Chapter 3
Ruby’s room looked like a staged disappearance.
Closet empty.
Drawers open.
Bed stripped.
Her stuffed animals packed into two suitcases.
Photographs removed from the shelves.
Even the little glass night-light shaped like a moon had been unplugged.
Ethan’s clothes hung in half the closet.
His books already sat beside Ruby’s bed.
I stood in the doorway.
Valentina did not enter.
Smart.
Marcus did.
Under guard.
“It can all be moved back.”
I looked at him.
“That is not the point.”
“It is exactly the point.”
“No.”
I stepped inside.
“The point is that you expected it to stay this way long enough to become normal.”
He said nothing.
That landed.
I opened the nearest suitcase.
Ruby’s birthday dresses.
Shoes.
A blanket that belonged to her biological mother, Serena.
My hand stopped.
Serena had died when Ruby was fourteen months old.
The blanket had been one of the few things I kept exactly where she left it.
I turned.
“Who packed this?”
Valentina finally entered.
“I did.”
“You touched Serena’s things.”
Her face hardened.
“That room cannot remain a shrine forever.”
Interesting.
Ruby’s removal was not only about Ethan.
It was about Serena too.
Valentina looked around.
“Everywhere I turn, there’s a dead woman.”
I stared.
“No.”
“Her photographs. Her blanket. Her books. Ruby asking what Serena liked. Staff telling stories about her.”
“She is Ruby’s mother.”
“And I am your wife.”
There.
The competition.
I had suspected jealousy.
Not this depth.
Marcus stepped in before she went further.
“Domenico, this is bigger than Valentina feeling excluded.”
I looked at him.
“Then explain.”
He hesitated.
I almost smiled.
He wanted the mystery large enough to justify his involvement but small enough not to expose the plan.
“Three capos have concerns about succession.”
There it was.
I laughed once.
“Ruby is three.”
“That doesn’t stop men from thinking ten years ahead.”
“Then those men need hobbies.”
Marcus’s expression hardened.
“The Falcone family has never passed central authority through a daughter.”
“Then the Falcone family has never met Ruby at thirty.”
Silence.
Valentina looked toward Ethan’s clothes.
“You see?”
I turned.
“What?”
“This is what I mean.”
Her eyes filled with anger.
“You already speak as if her future is guaranteed.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“I speak as if it is hers to grow into.”
May you like
Then I looked at Ethan’s shirts hanging beside Ruby’s empty closet.
“You wanted to make a decision for both children before either one understood the question.”
