Page 55 of The Kingpin’s Bride

I nodded. “Yes. You will tell me everything. Every address. Every name. Every detail of how he contacted you and where the photographs came from.”

Morena’s blue eyes stayed locked on mine. Fear lived in them. Something else did too. Something that looked almost like desperate hope.

“You’ll keep her safe?” The question was barely audible.

I held her gaze for a long moment. The image of a four-year-old in a red shirt sat behind my eyes.

“She is under my protection now,” I said. “That is the only answer you need. The rest is logistics. And logistics are what I do best.”

I released the chain enough for her to move, then pointed to the low cushion beside the chair I used for work. “Kneel for me, baby. Let’s get to work.”

She did. The movement was automatic now. The white dress brushed the marble.

“Start talking,” I said. “Every detail. Do not leave anything out.”

She spoke in a low, steady voice that carried the scrape of tears.

I found out about everything.

The apartment Dario had kept her in. The men who came twice a week to check she was there. The phone numbers he used. The way the photographs arrived. Sometimes slipped under the door of the old place. Once left with the building manager. The most recent one delivered to the penthouse through a cutout I had not yet identified. The red shirt was new. The carpet was in a place Rena didn’t recognize. The fact that Camilla no longer asked for her big sister much, according to Dario’s last taunt.

I typed as she spoke. Names. Addresses. Patterns. Weaknesses. The same cold efficiency I had used on the Vernizzi brothers. The same focus that had built the wall of her photographs in the first place. By the time she finished, the outline of a retrieval was forming in my head.

Dario would not see many more sunrises. If the child was elsewhere, the timeline would stretch only long enough to guarantee she came out of it breathing and unmarked. I closed the laptop and looked at the woman kneeling at my feet.

She was no longer only a solution to a seat. The realization sat in my chest like a second pulse I refused to name.

I stood. She rose at once, legs unsteady, eyes on me.

“The diary,” I said. “Write everything else we haven't discussed while I contact some people.”

She nodded once.

I watched her cross to the low table, pick up the pen, and begin. The soft scratch of ink on paper filled the quiet. She had hidden a child to protect the last pure thing in her life. She had begged for the life of the man who sold her because that man held the only leverage that mattered.

And now the secret was mine.

The retrieval would be arranged before the sun fully set. Dario would be handled with the same clean efficiency that had ended the Vernizzi line. The child would be brought somewhere safe, somewhere Morena could see her without fear once the dust settled.

She was writing when I looked back. Head bent. Dark hair falling forward. The flush faintly visible on her cheeks. The soft white fabric of the clothes I had chosen clinging to the body I had claimed. Her pen scratched faster. I left her there.

The study door shut. I put the photograph of Camilla on the desk under the lamp, face up, and made the first three calls.

Santino first. Not for permission. For bodies.

“I need a quiet team,” I said. “No Moretti colors. No one who drinks at After Dark. Four men who can take a door without turning it into a story.”

A pause. Then, flat: “Is this about your wife?”

“She has a younger sister.”

Another pause, longer. “Send me the address when you have it. I’m not putting Aurora’s name anywhere near this.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to.”

I hung up and called the two cutouts who still owed me unmarked vans and a clean doctor who did not file reports. Last, a man who specialized in finding kids men like Dario hid behind other names.

I sent the man the photo of Camilla. I did not give him Morena’s name. By the time I had a map on the screen, the outline was simple enough to be ugly.