
Mia was sleeping peacefully. Elena pressed her lips to the baby’s forehead.
The fever had broken. Her skin was cool, dewy, and pale pink.
Elena let out a ragged sob of pure relief, pressing the baby tighter to her chest. But as she looked across the room at the platinum lion pendant resting on her cracked formica table, the relief curdled into cold terror.
May you like
The Morettis did not lose things. And when they came looking for what was theirs, they left nothing alive in their path.
***
