Chapter 2 - The Lullaby and the Ultimatum
Stop. Enzo’s voice cracked through the room. Cerberus doesn’t like strangers. His hand moved under his jacket. The two guards by the hall shifted. And somehow the room had become a scene people found later in court documents.
But I was already walking forward. Every instinct I owned was screaming. I ignored all of it. Because fear was no match for recognition. Because grief has a smell when it wakes up. Because I had spent seven years imagining a reunion and none of those fantasies had included a gun pointed in my direction.
Sarabus bared his teeth. I kept moving. Then I did the stupidest thing I have ever done in my life. I started humming. The melody came out cracked and thin at first. An old Sicilian lullaby my grandmother used to sing in a kitchen that always smelled like tomato sauce and basil. A song she taught me for storms. For funerals. For any night when something you loved needed to be reminded it still belonged somewhere.
The dog’s growl cut off mid-breath. That terrified me more than the growl had. His ears twitched. His head tilted. The violence did not vanish. It broke. Like glass under pressure. Like something brutal splitting around something older and softer it could not kill. I dropped to my knees six feet away from him. My voice shook. My hands shook. Everything in me was shaking, but the melody kept coming.
His front paw moved first. Then the other. Then this scarred, thick-necked, terrifying animal began to crawl toward me on his belly like the biggest apology in the world. By the time he reached me, I was crying too hard to see. He collapsed against my chest with a sound I still cannot describe without my throat tightening. Not a bark. Not a whine. Something ruined and relieved at the same time. I buried both hands in his fur. There were old scars under my fingers. He smelled like metal, shampoo, and old fear.
I pressed my face into his neck and the years between us snapped so hard it hurt. It’s me. I’m here. I never stopped looking.
Silence hit the room. Not normal silence. The dangerous kind. The kind that meant powerful men were rearranging their understanding of reality. Then Enzo Dante said one word. Explain.
I looked up at him with my arms still wrapped around the dog he called Cerberus. His gun was out now. Not aimed at my head. Not quite. But close enough that I understood my next sentence might decide whether I left the penthouse breathing.
You want an explanation. Fine. Someone stole my puppy seven years ago. And unless your certified breeder also specialized in kidnapping dogs out of grieving girls’ backyards, your attack dog is mine.
One of the guards laughed once. Too fast. Too nervous. It died when Enzo glanced at him. Impossible, he said. His voice was quiet. That made it worse. Men like him did not need to raise their voices. They had other people for that. I tightened my hold on Sarabus. Cerberus. Whatever name he had learned to answer to after I lost him. He pressed harder into me, as if somebody else in the room understood I might get taken from him again.
Look at his chest. I turned him slightly. Look at the white mark. I used to trace it before bed. Every night. And the scar over his eye. That wasn’t there when he was mine.
Enzo stepped closer. Not enough to touch the dog. Just enough to inspect what he thought he owned. His expression did not change. His eyes did. They sharpened. That song, he said. Where did you learn it.
My grandmother. She sang it to him when he was little. She sang it to me too. So no, Mr. Dante, this is not a coincidence.
I expected rage. A threat. A quiet order for somebody to make me disappear and solve the inconvenience. Instead, he watched the dog melt into me and looked unsettled for the first time. Then he did something stranger than shooting me. He lowered his weapon.
May you like
You will stay, he said. I stared at him. I had just accused one of the most feared men in Manhattan of owning stolen property with teeth. My dinner was all over his floor. His dog was in my lap. And this man’s solution was apparently kidnapping with better upholstery.
I’m taking him home, I said. No, you’re not. The answer came flat. Absolute. Like weather.
