Chapter 2 - The Whisper in the Wax
The smell of beeswax and stale espresso clung to the library’s mahogany shelves, but Dante Moretti smelled only gunpowder and ozone—the lingering phantom senses that always visited him before a purge.
He remained cross-legged on the Persian rug, heedless of the creased creases of his bespoke trousers. Across from him, Lily Castellanos sat with the solemn dignity only a four-year-old could summon. Her small fingers smoothed the edges of the drawing she had pulled from her shoebox.
“Show me again, Little Flower,” Dante said, keeping his voice beneath the rumble of the Manhattan traffic outside the reinforced windows.
Lily tapped the construction paper. The crayon was dull, waxy, and thick, yet the strokes possessed a terrifying precision. A man in a brown vest. Round spectacles. But it was not Giuseppe Falcone. Dante had known Giuseppe for thirty years; the old tailor had a stoop from fifty years over an iron and an amputated left earlobe from a stray shrapnel burst in Palermo during the sixties.
This drawing showed two ears. And across the right knuckle, Lily had rendered three blue dots with the tip of a Crayola stub.
“He had stars on his fingers,” Lily whispered, her large hazel eyes unwavering. “Like the ones Mama puts on my chart when I eat my greens. But these were blue. And he smelled like vinegar.”
*Acetic acid,* Dante realized, his pulse kicking against his ribs. *Photographic chemical or circuit solvent.*
“Did he speak to Mr. Falcone?” Dante asked.
“Mr. Falcone was sleeping in the back room,” Lily said plainly. “The curtain was closed. The star-finger man told me to sit on the radiator and count the buttons in the jar. He said if I made a sound, the needle would prick my tongue.” She shrugged, an innocent, fragile gesture that made Dante’s jaw ache with sudden, murderous pressure. “So I took my dolphin scissors from Mama’s coat pocket and hid them in my sock. Just in case.”
Dante looked at the door. Marco Bellini stood outside the glass pane, silhouetted like an iron obelisk. Dante raised two fingers.
The door swung inward instantly. Marco stepped in, eyes scanning the rug, the child, the drawings.
“Boss?”
“Giuseppe Falcone isn't sewing our suits,” Dante said, his voice flat, devoid of the warmth he had used with the girl. “Take four men. Go to Mulberry Street through the cellar entrance of the bakery across the alley. If Giuseppe is breathing, get him to Dr. Valenti. If he isn’t, hold the shop until I arrive. Nobody enters. Nobody leaves.”
“And Romano?” Marco asked, dropping his voice to a murmur that didn't carry across the rug. “He’s still lingering by the gate downstairs. He’s asking questions about your doctor. He wants to know if you need his personal physician from Long Island.”
“Tell Victor I am resting in the master suite and the blinds are drawn,” Dante said. “Give him the decoy ledger for the Brooklyn docks. Tell him I need him to review the union disbursements before tonight. Keep his hands full of paper. He likes paper. It makes him feel like a general.”
“Understood.” Marco hesitated, his gaze drifting down to Lily. “And the maid? Her family?”
“They don't leave this house,” Dante commanded softly. “Move Mrs. Castellanos and the child to the third floor. The east wing. The rooms with the steel-reinforced doors.”
Elena Castellanos stood just beyond the threshold, her hands wringing her gray apron until the knuckles showed white through her caramel skin. She had heard enough. When Dante rose to his full six-foot-two height, she flinched, stepping instinctively between him and Lily.
“Señor Moretti,” Elena said, her accent trembling with an immigrant mother’s ancient dread. “We don't know anything. We didn't see anything. I swear on the Virgin. Let me take Lily to my sister’s apartment in Queens. We will get on a bus tonight. You will never hear from us—”
Dante crossed the space between them in two long strides. He did not touch her, but his shadow enveloped her completely. Up close, he noticed the faint circles under her eyes, the raw redness of her wrists from lye and industrial bleach, and the defiant, trembling courage in her chin. She was terrified of him, yet she had put her body between him and her daughter without an instant’s hesitation.
“Mrs. Castellanos,” Dante said, his voice dropping into a register that brook no argument, “if you leave this house, you and your daughter will be dead before you reach the Queens Midtown Tunnel.”
Elena went dead pale. “Why? We are nothing. I clean your floors!”
“You were in Falcone’s shop when an assassin planted a military-grade transponder into the clothing of the head of the Moretti family,” Dante said. He reached down, picking up the severed tie from the side table, the copper bug glinting like an insect’s eye in the morning light. “They know who signed for the delivery. They know who cleaned the dressing room. And if they suspect for one second that this four-year-old child noticed the stitching, they will not take chances with witnesses.”
Elena’s knees buckled. Dante caught her by the forearms, his grip firm, steadying, before releasing her the moment she found her footing.
“You stay here,” he said. “You eat from my kitchen. My men will guard your door. You keep Lily drawing. Every face she saw in that shop. Every car parked on that curb.”
Lily walked over, her mismatched shoes clicking softly on the parquet floor, and slipped her small, warm hand into Dante’s large, scarred palm.
“I have green crayons too,” she announced to the room. “For the car with the broken eye.”
Dante looked down at the tiny hand resting in his—a hand that had just saved him from an execution on Mott Street.
May you like
“Draw the car with the broken eye, Lily,” Dante said gently, his fingers closing carefully around hers. “And I’ll make sure nobody ever takes your scissors again.”
***
