She did not look at him. “You lied.”
Nico sat on the floor across from her, suit jacket off, tie still nowhere in sight, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows. Men feared him most when he was composed. Right now, composition was all he had left.
“I told you you’d be safe here,” he said.
“She got hurt because of me.”
“No. She got hurt because of me.”
That made her look up.
Children rarely heard adults tell the truth that directly. Sophie stared at him as though she did not know whether to be relieved or more frightened.
“Is she going to die?” she whispered.
Nico thought of the hospital monitors, the tubes, the surgeon’s exhausted face, the way Leah had somehow smiled at him with blood in her mouth and still sounded faintly annoyed.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Sophie burst into tears again, but this time he pulled her into his arms and let her cry there.
By evening, Nico had three names.
Roman D’Angelo.
Deputy Police Commissioner Raymond Keane.
A city contracts broker named Clay Mercer, an alderman with polished shoes, television hair, and a church attendance record tailored for reelection brochures.
That was the dangerous truth hiding under the gossip.
