Chapter 7 - The Return
The padlocked door at the back of the shop gave way under two kicks from Marco’s boot.
Inside, curled on a filthy mattress in the corner of a windowless storage closet, was a woman. Her clothes were torn, her face bruised from where Vance’s men had dragged her down the stairs of her apartment, but her eyes—those same fierce, desperate hazel eyes I had seen on Fifth Avenue—snapped open with primal terror.
She raised an empty tin can, her knuckles white. “Stay back! Don’t touch me!”
I stepped into the light of the doorway, holding out the yellow piece of paper I had carried from my brownstone.
“Clara Hayes?”
She froze, looking from my face to the paper in my hand. “Where... where did you get that? What did you do to my babies? Where are Lily and Sam? *Where are my babies?!*”
Her voice tore through the room in an agonized shriek of maternal panic. She launched herself off the mattress, ignoring her injuries, ready to tear out my eyes with her bare fingernails.
Marco stepped forward to intercept her, but I held up a hand, stopping him.
“Your son had bilateral pneumonia, Mrs. Hayes,” I told her, my voice low, firm, and utterly calm. “He was three hours from respiratory arrest. He is currently asleep in my home under the supervision of a licensed physician. His fever has broken. His oxygen is stable.”
She stopped dead in her tracks, chest heaving, tears spilling over the bruises on her cheekbones. “And Lily?”
“Lily is sitting in a silk bed on the Gold Coast, having eaten a hot meal, holding a cardboard box of chocolate that she refuses to let out of her sight until I return.” I held the yellow paper out to her. “She gave me this. She said you loved them more than the stars.”
Clara Hayes collapsed to her knees, burying her face in her calloused hands, her shoulders heaving with great, racking sobs of relief that shook her entire frame.
I walked over, bent down, and offered her my arm.
May you like
“Come,” I said gently. “Your daughter is waiting for you.”
***
