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"The play area suddenly had a bunch of big kids pushing and fighting, causing chaos... I just turned around to help a baby who fell, less than half a minute!" Martha sobbed uncontrollably on the other end, voice shaking apart. "When I turned back, the block castle had collapsed, Leon's mat was empty! We've already locked down all the play area exits, checked the security footage and found... Leon ran out while we weren't paying attention!"
Chapter 30
Marcelo
I leaned against the pillar outside the Hilton lobby, pulled a cigarette from my jacket pocket, bit off the filter, and lit it.
Drew deep. The harsh tobacco burned down into my lungs, but couldn't touch the suffocating tightness in my chest.
Ruby's words in that hallway kept circling back, a dull blade cutting the same wound over and over.
I closed my eyes. The smell of blood from that Long Island basement four years ago, the screams of the DeLucas as they died, and the razor-thin red rimming her eyes just now—all of it tangled together in the darkness, a net I couldn't break free from.
I thought if I cleared out every enemy in New York, I could give her a sky with no shadows. Make it up to her.
But she didn't need that.
She wouldn't even let me explain.
Maybe I needed to think this through again.
The cigarette burned down to the filter, heat stinging my fingers. I crushed it out in the metal trash can and buttoned my jacket.
Rocco had just texted—the Maybach was waiting in the garage. I crossed through the crowded lobby, heading for the side door to the parking level, when something tugged at my right pant leg.
I'd barely taken two steps when I felt it—a light pull on my right pant leg.
"Excuse me, sir. Can you help me?"
A small voice came from below.
Years of living on the knife's edge kicked in. My right hand shot down, landing on the gun at my waist, every nerve pulling taut as a bowstring in half a second.
In Manhattan's underworld, using women and children as bait was standard operating procedure. DeLuca's remnants were still hiding somewhere on the East Coast. A strange kid latching onto my leg without warning was enough to trigger maximum alert.
But when I looked down and saw the face staring up at me, my hand froze at my waist.
A little boy, barely reaching above my knee, looked up at me. He wore a forest-green hooded jacket, the collar askew, showing the edge of a light gray sweatshirt underneath. His nose was pink from the cold, soft brown curls falling messily across his forehead.
What stopped me cold were his eyes.
Gray-green.
Like olive groves in Tuscany shrouded in spring mist. Like a deep pool washed clean by a storm. Even the curve of his nose, the shape of his pressed-together lips—all of it carried a familiar shadow that made something in my chest seize up.
Enemy trap? A deliberately sculpted decoy?
Every brutal mafia suspicion I'd ever learned raced through my mind. But looking at those clear, pure eyes with no trace of deception, I couldn't summon the instinct to kill.
Those eyes looked like mine.
Logic screamed at me to push him away, have security take this unknown child to the police. But my body wouldn't listen. Something deep in my chest was waking up—maybe a last scrap of humanity surviving years of bloodshed, maybe something those eyes called forth.
Something I couldn't explain with reason hit me like a punch to the gut, shattering every defense.
"Sir?"
The kid blinked up at me through long lashes when I didn't respond. His little hand held onto my pant leg stubbornly while he rubbed his stomach, looking a bit pitiful. "There's big kids pushing people in the play area. Aunt Martha's holding crying babies. The castle fell down... I'm hungry."
