Chapter 1 - Apartment 4B
I went to Apartment 4B prepared to throw out a woman who owed me three months’ rent. Instead, a seven-year-old girl opened the door with bleeding fingertips and returned to sewing beside her seriously ill mother—and before I could leave, a woman I was certain had vanished from my past whispered the name only people from my old life dared to call me.
My name is Nathan Moretti. In Chicago, most people knew better than to say it twice. On paper, I owned restaurants, apartment buildings, nightclubs, warehouses, and a transportation company that moved everything from imported wine to construction equipment. Off paper, there were businesses that never carried my name but still answered when I called. Men who worked for me knew what I controlled. More importantly, they knew I didn’t forgive debts. That rule had kept my world orderly for almost twenty years. So when my accountant mentioned that Apartment 4B at the Bellamy building had fallen three months behind, I decided to handle it personally. Not because the money mattered. The unpaid total was less than I spent on dinner some nights. What bothered me was that every notice had been ignored. Three letters. Two calls. No response. In my world, silence after a debt usually meant disrespect.
I knocked hard enough to make the old wooden door shake.
Tiny footsteps approached.
The door opened six inches.
A little girl stared through the gap.
She could not have been older than seven. Her brown hair was braided loosely down one shoulder, though several strands had escaped around her pale, tired face. She wore a faded pink dress that had been repaired at least twice along the hem. Most disturbing were her hands. Tiny red dots covered three fingertips.
Blood.
“Where’s your mother?” I asked.
The girl stiffened.
“She’s sick.”
“I need to speak with her.”
“She’s sleeping.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lily.”
“Lily what?”
“Bennett.”
The surname meant nothing. At least, not yet.
I glanced beyond her. The apartment was barely furnished. One sagging sofa. Two chairs that didn’t match. Medicine bottles covered a little table beside an almost-empty loaf of bread. Through the small kitchen doorway I saw a refrigerator with a single carton of milk, eggs, and half a jar of peanut butter.
Then I saw the sewing machine.
Old.
Black enamel faded with age, gold detailing almost rubbed away. Fabric covered the small table around it.
“Where’s the rent, Lily?”
Her cheeks reddened.
Without answering, she disappeared into the apartment. A moment later she returned with a crumpled envelope.
She handed it to me.
Inside were forty-three dollars.
I looked at her.
“This is all?”
“I’m making the rest.”
“What does that mean?”
She pointed toward the sewing machine.
“You sew?”
She nodded.
“For people downstairs. Mrs. Cooper has curtains. Mr. Luis needs pants fixed. Miss Hannah gives me four dollars when I fix dresses.”
My hand closed around the envelope.
“You’re seven.”
“I’m almost eight.”
As though that changed everything.
She returned to the machine before I could stop her. Her small foot pressed the pedal. The needle began moving rapidly through a piece of floral fabric.
Her hands were too close.
“Slow down.”
“I need to finish.”
“Why?”
“Mom needs medicine tomorrow.”
The needle came down.
Lily jerked.
A bright bead of blood formed immediately.
She sucked in a breath, wiped the finger against the side of her dress—and kept sewing.
“Stop.”
She shook her head.
“Lily.”
“I have to finish.”
I had watched grown men sit across from me with broken noses and beg for second chances. I had watched competitors lose fortunes without feeling anything. But something about that child bleeding over a sewing machine made my chest tighten in a way I hated.
Thirty years disappeared.
I was eight again.
My mother, Elena Moretti, sat beside a sewing machine in a basement apartment, sewing restaurant uniforms until two in the morning while I counted quarters on the floor. I remembered her swollen fingers. Her bent back. Her whispered promise that tomorrow would be easier.
Tomorrow rarely was.
I pulled several hundred-dollar bills from my wallet.
“Stop working.”
Lily stared at the money but did not take it.
“Mom says not to take money from strangers.”
“I own the building.”
“That’s worse.”
I almost smiled despite myself.
“Why?”
“Because you want rent.”
Fair.
“Your mother needs medicine.”
“I’ll earn it.”
“You’ll hurt your hands.”
“They get better.”
That sentence was too familiar.
I looked toward the closed bedroom door.
“I need to speak with your mother.”
Lily jumped from the chair.
“No.”
The fear was immediate.
“Why?”
She moved in front of the hallway.
“Mom said if Mr. Moretti ever came here, I shouldn’t let him see her.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“How does your mother know my name?”
Lily’s face went pale.
“She just knows.”
“What exactly did she say?”
“That you were dangerous.”
I took one slow step toward the bedroom.
Lily grabbed my sleeve.
“Please.”
Then something shattered behind the closed door.
A glass.
Lily spun around.
“Mom!”
She ran.
I followed.
The bedroom smelled of medicine and fever. A thin woman lay beneath a faded quilt, coughing weakly. A broken water glass glittered beside the bed.
Lily climbed onto the mattress.
“Mommy?”
The woman’s eyes opened.
She looked toward me.
And whispered:
“Nate?”
The world stopped.
Nobody called me Nate anymore.
Nobody except my mother.
My younger brother.
And one girl from thirty years ago.
I stepped closer.
Her hair had faded. Her cheeks had hollowed. Time and illness had changed almost everything.
But not those green eyes.
“Sarah?”
Tears immediately filled them.
“You weren’t supposed to find me.”
My pulse thundered.
“Find you?”
She looked terrified.
I turned toward the old sewing machine visible through the bedroom doorway.
That was when I noticed the tiny mark carved into its wooden base.
A silver rose.
My mother’s mark.
She carved that rose into everything she loved because roses had grown outside the convent where she spent part of her childhood.
There had only been one sewing machine like that.
My mother sold it thirty years ago.
The same night Sarah disappeared.
I turned back.
“Where did you get that machine?”
Sarah closed her eyes.
“Nate…”
“No. Tell me.”
Lily looked between us.
“Mom?”
Sarah began coughing again. Lily reached for her water, realized the glass had broken, and hurried toward the kitchen.
I stepped closer to the bed.
“I thought you were dead.”
Sarah’s eyes filled.
“That was the point.”
Cold moved through me.
“Whose point?”
She looked toward the hallway, making sure Lily was gone.
Then she whispered:
“Your father’s.”
I stopped breathing.
My father, Carlo Moretti, had been dead sixteen years.
Sarah continued.
“He told me if I ever came near you again, my mother would disappear next.”
My jaw locked.
“What did he do?”
Tears slipped down her cheeks.
“He bought your mother’s sewing machine. Gave it to me. Said I should remember what happened to poor women who made Moretti men weak.”
I felt sick.
“My mother never told me.”
“She didn’t know why it was sold.”
“Why did you leave?”
Sarah looked toward the kitchen.
Then back at me.
“Because I was pregnant.”
Everything in the room became distant.
The radiator.
Traffic outside.
My own breathing.
I slowly turned toward Lily.
Seven years old.
Brown hair.
Green eyes.
But the shape of her eyebrows.
The small dimple beside her mouth.
Moretti features I had spent my entire life seeing in mirrors and family photographs.
My voice came out almost soundless.
“Sarah.”
She began crying.
“Don’t.”
“Is Lily mine?”
She closed her eyes.
That was answer enough.
I had entered Apartment 4B ready to evict two strangers.
Instead, I had found the woman my father stole from me.
My mother’s sewing machine.
And possibly the daughter I had spent seven years not knowing existed.
Then Lily returned carrying a plastic cup of water.
She looked at me.
“Why is Mom crying?”
May you like
I opened my mouth.
For the first time in twenty years, Nathan Moretti—the man Chicago feared—had absolutely no idea what to say.
