FULL CHAPTER: I Asked to Take the Leftovers Home for My Seven-Year-Old Son—Then the Most Feared Mafia Boss in Chicago Heard Every Word

Three days.

That was all we had, and Gabriel spent them like a man packing a house before a flood.

Thursday morning, he went to breakfast at his uncle’s.

He came back at ten with his tie loosened and a face like a locked door.

“He flipped the dollar the entire time,” he said.

I handed him coffee. My hands hadn’t entirely stopped shaking since Wednesday.

“Did he ask about the book?”

“Twice. Casually. Once over the eggs, once over the check.” Gabriel sat. “I told him it was a repair job from a client. Someone else’s cookbook. He relaxed. A little.” His mouth twisted. “He asked me to say hello to the girl.”

“What girl?”

“That’s what I said.” He stared into the mug. “He said, the pretty one. With the boy.”

The cold slid down my spine.

“He knows where I live.”

“Yes.”

At noon, a delivery boy knocked on my door with a wicker basket wrapped in green cellophane.

Cheese. Crackers. A tin of cookies. Two oranges. A bottle of sparkling cider.

A card in a spidery hand:

With the Hart family’s gratitude for your kindness to Lucia’s memory.

I stood in the doorway holding the basket like it might bite.

Teddy took it out of my hands, gloved, and set it on the landing.

“He’s telling you,” Gabriel said quietly, “that he can reach you.”

“I know what he’s telling me.”

“I’ll move you tonight. Both of you. A hotel, a house, wherever you—”

“No.”

“Nora.”

“I’m not leaving my home because a man sent me crackers.”

“He’s—”

“I know what he is.” My voice cracked. I let it. “I’ve been scared of one thing or another since I was five years old, Gabriel. I’m tired. I’d like to be scared in my own kitchen.”

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he nodded.

“Teddy on the stairs. Two men on the street. A sitter who works for me.”

“Mrs. Delgado works for me.”

“A second sitter.”

“Fine.”

Eli’s voice drifted from the couch.

“Can we eat the cheese?”

“No.”

“Not even the cheese?”

“Not even the cheese.”

He considered this with the gravity of a man losing a negotiation.

“That’s unreasonable,” he said.

Gabriel turned away so I wouldn’t see him smile.

Friday evening, a thin old man in a rumpled raincoat climbed three flights of stairs with a cane and a cardboard file box.

“Frank Ruiz,” he said, breathing hard at my threshold. “Retired. I’d shake your hand, but I’d have to put down the box.”

Gabriel stood. “Detective.”

“Mr. Hart.” Ruiz’s eyes were very pale and very tired. “I worked the fire at Lucia’s. March fifteenth, 1999.”

“I remember.”

“I wrote accident.” Ruiz set the box on my worktable. “I was told to. By my captain, who was told by a man whose name I’m not going to say in front of a woman with a small child in the next room.”

“Vincent,” Gabriel said.

Ruiz didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

“The boiler’s pressure valve had been tampered with,” he said. “I saw the file marks. I photographed them. I put the photographs in a Folgers can in my garage and I’ve had them for twenty-seven years.” He tapped the box. “I’m sixty-nine. I have a bad heart and a worse conscience.”

“Will you stand?” Gabriel asked.

“Tomorrow night? In a ballroom full of people who think I’m dead?” Ruiz’s crooked smile broke through. “I’d be honored.”

On Saturday afternoon, I stood in the bathroom doorway watching Gabriel Hart, head of one of the most feared crime families in Chicago, kneel on my bathroom tile and struggle with a seven-year-old’s clip-on tie.

“It’s crooked,” Eli said.

“It’s a clip-on. It can’t be crooked.”

“It’s crooked.”

“Hold still.”

“Do you have a kid?”

“No.”

Eli thought about this.

“Cake is a formal event,” he said. “If there’s cake, I’m not going to be in pajamas.”

“Mrs. Delgado will bring you to the hotel after dessert.”

“I know. I’m just saying.” He frowned. “You’d be okay at this, you know. You don’t yell.”

Gabriel’s hands paused on the tie.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.