Page 7 of The Hidden Heir

"Michael is Petrucci blood. Running is a life for fugitives, not for children. I won't watch my brother's son grow up learning the sound of a motel deadbolt."

"I never asked for any of this."

"No. But it's here anyway." I glance around her small warm kitchen one last time. "Pack a bag. For both of you."

Hope flares in her eyes, foolish and bright. "You'll let us..."

"You're coming with me."

"We are not."

I hold her gaze and say nothing. She tries the stall anyway. "His medicine. It's upstairs." But the stairs run past the back door and we both know it.

"There are two of my men on the alley and one on the corner," I say. "But by all means. Get the medicine."

She doesn't move.

So I do. I cross to the basket of folded laundry by the table and start packing for the boy myself. Sleep sacks. Small socks. A stuffed rabbit missing one ear. A pale-blue blanket with hand-stitched hippos, which I fold in half, then in quarters, with more care than I've handled anything in years.

"Stop." Her voice cracks down the middle. "Don't touch his things. I'll do it."

That's how I win. Not with the gun.

With a blanket.

Forty minutes later, bags by the door, boy in his carrier, she stops on the threshold and looks back. Not at me. Through me. At the high chair. The crayon scribble taped to the refrigerator, sun-faded at the corners. Two years of double shifts and deadbolts and nobody's help, a whole small life she built out of nothing, and she doesn't know if she'll ever stand in it again.

I see exactly what I'm taking from her.

I take it anyway.

An hour later we're northbound along the lake, the water a long black absence on our right. Michael sleeps in his car seat behind us, the hippo blanket tucked to his chin. Valentina sits with her arms crossed, staring out the window like the glass owes her something.

"Where are you taking us?" she finally asks.

"Home."

"Whose?"

"Mine."

"So I'm a prisoner."

"That's an ugly word."

"If the shoe fits," she hisses.

I almost smile. Rooms go silent when I walk into them. This woman talks back like it costs nothing, but her eyes give her away. She knows the odds. She simply refuses to be polite about them.

The gates read my plates and swing open, and the house my great-great-grandfather built rises out of the Gold Coast dark, brick and shadow and French windows, cameras turning to follow the car. Beyond the roofline, Lake Michigan breathes against the shore.

"Cameras and motion sensors on every approach," I tell her as we roll up the drive. "I mention it so you don't waste a night finding out."

Eddie comes down the front steps as I park, one of the men permanently attached to the house, built like a door and gentler than he looks. He clocks Valentina, then the car seat, and his frown deepens.

"Mr. Petrucci?"

"Miss Valentina Peroni and her son, Michael. My nephew." I let that settle on him. "They're family now, whether Miss Peroni likes it or not. Put them in the Michelangelo Room."