Chapter 16: House of Glass

Rain rattled the recovery-room window hard enough to make Noah stir when the security guard came through the door without knocking. He stopped at Noah's bed but would not meet my eyes. "Ms. Vale, De Luca just pulled the protected transport." His radio spat, "Two De Luca sedans at the front. Midnight in eighteen." Noah slept against my shoulder, worn out but breathing evenly. Without the guarded car, any exit made Noah a target. The complaint would call me reckless; Vittoria's house would give her custody access. Dante's penthouse left me control of one door. Dante stood beside the nurse's station. "Penthouse is twelve minutes. Private elevator. My team reports to no one, including my mother." "Your mother doesn't have a key?" "No." "Bianca?" "No." I shifted Noah higher. He breathed against my neck. "Listen," I said. "We go to your penthouse because I choose it, not because you offer it. Noah's room is mine. No one enters without me. You put a camera in it, you lose the room. You call your mother, we leave." "Yes." "And if someone tells you I am being difficult?" "I'll tell them you're his mother." Rocco rushed us toward the service doors, where a wheelchair and plain black SUV waited. "Front drive is blocked," he said. "We use the loading ramp." "No," I said. I pointed at the wheelchair. "That chair goes out front with your coat over it. Let every camera chase it. Noah stays in my arms until the car door closes." Dante folded his coat over the empty chair and pushed it toward the lobby himself. The cameras surged after him, shouting Noah's name. Rocco shoved open the service door. A black sedan stopped sideways across our path. "Ms. Vale," a man called from inside. "The De Luca family has arranged a safer residence." "You mean Vittoria's house," I said. "Then you can prepare it for someone else's child." The man stepped into the rain, black steel under his coat. "At midnight, the complaint goes public. You'll be the mother who risked a sick child," he said. "Take him to Vittoria, and we'll say you cooperated." Noah's fingers curled in my shirt. I locked my arm around him. The man's hand slid for the pistol beneath his coat. Rocco drove his shoulder into him before he could draw. Dante shoved the rear door open, shielding Noah's head with his body. I got in with Noah. "Driver," I said, "go." Dante reached for the rear door. I said, "Ride in front or stay in the rain. You do not sit beside my son because a threat made you remember him." He released the door and took the front seat. The De Luca sedan rammed the SUV, scraping the rear and leaving a white scar down the black paint. Noah cried out. Rocco's SUV pinned it against the ramp's concrete pillar as our driver shot into the wet street. Red numbers on the dash kept counting toward midnight. The back seat smelled of wet leather and hospital antiseptic. "Mom?" I pressed two fingers to his pulse. Steady. "I'm here." "Are we going home?" "We're going somewhere I can watch every door." Rain streaked the city as the driver dropped us at Dante's tower. The elevator rose in silence, city light dragging down its glass walls. The elevator opened on two armed men, glass walls, and a silver-framed photograph of Dante and Bianca. Dante took a black keycard from his jacket and held it out. "It opens the elevator and this floor. No one overrides it." I pocketed it. "Out," I told the guards. Neither moved. Their hands stayed close to their jackets. I looked at Dante. "My son wakes up frightened, and he sees strangers with guns or the woman who wanted to marry his father? We turn around." Dante crossed the marble, picked up the photograph, and walked it to the elevator himself. He handed it to the nearer guard. "Burn it," he said. Then he faced both men. "Leave the floor. Ms. Vale decides who comes back." They left. Only then, after I tested the window latch and fire door, did I let the nurse settle Noah in the smaller room, where I could sleep beside him. I found the black dome camera above the door before I found the lamp. "Take that down." Dante did not argue. He dragged a dining chair across the floor, climbed it, and pulled the camera free with both hands. The tiny red light died in his palm. He placed it in my hand. I closed my fist around the camera. Then Dante carried the dead camera into the hall, and I followed to make sure it was gone. The bedroom door swung almost closed behind me. On its outer edge, hidden beneath the white paint, was a narrow steel plate and a thumb turn. I touched it. The lock slid home with a soft, final click. Inside the room, Noah slept. I stared at the metal in my hand. "Dante," I said. He turned. "Your safe house has a lock on the outside of my son's door." Dante looked down at it. His mouth tightened. His hand went toward the steel plate. I caught his wrist. "Don't remove it. In a custody fight, this is control—not protection. Find out who put it there first."