Chapter 4 - A SAFE HOUSE WITH NO LOCKED DOORS|
The safe apartment was on the top floor of a renovated brownstone in Brooklyn, far from the restaurant and the neighborhood where Samantha had spent six years stretching every dollar.
It had two bedrooms, a clean kitchen, a small balcony, and windows facing a quiet railway line. The refrigerator was full. A stack of fresh towels sat beside the bathroom sink. Someone had placed a box of crayons and several blank notebooks on the coffee table.
Samantha noticed the locks first.
Each door had a heavy deadbolt. The windows were reinforced. A camera watched the street from the neighboring rooftop.
She looked at Franco.
“You call this safe?”
“I call it prepared.”
“I call it a place where a person can't leave without being watched.”
“The cameras face the street, not the rooms. You can check every one of them yourself.”
“Can I go outside?”
“Yes.”
“Can I take Tyler to the park?”
“With an escort until we understand the threat.”
She let out a humorless laugh.
“So I'm a prisoner with fresh towels.”
Franco did not argue.
Instead, he took a small key from his pocket and placed it on the kitchen table.
“This opens the front door. The second key opens the service entrance. Neither one belongs to me.”
Samantha stared at them.
“You really expect me to trust you because you gave me keys?”
“No. I expect you to judge me by what I do after you take them.”
She hated that he sounded sincere.
She hated even more that some part of her still remembered the man who had sat on her kitchen floor eating burnt eggs and laughing when she told him he was hopeless in a domestic setting.
Tyler wandered toward the crayons.
Franco stayed several feet away while the boy chose a blue marker and opened a notebook. He drew a series of small rectangles connected by lines.
“Trains?” Franco asked.
Tyler nodded.
“Can I sit here?”
The boy hesitated, then pointed to the other side of the table.
Franco sat.
Samantha watched from the kitchen doorway, unable to reconcile this quiet man with the stories she had heard about the Richetti family. A feared businessman, people said. A man whose opponents disappeared from negotiations forever. A man who could make a room full of powerful men forget their own names by entering it.
Yet here he was, asking permission to sit beside a child.
Tyler pushed the drawing toward him.
Franco studied it seriously.
“That's a very good station.”
Tyler tapped one rectangle.
“Mommy's room.”
“And this one?”
“My room.”
“What about this?”
Tyler pointed toward the space connecting them.
“Daddy room.”
Franco's breath caught.
Samantha crossed the room.
“He doesn't mean you.”
Tyler stared at his drawing, then began rubbing out the final rectangle.
Franco gently stopped his hand.
“You don't have to erase it.”
Samantha looked away, afraid the smallest act of kindness would make her forget six years of loneliness.
Later, when Tyler was asleep, she found Franco standing on the balcony with his phone against his ear.
“No,” he said quietly. “You will not approach the child. You will not mention his name to anyone. If I hear that you've shared information with Wells again, the arrangement between us is finished.”
He ended the call.
Samantha stepped outside.
“Who were you threatening?”
“Someone who should have known better.”
“You can't threaten everyone into behaving.”
“No. But sometimes you can make it expensive to misbehave.”
She folded her arms.
“I won't raise Tyler in a house where violence is the answer to everything.”
Franco turned to face her.
“Neither will I.”
“You say that as if it's easy.”
“It isn't.”
For a moment, his confidence disappeared, leaving a man who looked tired beyond his years.
“My father taught me that fear was the only reliable kind of loyalty,” he admitted. “I built my life around that lesson. I'm beginning to think he was wrong.”
Samantha looked at him carefully.
“Beginning?”
A faint, painful smile crossed his face.
“I have a lot to learn.”
Inside, Tyler called out in his sleep.
Samantha hurried to him.
By the time she returned, Franco had placed a folded piece of paper on the kitchen table.
It contained the name of a pediatric specialist, an independent attorney, and a bank account statement proving that the three thousand dollars had come from his personal funds.
He had written one sentence at the bottom.
No money is worth your trust, and none of this makes you mine.
Samantha read it twice.
Then her phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number contained a photograph of Tyler asleep in his new bed.
May you like
Beneath it were seven words.
Nice room. Shame if he disappeared.
