Chapter 55: The Ambush Under FDR

I did not wait for Dante to stop bleeding before I decided Noah was leaving Maya's house. The brownstone had a broken basement window, a stranger's muddy handprint, and a blue vial locked above Maya's refrigerator. It was not a refuge anymore. And I would not keep Noah inside a house someone had already entered while I waited to learn what the vial would have done to him. Noah was stable. That mattered. It was also why I could move before fear became an emergency someone else used to take my choices away. Maya tied a dish towel around Dante's palm from the doorway. He stayed outside. I made sure of it. "The independent pediatric unit on Thirty-Eighth has Noah's real prescription in the trust lockbox," I told Maya. "Dr. Hall set it outside both families' keys. We go there. We do not use anything from that box. We do not call a Moretti. We do not ask a De Luca for permission." Maya's jaw set. "I drive." "You drive my son," I said. "I sit with him." I looked at Dante on the top step. Rain had turned his shirt dark around his ribs. The black-and-gold cord lay loose in his good hand. "You take Luca's car," I said. "You stay ahead of us. You do not choose the turns. You do not get near Noah unless I say so. If someone follows, they see a Moretti in a De Luca car before they see us." He did not argue. That was new enough to hurt. "Maya decides when we stop," I added. "Not you." "Understood." The De Luca sedan rolled away first with Dante alone behind the wheel. Maya's small hatchback followed at a distance, Noah buckled into his seat between us. I kept the medication box inside my canvas bag beneath my feet, the locked blue vial buried in its tin at the bottom where Noah could not reach it. My prenatal packet, the Room Four sleeve, the cracked card, the necklace, the committee card, and the broken red seal pressed against my body where no car window could show their shape. Noah held his dinosaur against his chest. "Are we going to the doctor?" he asked. "We're going somewhere that knows which medicine is yours," I said. "That is all." He nodded. He trusted the answer because I did not make it pretty. Rain blurred the East River into gray glass as Maya took the lower road. Ahead, Dante's sedan moved under FDR's concrete ribs, its taillights red through the spray. For six blocks, nothing happened. Then an unmarked cargo van jackknifed across two lanes. Maya hit the brakes. Noah pitched forward against his harness. I caught the side of his seat and pulled the dinosaur blanket over his legs before he could see the men climbing from the van. They wore dark rain jackets with De Luca badges clipped at their chests. One of them raised a tire iron. "Down," I told Noah. He did not question me. He folded over the dinosaur, small and shaking but listening. The first blow starred Maya's windshield. She gasped. I reached over the seat, locked the rear doors, then grabbed the emergency hammer from the floor pocket and shoved it into Maya's hand. "Do not open anything," I said. "If the glass goes, you break the side window and drive." The passenger door yanked once. Twice. The lock held. Ahead of us, Dante's sedan stopped hard. He had seen the van. Instead of turning back to tell us what to do, he drove the De Luca car straight into the open space between the cargo van and Maya's hood. Metal screamed. The sedan took the hit meant for Noah's door. Dante climbed out through the driver's side with blood already soaking the towel around his hand. "Stay in the car!" I shouted. He looked at me once through the rain-streaked glass. Then he turned his body toward the men coming for Noah. It was not rescue. It was not forgiveness. It was a man finally putting himself between the danger and the child he had once failed before the danger reached us. The man with the tire iron swung at Dante's head. Dante caught his wrist with the injured hand, grunted, and drove him into the side of the sedan. A second man came around the hood with a knife. I saw the blade before Dante did. "Dante!" The knife went into his side. He folded against the sedan but did not fall. His shoulder hit the rear door hard enough to rock the car. The man behind him reached for the handle beside Noah's seat. I was already there. I shoved the door lock down with both hands and kicked the inside panel where his fingers showed through the cracked seal. He cursed and pulled back. I leaned across Noah, kept my body between him and the glass, and hit the horn until the sound became one long animal scream under the highway. Maya put the hatchback in reverse. The van blocked the lane behind us. "Left," I said. "There." There was a strip of wet shoulder between the van and a concrete pillar. Not enough room unless she believed me. Maya did. She backed hard. The hatchback scraped concrete, shuddered, and slid past the van with a howl of metal. For one terrible second, Dante disappeared behind the cargo door. Then he staggered into view, one hand pressed to his side, the other holding the tire-iron man's jacket collar. He dragged the man into the rain and tore the De Luca badge from his chest. The man laughed bloodlessly. "You think Luca sent us?" he spat. Dante's face had gone white. "Who paid you?" The attacker looked past him at me through the rear window. "Vittoria paid first." It was an accusation thrown by a man in a failed attack, not proof of who had ordered him. Then the cargo van lurched forward. Its side door slammed into Dante, throwing him clear across the wet road. Maya screamed his name. I did not. Noah was crying now, silent tears running into the dinosaur's green fur. I held his face between my hands. "Look at me," I said. "You are with me. You are not going with anyone else." The van vanished beneath FDR with the men and their badges. Dante pushed himself up on one elbow in the rain. Blood spread dark beneath his hand. The De Luca badge lay in the gutter. Vittoria's name hung over the road like a second weapon. Both of them had just come for my son.