Chapter 5: The Man With the Smile Sharp Enough to Cut Glass
The doctor's name was Reyes.
She worked out of a private clinic in the Back Bay that had no sign on the door and no listing in any directory.
Dante had been sending people there for twelve years — people who needed care without questions, without records, without the kind of attention that came from emergency rooms.
Dr.
Reyes examined Elena for forty minutes while Dante sat in the waiting room with three six-year-olds and a painting wrapped in his coat.
Rosa sat beside him and did not speak.
Mia fell asleep against his arm.
Cora drew on a notepad she'd pulled from somewhere in her coat pocket, filling the page with small careful horses.
At ten-fifteen, Dr.
Reyes came out.
"She needs to be admitted to a proper facility," Reyes said quietly.
"The kidney function is at thirty-one percent.
It's been declining for a while.
She needs a full workup, a nephrologist, and almost certainly a transplant evaluation."
"Arrange it."
"Dante, that's — "
"Arrange it.
Tonight if possible.
Tomorrow morning at the latest.
Whatever it costs."
Reyes looked at him for a moment, then nodded and went back through the door.
Dante's phone had been vibrating in his pocket for two hours.
He took it out.
Eleven missed calls.
Seven from Nico.
Three from a number he recognized as the restaurant in the North End.
One from Vincent directly.
He put the phone back in his pocket.
"Is she going to be okay?" Rosa asked.
"The doctor is going to make sure she is."
"That's not what I asked."
Dante looked at her.
She was watching him with those green eyes that were Elena's eyes and also, he was beginning to understand, entirely her own.
"She's going to need treatment," he said.
"It's serious.
But she's not alone anymore."
Rosa considered this.
"Are you going to stay?"
"Yes."
"Even though she told you to leave?"
"She told me to leave before she knew how sick she was."
Rosa thought about this with the gravity of someone twice her age.
"Okay," she said finally.
"But you should know she cried after you left the last time.
The real time.
Not tonight — before.
When things were bad between you.
She didn't think I knew but I was listening."
"You were a baby."
"I know things," Rosa said simply, and went back to watching the door.
Dante called Nico at ten-forty.
"Where are you?" Nico said immediately.
"Back Bay.
I need you to pull everything we have on Vincent Caruso going back nine years.
Financial records, communications, the Gloucester property transfers, the I-93 incident report — everything."
A pause.
"Boss, Vincent has been calling — "
"I know.
Don't return it.
And Nico." Dante kept his voice even.
"Vincent said seven years ago that he had someone close to me.
Someone who reported to him.
I need you to start thinking about who that was."
A longer pause.
"You don't think it's me," Nico said.
It wasn't quite a question.
"If I thought it was you, I wouldn't be calling you."
"Okay." Nico's voice was careful.
"I'll start pulling."
"One more thing.
Find out if Vincent has had anyone watching a building in Dorchester in the last six months.
Discreetly."
"Understood."
Dante ended the call.
Elena came out twenty minutes later, moving slowly, a paper prescription in her hand.
She stopped when she saw Mia asleep against Dante's arm.
Something crossed her face that she didn't try to hide.
"Reyes wants me admitted tomorrow," Elena said.
"I know."
"I can't leave the girls."
"They'll stay with me."
"Dante — "
"Elena." He said it quietly, not harshly.
"You have been alone with this for seven years.
You don't have to be alone with it tonight."
She looked at him for a long time.
Then she sat down in the chair on his other side, the one Rosa had vacated, and she didn't say anything else.
After a moment, almost without seeming to decide to, she leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.
Dante's phone buzzed one more time.
He looked at the screen.
Vincent Caruso.
Calling again.
He let it ring.
But across the city, in a private dining room in the North End, a man with a smile sharp enough to cut glass was already setting down his napkin.
May you like
Already reaching for his own phone.
Already calling someone else.
