Chapter 7: What Caruso Confessed
Alessio came to the cottage at 4:17 in the morning.
He was dry, which meant he had taken the interior route.
His shirt was torn at the left collar.
He did not explain it and I did not ask.
He stood in the doorway and looked at Leo in my arms, and something in his shoulders dropped half an inch.
Brennan stood up from his chair.
"I'll check the garden," he said, and went out without being asked.
Alessio sat in the vacated chair.
He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands loosely joined, and he looked at the floor for a long moment.
"Caruso talked," he said.
"How much?"
"Enough." He looked up.
"Voss approached him four months ago.
Offered to cover his daughter's medical costs — all of it, the surgery, the rehabilitation, everything — in exchange for access."
"Access to what?"
"To Leo.
Not to kjll him." He said it quickly, reading my face.
"To take him.
A kidnapping.
Hold him until I signed the shipping contract."
"The bead wasn't the plan."
"No.
The bead was Caruso improvising.
Voss told him the timeline was moving up — I'd been in contact with a competing partner.
Caruso panicked.
He thought if Leo was in the hospital, I'd be distracted long enough for Voss to make a move on the contract directly."
"He put a foreign object in your infant son's throat to distract you."
Alessio's jaw tightened.
"Yes."
"And if I hadn't heard the monitor—"
"He didn't think about that part carefully enough." A pause.
"Or he did, and he made a choice I won't forgive."
The fire had burned low.
I watched it.
"Where is he now?" I asked.
"In the house.
Two of my men with him.
He's not going anywhere."
"And Voss?"
"Ferro is handling Voss." He said it with a finality that closed the subject entirely.
I shifted Leo in my arms.
He was beginning to stir — small movements, the precursor to hunger.
We had maybe ten minutes before he made his feelings known.
"There's something else," Alessio said.
I looked at him.
"Caruso said Voss had a second option.
If the kjdnapping failed." He stopped.
"Tell me."
"You." He held my gaze.
"Voss pulled your background when Caruso told him about the nanny who'd saved Leo.
He found your nursing record.
He found why you left."
The room went very still.
"He was going to use it," Alessio said.
"As leverage.
Against you.
To make sure you didn't talk about tonight."
My hands tightened around Leo.
"What did he find," I said.
It came out flat.
"A patient.
Four years ago.
A child who d*ed during a procedure.
The inquiry cleared you.
But Voss had someone who was willing to say otherwise, for the right price."
I had not spoken about that child in four years.
I had not said his name out loud since the day the inquiry closed.
I had left nursing six weeks later and told myself it was a practical decision.
"His name was Oliver," I said.
"He was seven.
He had a toy car in his pocket when they brought him in.
Red.
He wouldn't let go of it."
Alessio said nothing.
"The inquiry was correct," I said.
"But correct doesn't fix it."
"No," Alessio said.
"It doesn't."
Leo opened his eyes.
He looked at his father.
Then he made the small escalating sound that meant the ten minutes were up.
Alessio stood.
He crossed the room and held out his hands.
I hesitated for just a moment.
Then I placed Leo in his father's arms.
Alessio held his son with the careful intensity of a man who has recently understood what loss feels like from the outside of it.
Leo looked up at him and grabbed his collar with one fist.
"He's hungry," I said.
"I know.
There's formula in the kitchen."
"He prefers the bottle slightly warmer than the instructions say."
"I know that too." He looked at me over Leo's head.
"I pay attention."
It was the first thing he had said that sounded like something other than crisis management.
"Voss won't be able to use what he found," Alessio said.
"I'll make sure of it."
"I'm not asking you to."
"I know.
I'm telling you anyway."
Leo yanked on his collar again, more insistently.
"We should get him inside," I said.
"Yes." Alessio moved toward the door, then stopped.
"Nora."
I looked up.
"You stayed in that passage until you heard my voice.
You didn't run further."
"You told me forty minutes."
"Most people would have run."
I picked up his phone from the table and held it out to him.
"Most people don't have a reason to come back."
He took the phone.
"What's yours?" he asked.
I looked at Leo, still gripping his father's collar, his face beginning to crumple toward genuine outrage.
"He likes the sound of rain," I said.
"And it was still raining."
May you like
Alessio looked at me for a moment longer than necessary.
Then he carried his son out into the clearing night.
