Page 57 of The Kingpin’s Bride

“I will.”

“Matteo.” My name in her mouth still landed like a claim she had not meant to give me. “Please don’t make me wait for another photograph.”

That one reached the crack I kept refusing to name. I took the diary out of her hands, set it on the desk, and tipped her chin up with two fingers.

“I am going to bring her home,” I said. “Not to make you grateful. Because I am done letting that man write this story.”

Her eyes were wet. She nodded once, sharp, as if nodding harder might make it true. I dropped my hand. “Go finish writing. I bought you some coloring books too. If I call the landline, you answer on the first ring. If anyone who is not me or Santino comes to that door, you do not open it.”

“And if it’s her?” she whispered.

I looked at the photograph one more time. Small hands. Soft eyes. The same mouth as the woman in front of me.

“Then you open it,” I said. “And you do not let go of her until I am in the room.”

She left with the diary. I closed the laptop, checked the pistol I would not fire unless I had to, and took the photograph off the desk and slid it into the inside pocket of my jacket as a reminder of the only outcome tonight that counted.

Camilla Caruso was coming out of that house. Dario Rizzo could come out of it in pieces.

The building was the kind of place that had already given up. Ground floor. Rear alley with a dead camera. Two men on the front stoop who smoked like they were being paid to look bored. Santino’s team took them without a shot.

I went in through the kitchen because kitchens were where men like Dario kept the things they did not want seen from the street.

The apartment smelled like old grease and cheap cleaner. A cartoon played on a muted television. A plastic bowl sat on the table with a few pieces of cut apple turning brown. Then I saw her.

Camilla sat on the carpet in the red shirt from the photograph, a stub of purple crayon in one fist, a page covered in lopsided suns in front of her. Her hair was in a crooked braid someone had given up on halfway through. She was smaller than the picture had made her look.

She looked up. Four years old. Same eyes as Morena. Softer. Already too careful. I stopped in the doorway and went down on one knee so I was not a shadow standing over her.

“Hi,” I said. Quiet. No sudden hands. “My name is Matteo.”

She studied my face the way she had probably learned to study every new man who walked into a room. Then she looked at the watch on my wrist, the ink on my hands, the open doorway behind me.

“Hi. I’m Camilla. Are you one of Dad’s friends?” she asked.

“No.”

She considered that. The crayon rolled between her fingers. “He said nobody nice was coming.”

“He lies a lot.”

A tiny frown. “Rena says lying is for scared people.”

Something in my chest pulled tight.

“Rena is very smart,” I said. “She’s your sister, right?”

Camilla’s whole face changed. It was like watching a light get turned on in a room that had been dark too long. “You know Rena?”

“Yes.”

“Is she mad at me?” The words came out small and fast, like she had been saving them. “I tried to be good. Dario said if I cried she wouldn’t come.”

I shook my head once. “She’s not mad. She’s been looking for you the whole time. She sent me.”

Camilla’s mouth opened. Then she stood up, walked over on bare feet, and put one small hand on the front of my jacket, exactly over the pocket where I had put her photograph. She patted it twice, solemn, as if checking that I was real.

“You’re very tall,” she whispered.