Chapter 4 - The Sanctuary Agreement
The library at the Ferrante estate smelled of old paper and woodsmoke from the chimney that had, apparently, been cleaned since the morning.
A large oil portrait hung over the mantelpiece. It was a woman with dark hair pulled back in the style of the late eighties, wearing a simple gold necklace and looking out at the room with an expression that wasn't exactly happy but wasn't soft either. Lucia.
Enzo was sitting in a green leather wing chair by the fire. He had a book on his lap—a leather-bound volume of something large and German—but he wasn't reading it. He was looking at a silver teaspoon he held three inches from his mouth.
"The wind is louder now," he said as I walked in. He didn't look up, but he moved his foot slightly, as if making room for me on the rug. "The lake is angry tonight, Lucia. It wants the boats."
"The boats are in the harbor, Enzo," I said, sitting on the low stool across from him.
He looked at me over the top of the spoon. The cloudiness was back in his eyes, but when he saw my uniform—I hadn't changed out of the diner cotton—his face relaxed slightly. "The girl from the kitchen. Did you bring the bread?"
"The bread is coming," I said. "Felix is looking after it."
"Felix is a good boy," Enzo said, his voice softening. "A bit dry. Like his grandfather. But he knows how to handle the horses. Dante... Dante is too quick. He thinks everything can be solved with a pen and a ledger. You can't lead a horse with a ledger, Uccellina."
"No," I said. "You need a rope."
"A rope," he agreed, looking back at the spoon. "Or a song. Your mother had a song for the grey mare. What was it?"
I didn't know the song, so I just hummed the first few bars of a lullaby my grandmother used to sing when the trains on the South Side were too loud. It wasn't Italian, and it wasn't old, but it had a rhythm that moved like a slow walk.
Enzo’s thumb stopped moving against the silver. His head dropped back against the leather of the chair, his breathing deep and regular. Within three minutes, he was asleep, the spoon slipping from his fingers to land with a dull thrum on the Persian rug.
Dante stepped out from the shadows by the bookshelves. He had a glass of clear amber liquid in his hand—not bourbon, something lighter that smelled of peat.
"He hasn't slept three hours consecutive since the summer," Dante said. He walked over, picked up the spoon, and set it on the mantelpiece next to the silver lighter. "The doctors gave him pills. The pills made him see things in the curtains. He thought the curtains were on fire."
"He doesn't need pills," I said, standing up and rubbing my neck. "He needs someone to tell him the horses are looked after. He’s spent fifty years being the person who looks after things. It’s hard to stop just because your brain starts losing the thread."
Dante looked at the portrait over the fireplace. "He built this house. Not the stones—the money. He started with two trucks in forty-six. By sixty-two, he had forty. By seventy-four, he had the pier. He didn't lose the thread until she died. After that, the house just started getting bigger and the rooms started getting emptier."
He looked at me. His face was closer than it had been in the car, and I could see the small silver hairs near his temples and the faint scar that ran from the corner of his left eye down into his jawline—an old mark, small but deep, like it had been done with a wire or a thin blade.
"I want to make a proposal," Dante said.
"I already have a job," I said.
"You had a job," he corrected. "Sal’s is closed for the winter. I bought the lease this afternoon from the corporation. Sal is taking a vacation in Florida. He’s sixty-eight, Wren. He’s had enough bacon grease."
I stared at him. The heat from the fireplace was strong, but I felt a sudden, sharp chill right behind my ribs. "You can't just buy a person's life because they helped your father."
"I didn't buy his life. I bought his lease," Dante said, his voice entirely calm, entirely reasonable. "And I'm offering you a position here. Not as a maid. Not as a nurse. As his companion. When the sundown hits him—when he starts looking for the shoe—you sit with him. You hum that song. You tell him the horses are in the barn."
"And the rest of the time?"
"The rest of the time you live in the east wing," he said. "Your roommate too. The apartment on Damen is already listed. The boxes are coming here tomorrow."
"You're very efficient," I said, my voice rising slightly.
"Efficiency keeps people alive," Dante said. He set his glass down next to the lighter. "The Moretti family thinks my father is a weakness. They think because his mind is going, he might have said something to someone in the street. They think he might have given away the books from eighty-eight."
"Did he?"
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"My father doesn't remember the books from eighty-eight," Dante said. "But he remembers the names of every man who worked the docks. If the Morettis get him in a room for twenty minutes, they don't need the books. They just need him to talk about the old days."
He stepped closer, his shadow falling over me, broad and dark against the firelight. "You're in the ledger now, Wren. Whether you like it or not. I can either protect you here, where I have eight men on the lane and three in the house, or I can watch you die through a window on Damen. Which one looks like a cage to you?"
